Scripting with Powershell 7

dfletcher

We script against some 3rd party powershell modules that require Powershell 7. Running these scripts through Atera fails because it defaults to powershell.exe (Powershell 5.1) when powershell 7 requires pwsh.exe.

I found a workaround here that is working for us:

You can definitely do this it's just not builtin using a pwsh syntax. The easiest way I know is to just start the new process and use a scriptblock as the argument.

pwsh.exe {
  code inside here runs in the new process
  }

PowerShell internally will convert that scriptblock into -EncodedCommand ... and output the data as actual objects so you can get richer objects back to use in the main process. They will be serialized so essentially a read only copy of what was output.

nina

FYI @kim :)

kim

Hi @dfletcher !

Thank you for sharing your script! That's very helpful for a lot of the tasks I've been trying to remediate in my environment. Have you submitted it to the Shared Script Library? This would make it super easy for others to clone in their environments as well. I'm not the world's best script-er so this is very helpful for people like me.

Thank you again!

Sincerely,

Kim

dfletcher

@kim

I've submitted it to the shared script library, but it hasn't been accepted yet.

For reference, the script name I used was ps7wrapper.ps1

kim

That's awesome! I'm sure it'll be accepted soon!

mjones

https://community.atera.com/discussion/176/scripting-with-powershell-7

Might be good to build some logic around this to run one version or another based on the PS version on the machine.

if ($PSVersionTable.PSVersion -lt 7){

  # Do things in PS v5

}else {

  pwsh.exe {

    # Do things in PS v7

  }

}

dfletcher

https://community.atera.com/discussion/comment/964#Comment_964

Except that PowerShell 7 is a side by side installation. The default powershell is always 5.1 and as far as the current documentation it will stay that way. Calling powershell.exe gets you 5.1. Calling pwsh.exe gets 7.

kim

That makes sense, @dfletcher look your script has posted! https://app.atera.com/new/admin/scripts and search for "ps7wrapper" to find your posted script in the Shared Script Library! I've already cloned it to use in my environment, so thank you in advance for this awesomeness!

Sincerely,

Kim

nina

#teamwork

nina

As @kim mentioned, you can view your script in-app here.

kim

https://community.atera.com/discussion/comment/991#Comment_991

Thanks @nina!