Remote Invoke-Command job generating error from WSMan

Question

_{Monday, July 11, 2016 10:17 PM}

I'm trying to run a to search IIS logs on each of our IIS servers (36) because the log files are quite large and there are 14 days worth kept. 

I have a scriptblock which runs just fine locally on one of those server, but it fails when I try it via invoke-command from a remote machine. The message returned is: 

Processing data for a remote command failed with the following error message: The WSMan provider host process did not return a  proper response.  A provider in the host process may have behaved improperly

What is WSMan? This script takes 15-30 minutes to run. Is there a timeout I am hitting?

Here is the code:

$script = {
cd c:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\w3svc3
$unique = @()
Get-ChildItem -name -path "u*.log" | % { 
    $content = get-content $_ | select-string -pattern " (GET|POST|MERGE|PUT) /.*/api/applitrack.*\.svc.* 40[13] "
    $content = $content -replace('.* (GET|POST|MERGE|PUT) /([^/ ]+)/api/applitrackapi.*','$2')
    $content | % {
        if ( ! $unique.Contains($_.ToLower()) ) {
            $unique += $_.ToLower()
        }
    }
}
$unique | write-host
}

$svcCreds = get-credential -username 'remoteuser' `
      -message 'Input password for remoteuser'

invoke-command -computername 'webserver1' -credential $svcCreds `
   -scriptblock $script -asjob

All replies (6)

_{Tuesday, July 12, 2016 9:08 PM ✅Answered}

Found out that since the log files were so large, it was running out of memory. In the algorithm I was loading the entire file into memory. The identifying output was obtains by running Invoke-Command without the "-asjob" parameter and interactively. 

See http://www.gsx.com/blog/bid/83018/Troubleshooting-unknown-PowerShell-error-messages for helpful information on dealing with WSMan messages.

So, once I modified the code like this (using select-string to read the file), it ran well remotely.

$script = {
cd c:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\w3svc3
$unique = @()
Get-ChildItem -name -path "u*.log" | % { 
    $content = select-string -pattern " (GET|POST|MERGE|PUT) /.*/api/applitrack.*\.svc.* 40[13] " -path $_
    $content = $content -replace('.* (GET|POST|MERGE|PUT) /([^/ ]+)/api/applitrackapi.*','$2')
    $content | % {
        if ( ! $unique.Contains($_.ToLower()) ) {
            $unique += $_.ToLower()
        }
    }
}
$unique | write-host
}

_{Monday, July 11, 2016 11:51 PM}

Invoke-Command is WSMan. You have issues. They need to be fixed.

Also your script makes little sense.  What is this line:

  if ( !$unique.Contains($_.ToLower()) ) {

The object is empty and will always be empty.  The code will never resolve.

\(ツ)_/

_{Tuesday, July 12, 2016 2:54 AM}

Hi Kevin,

>>What is WSMan? This script takes 15-30 minutes to run. Is there a timeout I am hitting?

WSMan provides access to Web Services for Management (WS-Management) configuration information.

For more details,please refer to link below:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh847813.aspx

For this issue, I suppose we could use the command *test-wsman -computernname -authentication  *to test your target server's wsman related configurations.

For detailed parameters, refer to link below:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849873.aspx

Besides, please check the related authentication method on your target server.

Best regards

Andy_Pan

_{Tuesday, July 12, 2016 2:15 PM}

Wrong, that scriptblock runs just fine locally. The line you cite is looking to see if a given string is not already in the array. As you can see the if statement will then add to that array.

_{Tuesday, July 12, 2016 2:54 PM}

Perhaps if you explain what it is you are trying to accomplish.

Trying to guess for the code I can only say that this would be more efficient.

$script={
    Get-ChildItem -path c:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\w3svc3 -Include 'u*.log'|
        get-content |
        select-string -pattern ' (GET|POST|MERGE|PUT) /.*/api/applitrack.*\.svc.* 40[13] ' |
        ForEach-Object{ ($_.Line) -replace '.* (GET|POST|MERGE|PUT) /([^/ ]+)/api/applitrackapi.*', '$2' } |
        ForEach-Object{$_.ToLower} |
        Select -Unique
}

Also LogParser is a far more efficient and flexible way to parse IIS log files.  It is how most do this:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24659

Forums for LogParser with IIS logs are here: http://forums.iis.net

\(ツ)_/

_{Tuesday, July 12, 2016 9:19 PM}

That is what my post would have fixed.  You need to learn to use the pipeline as it can easily educe overhead.  The only issue is the "unique-ing" bit which requires loading it all into memory at one shot.

LogParser would be faster and use less memory.  LogParser can also output directly into a database table. And uses many advanced methods to read log files.  It also runs multithreaded which PowerShell does not.

\(ツ)_/