Not able to create service with powershell

[mlenz968]

I want to start a powershell script with shawl but as soon as I have powershell on the shawl command line the Windows service is broken. Of course my original service registration has more arguments but I could reduce it to this simple service registration to reproduce the problem: shawl add --name PS_Test -- "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -File service_master.ps1" or even shawl add --name PS_Test -- powershell -File service_master.ps1

If I try to open the service properties in the Windows Services I get an error message The system cannot find the file specified.

Also the service description only contains an error message: <Failed to Read Description. Error Code: 2 >

Does anybody have an idea what could be the root cause and how to solve it?

[mtkennerly]

shawl add --name PS_Test -- "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -File service_master.ps1"

There are a couple of problems with this command:

• You only need quotes around individual arguments (with spaces). The exe and arguments don't need to all be grouped together in a single pair of quotes.
• service_master.ps1 is a relative path, but you haven't specified a --cwd, so it'll look for the script in whatever default working directory Windows assigns to the service. You probably want to either set --cwd or use an absolute path to the script.

For example, if the script is in C:\scripts\service_master.ps1, then you could try one of these:

• shawl add --name PS_Test -- powershell -File C:\scripts\service_master.ps1
• shawl add --name PS_Test --cwd C:\scripts -- powershell -File service_master.ps1

[mlenz968]

I also tried the following variants but they all had the same problem:

• shawl add --name PS_Test --cwd "C:\service_test" -- powershell -File "service-master.ps1"
• shawl add --name PS_Test --cwd C:\service_test -- powershell -File service-master.ps1
• shawl add --name PS_Test -- powershell -File "C:\service_test\service-master.ps1"
• shawl add --name PS_Test -- powershell -File C:\service_test\service-master.ps1

If I put the powershell -File C:\service_test\service-master.ps1 into a service-master.cmd and register the service via shawl add --name PS_Test -- C:\service_test\service-master.cmd the service registration is ok.

Also the graceful shutdown of my application via ctrl-c works.

The only drawback is that after the graceful shutdown of the app the script does not terminate because the command interpreter waits for the "Terminate batch job (Y/N)" confirmation.

[mlenz968]

I made another test.

I created a symbolic link to powershell mklink ps.exe C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe and used ps.exe in the command. This time everything is ok.

But if I use powershell.exe as link name then I have the same problems as before.

That's really strange.

But at least I have a workaround for this problem.

[mtkennerly]

Yeah, that's really weird. Unfortunately, I'm not able to reproduce it. This worked for me on Windows 11 with PowerShell 5.1.22621.1778:

• C:\tmp\script.ps1:

  Add-Content script.txt "`ntest"

• shawl.exe add --name PS_Test --cwd C:\tmp -- powershell -File script.ps1
• sc start PS_Test
• C:\tmp\script.txt:

  test

What happens if you try using the same test script?

I was also able to just do shawl.exe add --name PS_Test --cwd C:\tmp -- script.ps1 without specifically referencing powershell. Does that work for you, so you can avoid the symbolic link?