Question

I am trying to install a service on a remote machine using the powershell.

So far I have the following:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName  $remoteComputerName -ScriptBlock {
         param($password=$password,$username=$username) 
         $secpasswd = ConvertTo-SecureString $password -AsPlainText -Force
         $credentials = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ($username, $secpasswd)
         New-Service -Name "XXX" -BinaryPathName "c:\XXX.exe" -DisplayName "XXX XXX XXX" -Description "XXXXXX." -Credential $credentials -ErrorVariable errortext 
         Write-Host("Error in: " + $errortext)
        } -ArgumentList $password,$username -ErrorVariable errortext 


Write-Host("Error out: " + $errortext)

When there is an error while executing New-Service the $errortext ErrorVariable get set properly inside the ScriptBlock, because the text: “Error in: shows me the error.

The ErrorVariable of the Invoke-Command does not get set (which I expected).

My question is:

Is it somehow possible to set the ErrorVariable of the Invoke-Command to the error I got inside the ScriptBlock?

I know I could also use InstalUtil, WMI and SC to install the service, but this is not relevant at the moment.

Answer 1

No, you can’t get the Errorvariable from the Invoke-Command call to be set the same as in the scriptblock.

But if your goal is “detect and handle errors in the scriptblock, and also get errors returned back to the context of the Invoke-Command caller” then just do it manually:

$results = Invoke-Command -ComputerName server.contoso.com -ScriptBlock {
   try
   {
       New-Service -ErrorAction 1
   }
   catch
   {
       <log to file, do cleanup, etc>
       return $_
   }
   <do stuff that should only execute when there are no failures>
}

$results now contains the error information.