chefctl on windows doesn't produce logs in /var/chef/outputs

[natewalck]

When using chefctl on windows, I cannot get it to write out the log to C:\chef\outputs like it does on Linux/macOS.

This occurs on chef-client 14.10.9.
Here is the config:

lock_file 'C:/chef/chefctl.lock'
plugin_path 'C:/chef/chefctl_hooks.rb'
log_dir 'C:/chef/outputs'
default_chef_options ["--fatal-windows-admin-check"]
chef_options ["-c C:/chef/solo/solo.rb"]
chef_client 'C:/opscode/chef/bin/chef-client.bat'
lock_time 1800
max_retries 1
windows_subshell true

Here is the command:

C:\opscode\chef\embedded\bin\ruby.exe c:\chef\chefctl.rb -C C:\chef\chefctl-config.rb

And here is what ends up in C:\chef\outputs:

PS C:\chef\outputs> Get-Content chef.20190207.1115.1549556120.out
[2019-02-07 11:15:21 -0500] WARN chefctl: Deprecated: windows_subshell shouldn't be used

I get stdout when running this and can see the changes, but it doesn't land in the outputs for some reason.

[jaymzh]

The code to get both logs going to the same place is pretty gnarly, and I don't know the windows stuff well enough to debug this... any idea on the fix?

[svmastersamurai]

@natewalck Have you tried setting windows_subshell to false? The branch of code that writes to console and the log file is not hit unless this value is false:
https://github.com/facebook/chef-utils/blob/master/chefctl/src/chefctl.rb#L1017-L1038

FWIW I was able to see logs in both console and the app created a directory appropriately with this config:

PS> cat $env:temp\chefctl-test\chefctl-config.rb
## THIS FILE IS MANAGED BY CHEF
### LOCAL CHANGES WILL BE OVERRIDDEN
log_dir 'C:\Users\svmastersamurai\AppData\Local\Temp\chefctl-test\outputs'
lock_file "C:/chef/chefctl.lock"
default_chef_options ["--fatal-windows-admin-check"]
chef_client "C:/opscode/chef/bin/chef-client.bat"
lock_time 1800
max_retries 1
windows_subshell false

PS> C:\opscode\chef\embedded\bin\ruby.exe C:\Users\svmastersamurai\github\chef-utils\chefctl\src\chefctl.rb --config $env:temp\chefctl-test\chefctl-config.rb -i

PS> dir $env:temp\chefctl-test\outputs
    Directory: C:\Users\svmastersamurai\AppData\Local\Temp\chefctl-test\outputs
Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----         6/5/2019   2:45 PM         160361 chef.20190605.1444.1559771097.out
-a---l         6/5/2019   2:44 PM              0 chef.cur.out
-a---l         6/5/2019   2:45 PM              0 chef.last.out

PS> cat $env:temp\chefctl-test\outputs\chef.cur.out -first 10
INFO: Registering FB::CpeinfoReport as a handler for types: report, exception
INFO: Registering FB::TableauReport as a handler for types: report
INFO: Registering FB::ChefRunsReport as a handler for types: report, exception
INFO: Registering FB::FbagentReport as a handler for types: report, exception
INFO: Running on
[2019-06-05T14:45:05-07:00] INFO: *** Chef 14.12.9 ***
[2019-06-05T14:45:05-07:00] INFO: Platform: x64-mingw32
[2019-06-05T14:45:05-07:00] INFO: Chef-client pid: 15864
...

[gleason86]

This issue can be closed; this issue was caused by plugin_path 'C:/chef/chefctl_hooks.rb' in chefctl-config.rb. More specifically, the function def pre_start was altering Chefctl::Config.path which should be set to nil when windows_subsystem is set to false.