Running remotely an app from a shared folder with PsExec

Question

I am actually not sure that this is possible. let's see:

I have a script that runs on a Build server. Let's name this server A.
It drops the bins to a shared folder on server B. And I want to run the program on server C.

So using caspol I can allow the executable to be ran remotely. that means from B I can run \C\shared\my.exe

What I want to do is from A run \C\shared\my.exe on B.

SysInternals\PsExec.exe -u username -p password -accepteula \\ServerC -i 0 -d -w \\ServerB\Nightly\Server \\ServerB\Nightly\Server\server.exe

The user has all the necessary rights.

But, the -w (working directory) options apparently wants a path relative to the server I point to. Any idea?

Answer 1

Without knowing what your application does, do you need to define the working path? I may be wrong, but I don't believe UNC paths are supported? What about a little trickery, and doing a map of a network drive, and bundle it up in a script? Something like:

pushd \\ServerB\Nightly\Server
server.exe
popd

Put this in a script, then call it using psexec:

psexec -u username -p password \\machine -accepteula -i 0 -d \\serverb\nightly\server\myscript.bat

The pushd command maps the next available drive letter to the share, and then changes directory to that new map. popd returns back to the previous path, and unmounts the drive.

Answer 2

try it with the -e switch as well (doesn't try to load the user's profile) not too sure about the "-accepteula" switch either since psexec doesn't prompt for one AFAIK and this doesn't appear to be a valid switch for psexec...

The 2 switches "-i" and "-d" contradict each other since -i makes it run interactively and -d says only to use it with non-interactive applications. I have never had a need to use either switch.

The best way to approach a troublesome operation involving remote systems that I have found is first try to run it locally, then slowly start moving different components to remote boxes and getting them to work from there. That way you figure out exactly where the problem lies in your syntax of your original attempt.

psexec usage

Answer 3

I was able to do it like this:

psexec -s -username domain\username -p MyPassw@rd @c:\temp\computers.txt \\fileserver\SCCMClient\CCMSetup.exe

-s was needed to not get "access denied" errors -username and -p were needed to connect to the fileserver with the executable files

I personally think that PSExec is a great little tool!

Answer 4

In your script you can copy the thing that you want to run to the local machine disk and after run it delete it. Use robocopy.exe \UNC-Path LocalDestionation to copy the file, run it and after that delete it. Remenber that you always have envitoment variables like %Temp% to use.

For your case running using Sysinternals PSExec you can try make a bat that runs every bat line started with PSExec. You can use enviroment variables in the bat using the SET command for things like the username.