Doesn't run under WinRM

[thumperward]

Brief description of your issue

WinGet can't be run on a WinRM session. The UWP magic doesn't seem to understand such a setup and so there are various problems:

• The winget command can't be found, despite the WindowsApps directory being in $PATH;
• Access is denied ("The system cannot execute the specified program.") when providing a full path to the executable.

I'm working on a Chef cookbook which adds WinGet as a custom resource (so it can install packages) but at present this can't be smoothly tested because the call to the winget executable always fails.

Steps to reproduce

1. Use Enter-PSSession, vagrant powershell or the like to open a remote PowerShell session to a host with WinGet installed.
2. Try to run WinGet.

Expected behavior

• WinGet prints its help output as it does when run in a local terminal

Actual behavior

Typical example output on an interactive session on a local Windows VM created by Vagrant:

[127.0.0.1]: PS C:\Users\vagrant\Documents> winget
Program 'winget.exe' failed to run: A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated.
    + CategoryInfo          : ResourceUnavailable: (:) [], ApplicationFailedException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandFailed

[127.0.0.1]: PS C:\Users\vagrant\Documents> cd $Env:LOCALAPPDATA/Microsoft/WindowsApps
[127.0.0.1]: PS C:\Users\vagrant\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps> ls

    Directory: C:\Users\vagrant\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d-----       20/05/2020     22:57                Backup
d-----       20/05/2020     22:57                Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_8wekyb3d8bbwe
d-----       06/02/2020     20:09                Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe
d-----       20/05/2020     18:10                Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay_8wekyb3d8bbwe
-a---l       20/05/2020     18:10              0 GameBarElevatedFT_Alias.exe
-a---l       06/02/2020     20:09              0 MicrosoftEdge.exe
-a---l       20/05/2020     22:57              0 python.exe
-a---l       20/05/2020     22:57              0 python3.exe
-a---l       20/05/2020     22:57              0 winget.exe

[127.0.0.1]: PS C:\Users\vagrant\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps> .\winget.exe
Program 'winget.exe' failed to run: A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated.
    + CategoryInfo          : ResourceUnavailable: (:) [], ApplicationFailedException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandFailed

[127.0.0.1]: PS C:\Users\vagrant\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps>

Environment

Windows Package Manager v0.1.41331 Preview
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Windows: Windows.Desktop v10.0.18363.836
Package: Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller v1.0.41331.0

Links:
  Privacy Statement: https://aka.ms/winget-privacy
  License agreement: https://aka.ms/winget-license
  3rd Party Notices: https://aka.ms/winget-3rdPartyNotice
  Homepage:          https://aka.ms/winget

Any other software?

• WinRM

[KevinMarquette]

This is a really important one to the community that does Windows automation. Not having remote command execution over WinRM will turn away the PowerShell community and they would actively discourage it's use. Windows Updates has a similar issue and the workarounds to their issue is really ugly. It's not something we want to deal with again.

[jantari]

This is a huge blocker.

Does it run over ssh? Even if it does, WinRM needs to work flawlessly too. Not every windows tool can utilize ssh for remoting yet.

EDIT: I know it's been a while but today I was able to test winget over ssh - it does not work. In cmd the error message is The system cannot execute the specified program. and in PowerShell it's Program 'winget.exe' failed to run: The file cannot be accessed by the system.

When I run Get-Command winget it tells me the executable is C:\Users\MY_USER\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\winget.exe and winget is installed and working for that exact same useraccount when I login via RDP.

[doctordns]

It is bad enough that the feature has no Powershell Powershell cmdlets, but not working over remoting?

Package management without remoting just makes this toil even less useful.

[minusdavid]

I was wondering if it would run under WinRM. I was thinking about using Ansible with WinRM to use winget...

[KevinMarquette]

It is bad enough that the feature has no Powershell Powershell cmdlets, but not working over remoting?

Package management without remoting just makes this toil even less useful.

Oh absolutely. For as much as I am pushing for solid integration with PowerShell #221, if you have to choose between that and remote execution, it has to be remote execution. We deal with enough apps that don't have good PowerShell options that we can mitigate that pain if we have to. But not having execution work over WinRM is much much worse.

From my experience of helping people hack around that limitation for another Windows feature, I can tell you that support requests related to this will be endless. Not only to the community, but also to your team.

[rasq]

OMG, i see thats a next to msix packaging tool software that cannot work from winrm.
At last there is a choco but this schould be fixed a months ago.

[jdhitsolutions]

This is still an issue and should be a higher priority. Failure to run over a WSMan remoting session is a huge problem.

[jdhitsolutions]

This also fails in an SSH session. The system cannot execute the specified program.

[jdhitsolutions]

And this fails using PSExec with an error that the file can't be found. Even when using the full path winget.exe.

[djpbessems]

What an utter disappointment; going through all kinds of hoops to get winget to run on Server2019, only to find out that it doesn't even run in a WinRM session.
How does Microsoft envision using this tool? Log in manually on a packer-provisioned VM to install software?!