Question

I have function in a powershell 2.0 script that I am launching as a bkground job

Start-Job -ScriptBlock {CopyDataToServer($uploadSessionGuid)} -Name $uploadSessionGuid

Then at the end of the script I have

Wait-Job -State Running -Timeout $LogCopyTimeout

Event though the job is showing as Running and then completed, nothing is copied to the server.

How can I debug this?

Answer 1

Roman is right about CopyDataToServer and $uploadSessionGuid probably not being defined in the runspace the job executes in (upvoted his answer). BTW I believe it is better to wait on a specific job object than for any job in the running state e.g.:

$job = Start-Job {param($path, $guid) . $path\lib.ps1; CopyDataToServer $guid} `
       -arg $pwd,$uploadSessionGuid
Wait-Job $job
Receive-Job $job

Note that you can use the -ArgumentList parameter to pass in parameters to your scriptblock. While you can access these arguments in your scriptblock via $args, I prefer using a param block and naming the args. This example also shows how you can pass in the path to a PowerShell script containing the function CopyDataToServer which gets dot sourced into the job’s runspace.