shell-local post-processor results in errors on Windows

[mrled]

When I try to use the shell-local post-processor in Windows, it fails with an empty error message.

Is this working under Windows? Have I done something wrong?

• Packer version: 0.11.0
• Host platform: Windows
• Simplest example template and scripts: https://gist.github.com/mrled/a6454b8432fc20b043ee70d64d6fd552

[mwhooker]

confirmed this.

the problem seems to be that powershell.exe won't run any file that doesn't end in ".ps1" and we write the script to something like packer-shell123456

[mrled]

Hmm. That might be part of the problem too, but I'm also seeing it when trying to run a Python script, and Python isn't constrained to only running files with certain extensions. I've updated my gist with a Python script and its output. It has the same empty error message.

[mwhooker]

alright I think the problem is that the post-processor communicator uses exec.Command("sh", "-c", cmd.Command).

I manually changed it to use exec.Command("Powershell.exe", "-command", cmd.Command) and made the execute_command something like Move-Item {{.Script}} {{.Script}}.ps1; Powershell.exe -File {{.Script}}.ps1 and it worked. Need to figure out how to abstract this for the windows host

[rickard-von-essen]

Maybe we should have a powershell-local post-processor. But on the other
hand we have our doubts about the shell-local since it ties the
configuration tighter to the setup/type of host running the build.

On Nov 10, 2016 01:57, "Matthew Hooker" notifications@github.com wrote:

alright I think the problem is that the post-processor communicator
uses exec.Command("sh",
"-c", cmd.Command).

I manually changed it to use exec.Command("Powershell.exe", "-command",
cmd.Command) and made the execute_command something like Move-Item
{{.Script}} {{.Script}}.ps1; Powershell.exe -File {{.Script}}.ps1 and it
worked. Need to figure out how to abstract this for the windows host

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[mrled]

Hmm. Well I hope it, or something like it, stays around, because I've found it to be very useful. A powershell-local (or cmd-local, which I could use to invoke Powershell or any other scripting language myself) would definitely solve my problem too.

[vtolstov]

I thinks we can change default for each builder....

[damphyr]

I've stumbled on this trying to get .msu files to execute.

Basically I'm trying to get a Vagrant Win7 basebox without the dreaded 100% CPU windows update bug and that involves installing three .msu files with in-between reboots just so we can run windows update again. But wusa.exe does not allow .msu execution over winRM so I thought I would do it locally - hence my landing here.

I switched back to

{
      "type": "shell-local",
      "execute_command": ["cmd.exe","/C","{{.Command}}"],
      "command": "echo Boo"
}

as a workaround but I'm not having much success with it either.
Without a local execution context the only workaround I have left is creating schedule tasks to run on reboot and triggering reboots :(

[SwampDragons]

It seems to me that the point of having an "execute_command" option is to allow the entire command to be configurable. So why not wait until we can make a backwards-breaking change, and then entirely remove the assumption of a shell command? This seems to me to be the way the feature is documented, anyway.

For example (pardon the naive string handling, was just pounding this out to see if it'd work):

--- a/post-processor/shell-local/communicator.go
+++ b/post-processor/shell-local/communicator.go
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ import (
        "io"
        "os"
        "os/exec"
+       "strings"
        "syscall"

        "github.com/hashicorp/packer/packer"
@@ -13,7 +14,10 @@ import (
 type Communicator struct{}

 func (c *Communicator) Start(cmd *packer.RemoteCmd) error {
-       localCmd := exec.Command("sh", "-c", cmd.Command)
+       splitcmd := strings.Split(cmd.Command, " ")
+       cmdName := splitcmd[0]
+       cmdArgs := strings.Join(splitcmd[1:], " ")
+       localCmd := exec.Command(cmdName, cmdArgs)

Which you can then use a provisioner with like this:

> "post-processors": [
>     {
>       "type": "shell-local",
>       "execute_command": "Powershell.exe Move-Item {{.Script}} {{.Script}}.ps1; Powershell.exe -File {{.Script}}.ps1",
>       "inline": ["write-output HIIIIIIIII"]
>     }

[SwampDragons]

Closing because we have decided to deprecate this post-processor instead of fixing it; #5330

[ghost]

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