Exec To Powershell returns different from running directly to Powershell

Question

I have the following code implemented:

$ServiceName = $_GET['Service'];
exec("echo . | powershell.exe -c get-service ".$ServiceName,$OutputArray);
        echo "<pre>";
            print_r($OutputArray);
        echo "</pre>";

My $ServiceName is assigned through get, but for this example.

$_GET['Service'] = "WinRM"; // Service Name is assigned to WinRM For *Windows Remote Management*

Now.. When I run this script, I get the following:

Array
(
    [0] => Get-Service : Cannot find any service with service name 'WinRM'.
    [1] => At line:1 char:12
    [2] => + get-service <<<<  WinRM
    [3] =>     + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (WinRM:String) [Get-Service], Se
    [4] =>    rviceCommandException
    [5] =>     + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NoServiceFoundForGivenName,Microsoft.PowerShell.
    [6] =>    Commands.GetServiceCommand
    [7] => 
)

Now, when I open Powershell, and run the following:

get-service WinRM I get returned with the following output:

PS C:\Users\Administrator> get-service WinRM

Status   Name               DisplayName
------   ----               -----------
Running  WinRM              Windows Remote Management (WS-Manag...

This happens on a few other service names such as:

$Array = array(
        "DNSServer" => "DNS",
        "DHCP Client" => "DHCP",
        "Web Server" => "IISADMIN",
        "Windows Remote Management" => "WinRM"
    );

This fails on DNS, IISADMIN, WinRM in this example... But again, from PS I get returned with:

PS C:\Users\Administrator> get-service DNS,IISADMIN,WinRM

Status   Name               DisplayName
------   ----               -----------
Running  DNS                DNS Server
Running  IISADMIN           IIS Admin Service
Running  WinRM              Windows Remote Management (WS-Manag...

My overall question is how to improve the reporting from Powershell to PHP and get accurate results from both ends?

This Does succeed some of the time depending on the service name. For example:

$ServiceName = "DHCP"; -- Which is why this Name is not included in the error debugging.. I get returned with:

Array
(
    [0] => 
    [1] => Status   Name               DisplayName
    [2] => ------   ----               -----------
    [3] => Running  DHCP               DHCP Client
    [4] => 
    [5] => 
)

Which is what I am looking for.

Gordon · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-01 15:56:29Z

1

Instead of Powershell, consider querying the machine via COM and WMI:

$wmi = new COM('WinMgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!root/cimv2');
$result = $wmi->ExecQuery('Select * from Win32_Service where Name="Dhcp"');
foreach ($result as $share) {
    printf(
        'Service: %s - Status: %s %s',
        $share->Name,
        $share->Status,
        PHP_EOL
    );
}

This will print

Service: Dhcp - Status: OK

The available properties for Win32_Service are listed here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/windows/desktop/aa394418(v=vs.85).aspx

An alternative would be to exec wmic:

exec('wmic Service where name="DHCP" get name, status /format:csv', $services);

Content of $services would then be

Array
(
    [0] => 
    [1] => Node,Name,Status
    [2] => MYCOMPUTER,Dhcp,OK
)

You can parse this easily with fgetcsv. An alternate and easy to parse format would be rawxml instead of csv. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757287(v=ws.10).aspx for details

edited May 1, 2013 at 15:56

answered May 1, 2013 at 15:20

Gordon

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6 Comments

Daryl Gill Over a year ago

Sorry for the delay, I will check over this in a minute, seeing if it works

Daryl Gill Over a year ago

After running the first chunk, it returns blank, so does the second.. If i run the win32_service library within PHP, i get error 5 which is a permission problem which I do not have to resolve

Gordon Over a year ago

Sorry, don't know why this ain't working for you. Both approaches work fine on my win7 machine.

Daryl Gill Over a year ago

Perhaps it's a permission fault, because im on a 2008r2 operating system? And I have found a temporary work around, I've got a scheduled task running a PowerShell with the correct privileges, then PHP reading a text file making an array with the necessary information

Daryl Gill Over a year ago

this is my temporary solution, as I was stuck; stackoverflow.com/questions/16328299/…

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