CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
PnP
PnP

Reputation: 3185

Misbehaving Get-ChildItem Operation in PowerShell

There is a back-end SQL DB contains "managed folders" in the form of UNC paths. Using SQL queries in PowerShell I have a loop that will work it's way through these folders and run a GCI operation against them to work out how much disk space they are using. 

$managedFolder = "\\server\share\folder\subfolder"

For the sake of the question, $managedFolder is declared as above. The failing command below: 

$diskTrendsInitialUsage = "{0:N2}" -f ((Get-ChildItem $managedFolder -Recurse -Force | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum / 1GB)

Now if I were to run this command manually in PS console it's fine, it pulls back data. But as soon as it's packaged in a script, it fails with the below error. The folder is accessible from the server, as it works fine from a local PS console session. 

ERROR: Get-ChildItem : Invalid Path: '\\server\share\folder\subfolder'.
AddManagedFolder.psf (17): ERROR: At Line: 17 char: 42
ERROR: +         $diskTrendsInitialUsage = "{0:N2}" -f ((Get-ChildItem $managedFolder -Recurse  ...
ERROR: +                                                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ERROR:     + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-ChildItem], ArgumentException
ERROR:     + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ArgumentException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetChildItemCommand
ERROR:

I'm stumped.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3252

Answers (2)

user4003407
user4003407

Reputation: 22102

The problem with your path is that it does not have any indication about which provider to use, so PowerShell just use current one. And if current provider is not a file system provider, then it will fail. So you need to specify provider in path, to allow PowerShell to choose right one regardless of current provider:

$managedFolder = "filesystem::\\server\share\folder\subfolder"

Upvotes: 8

Noah Sparks
Noah Sparks

Reputation: 1762

My guess is your are using the SQL PS cmdlets prior to running GCI, this is changing your provider path to SQL: which is what is causing GCI to be unhappy.

Prior to running GCI do cd c:\ to change the path back to the file system and GCI will work.

Upvotes: 2

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