Using Out-file

PowerShell Help
1

Hi there,

I’ve recently watched the Powershell jumpstart series and I’m getting dangerous. I have a fairly simple script but I have a feeling there’s an easier (more elegant?) way to do this.

My script creates new deployments in a vmware environment and I want a nicely formatted log in a text file for now. The purpose is so the admin running it can see exactly what was done and also for auditing purpose.

My question is putting the out-file $filename -append and the end of just about every line seems a little crazy. Is Start-Transcript a better option? I did see a forum post about Start-Transcript but it didnt to quite apply to my situation.

Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,Position=1)]
    [string]$ClientName,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True)]
    [string]$vlanID
) 

$cluster = 'Cluster'
$RootVMFolder = 'Client Folder'
$vSwitch = 'dvswitch'
$numports = 8
$LogFileRoot= "c:\scripts\logs\"
$logfile =($LogFileRoot + $clientname + "-" + (Get-Date -f MMddyyyy-hhmm)  +".log")

Write-Output ("Script Executed by " + $env:username) | out-file $logfile  -append

#Loading credentials for logging into vCenter
$creds = Get-VICredentialStoreItem -file pshell.creds 
Write-Output "Logging into vCenter...." | out-file $logfile  -append
Connect-VIServer -server $creds.host -user $creds.user -password $creds.password | out-file $logfile -append


Write-Output "Creating New Folder for VMs" | out-file $logfile  -append
new-folder -Name $clientName -Location $RootVMFolder  | select Name,Parent | out-file $logfile  -append

Write-Output "Creating New Resource Pool" | out-file $logfile -append
new-resourcepool -Location $cluster -name $clientName  | select Name |  out-file $logfile  -append

Write-Output ("Creating New PortGroup called " + "VPN-" + $ClientName + " with vlanID " + $vlanid) | out-file $logfile  -append
Get-VDSwitch -name "dvSwitch" | New-VDPortgroup -Name VPN-$ClientName -numports $numports -vlanid $vlanId  | out-file $logfile  -append
2

Maybe, maybe not. Only the console host supports transcripts, so your script would have to be running in it (e.g., not the ISE or another host). Most folks will create a “logging” function to make this a bit neater. Then you just do something like “Write-Log ‘whatever’” and it takes care of outing to the file.

3

A reply in two minutes, that’s impressive.

Turns out I’m not completely crazy so thanks for that.

Happy New Year!

4

For simple stuff, I don’t worry about putting logging code in the script itself. I just redirect the script’s output to a file and review it later. For example, in a scheduled task, I might launch:

PowerShell.exe -File c:\somePowerShellScript.ps1 *> c:\Logs\someLogFile.txt

The “*>” operator is available in PowerShell 3.0 and later; it redirects all streams (output, error, warning, verbose and debug) to the same file.

This approach has a couple of limitations. You don’t get to see the output at the console as the script is running; you have to view it in the log file afterward. I also like to have timestamps in my log files. For that reason, I wrote a module to intercept Host output and redirect it to a file, which you can see here, if you’re interested. It works a lot like Start-Transcript, but works with both the ISE and PowerShell.exe hosts (and very possibly with other custom hosts as well, though I haven’t tested it with anything else.) You can also have multiple captures going at once (with different combinations of streams, if desired), whereas there can only be one Start-Transcript active per session.

5

Clearly I am doing something wrong here as i cannot get the Out-File to write:

$a = Get-Date -format yyyyMMdd-HH:MM
Get-ChildItem -Path z:\ -Filter "$line.pdf" -Recurse | Copy-Item -DESTination c:\Temp -PassThru |Out-File c:\utils\Logs\$a.log

But this one works? Why doezsn’t Out-File take variables???

$a = Get-Date -format yyyyMMdd-HH:MM
Get-ChildItem -Path z:\ -Filter "$line.pdf" -Recurse | Copy-Item -DESTination c:\Temp -PassThru |Out-File c:\utils\Logs\test.log
6

The problem isn’t the pipe to out-file, it’s this part earlier in the pipeline:

> Write-Verbose

That greater than sign is a redirection operator (which essentially just calls Out-File under the hood anyway.)

7

Sorry, Dave, I saw that and changed the request. Why can’t I get Out-File to take a variable?

8

see, I am trying to write a script that will find corrupted files and list them.

9

Out-File does take variables, but your variable’s value has a colon in it, which isn’t legal in a Windows file name.