Windows – VBScript and PSEXEC – Remotely Executing Application

batch-filecmdtivolivbscriptwindows

I am updating an existing HTA application. The page displays records of each machine in the company that hasn't performed a backup (Via ibm tsm) within the last 3 days. I have made a button for each record that when pressed, should execute a cscript process using PSEXEC that run an exe on the target machine and passes an argument. (dsmc.exe INCREMENTAL) Now i can manually open a cmd prompt, use the \Remote cmd command to create a remote cmd, and run the application just fine. But without the extra step of creating a remote cmd prompt, and trying to

PSEXEC \\RemoteMachine cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\tivoli\tsm\baclient\dsmc.exe" INCREMENTAL

Only results in an error. I know that it should be possible to remotely execute this program and still pass in an argument but it just doesn't run. And when i create the remote cmd prompt using

PSEXEC \\RemoteMachine cmd

Any other lines in the execution script do not execute until i exit the remote cmd prompt.

Is there a secret to PSEXEC i don't understand or a way to grab an existing cmd prompt (The remote one i just created) and pass it the command to execute? Please Help

*Note, this is not my first script using PSEXEC. I typically use my VBScript to create a batch file locally with the PSEXEC Script contained, and then execute it. Never have been able to get wsshell.run to work with PSEXEC.

Best Answer

Here is (more or less) my syntax for using objShell.Run to work with psexec:

Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
objShell.Run "cmd.exe /c ""%pathToPsexec%\psexec.exe"" -accepteula -s -i -d \\RemoteMachine cmd.exe /k ipconfig",0,True

This is just an example, but shows that you can send nested switches, etc. It's also important to understand the switches of psexec.

-accepteula - this accepts the license agreement on psexec. this isn't necessary unless you're running it for the first time and you want it to be quiet.
-s - runs as the System account of the remote computer. If you don't use this, you need to specify -u and -p if you want to run interactively. Otherwise your credentials perform a network logon
-i - specifies to run interactively. This can be omitted or a session can be specified.
-d - don't wait for the remote command to finish before moving on

Example

@echo off
my_nify_exe.exe
if errorlevel 1 (
   echo Failure Reason Given is %errorlevel%
   exit /b %errorlevel%
)

Warning: If you set an environment variable name errorlevel, %errorlevel% will return that value and not the exit code. Use (set errorlevel=) to clear the environment variable, allowing access to the true value of errorlevel via the %errorlevel% environment variable.

What does %~dp0 mean, and how does it work

Calling

for /?

in the command-line gives help about this syntax (which can be used outside FOR, too, this is just the place where help can be found).

In addition, substitution of FOR variable references has been enhanced. You can now use the following optional syntax:

%~I         - expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (")
%~fI        - expands %I to a fully qualified path name
%~dI        - expands %I to a drive letter only
%~pI        - expands %I to a path only
%~nI        - expands %I to a file name only
%~xI        - expands %I to a file extension only
%~sI        - expanded path contains short names only
%~aI        - expands %I to file attributes of file
%~tI        - expands %I to date/time of file
%~zI        - expands %I to size of file
%~$PATH:I   - searches the directories listed in the PATH
               environment variable and expands %I to the
               fully qualified name of the first one found.
               If the environment variable name is not
               defined or the file is not found by the
               search, then this modifier expands to the
               empty string

The modifiers can be combined to get compound results:

%~dpI       - expands %I to a drive letter and path only
%~nxI       - expands %I to a file name and extension only
%~fsI       - expands %I to a full path name with short names only
%~dp$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH
               environment variable for %I and expands to the
               drive letter and path of the first one found.
%~ftzaI     - expands %I to a DIR like output line

In the above examples %I and PATH can be replaced by other valid values. The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name. Picking upper case variable names like %I makes it more readable and avoids confusion with the modifiers, which are not case sensitive.

There are different letters you can use like f for "full path name", d for drive letter, p for path, and they can be combined. %~ is the beginning for each of those sequences and a number I denotes it works on the parameter %I (where %0 is the complete name of the batch file, just like you assumed).

Best Answer

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