ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 and upgrade_to_ps3.ps1 chicken/egg problem

[breathe]

ISSUE TYPE

Feature Idea

COMPONENT NAME

core

ANSIBLE VERSION

2.2

CONFIGURATION

OS / ENVIRONMENT

SUMMARY

The example powershell script for setting up winrm on a windows host in a manner suitable for management with ansible requires powershell 3: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/examples/scripts/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1

meanwhile this sample powershell script to upgrade to powershell3 suggests that it can be run inside an ansible task (in the comments at the top):
https://github.com/cchurch/ansible/blob/devel/examples/scripts/upgrade_to_ps3.ps1

Chicken and egg though -- you can't run upgrade_to_ps3.ps1 via ansible because you can't setup winrm for ansible correctly with ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 since ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 requires powershell 3 ...

Would be nice if ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 didn't require powershell 3 -- then getting ansible working on a node would be simpler as ansible itself could be used to get the node to powershell3 ...

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

EXPECTED RESULTS

ACTUAL RESULTS

[cchurch]

The comments in upgrade_to_ps3.ps1 were there before the ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 script even existed, and the steps to configure remoting were only described in the documentation at that time. It may make sense to remove those comments to avoid confusion.

What is your target OS?

[breathe]

I'm targeting windows 7 (which comes with powershell 2) and higher. I'm not super familiar with powershell -- I see that ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 explicitly checks for greater-than or equal to version 3 -- is there anything in that script which actually depends on such a shell version? It would be be nice to deploy powershell >=3 via ansible if it were possible as the upgrade process for powershell requires upgrading to compatible dotnet which requires a reboot. Its easier and cleaner to orchestrate automation like that with ansible than without ... I'm currently using a script which creates a scheduled task that runs ONSTART to get hosts from clean windows install up to powershell 4 without intervention, then calls ConfigureRemotingForAnsible. Not the cleanest thing but I'll go with it if there's no other way ...

[trondhindenes]

@breathe One reason we didn't use configure....ps1 to optionally install the required powershell version, is that changing the WMF version (Powershell is part of WMF) requires a reboot. I didn't have to go down the path of having to create a script that would persist between reboots since this is meant to be a quick and easy config-script.

I have not tested the configure..ps1 script on PowerShell 2.0, there's a good chance it will work (maybe a little bit of tweaking is required).

[dagwieers]

@breathe Not really a chicken-and-egg problem, because you can use the script, raw or win_psexec modules to run tasks without the need for Powershell 3 ! But you will have to enable WinRM yourself manually. That is always the first step, which means running a few things from the ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 !

The script-module is powershell-agnostic as well (like it is on Unix), which would allow for this as soon as WinRM is configured:

- hosts: old_windows
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
  - script:  files/upgrade_to_ps3.ps1

So the following task would work on a Powershell 2 system:

- hosts: old_windows
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
  - raw: |
      <powershell commands or script content>

In fact what should work equally well is this:

- hosts: old_windows
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
  - raw: {{ lookup("file', 'files/upgrade_to_ps3.ps1') }}

Or you can run a script directly from a network share

- hosts: old_windows
  gather_facts: no
  tasks:
  - raw: powershell.exe -file \\system\share\path\upgrade_to_ps3.ps1

Good luck, report back and possibly send in a PR with suggested changes to the documentation !

[ansibot]

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