weird whitespace problem getting data out of cmd.run nssm on Windows

[Barry Laffoy]

Hi

I'm trying to build a simple state module around nssm, but I'm running into a problem where any output on stdout gets interpolated with lots of whitespace.

For a service named "myService" running an executable "myService.exe" installed in a python virtualenv at "C:\env\service", I see the following when running a query through Salt

PS C:\Users\blaffoy> salt-call cmd.run "C:\\env\\service\\Scripts\\nssm.exe get myService application"
[INFO    ] Executing command 'C:\\\\env\\\\service\\\\Scripts\\\\nssm.exe get myService application' in directory 'C:\\Users\\blaffoy'
 INFO    ] output: / e n v / s e r v i c e / S c r i p t s / m y S e r v i c e . e x e

local:
    / e n v / s e r v i c e / S c r i p t s / m y S e r v i c e . e x e

Where I expect to see output as I get on the command line:

PS C:\Users\blaffoy> C:\env\service\Scripts\nssm.exe get myService application
/env/service/Scripts/myService.exe

Does anybody have any ideas about why this might be happening?

Other command line output from Windows on Salt looks normal. I tried setting the shell=powershell and shell=cmd, but from looking the salt/modules/cmdmod.py, I don't think this has any effect in Windows. Also, if I make a call to this same command line in a Python shell using subprocess.Popen, the output appears correct. From reading salt/utils/timed_subprocess.py, Salt uses subprocess.Popen to implement cmd.run. I don't see anywhere in the call chain where the values might be modified.

I'm running different versions for the salt-minion and salt-master. Could this be the source of the problem? Unfortunately, I'm tied to an older version of salt on Windows due to the bug outlined here (https://github.com/saltstack/salt/issues/8405), but I make use of some of the newer features of salt on Ubuntu machines.

Versions Reports:

Minion:
PS C:\Users\blaffoy-admin> salt-call.exe --versions-report
           Salt: 2014.1.13
         Python: 2.7.5 (default, May 15 2013, 22:43:36) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)]
         Jinja2: 2.7.1
       M2Crypto: 0.21.1
 msgpack-python: 0.4.2
   msgpack-pure: Not Installed
       pycrypto: 2.6
         PyYAML: 3.11
          PyZMQ: 14.1.1
            ZMQ: 4.0.4
Master:
blaffoy@lon-cfp-dev-002:~$ salt-call  --versions-report
           Salt: 2014.7.1
         Python: 2.7.6 (default, Mar 22 2014, 22:59:56)
         Jinja2: 2.7.3
       M2Crypto: 0.22
 msgpack-python: 0.4.5
   msgpack-pure: Not Installed
       pycrypto: 2.6.1
        libnacl: Not Installed
         PyYAML: 3.11
          ioflo: Not Installed
          PyZMQ: 14.4.1
           RAET: Not Installed
            ZMQ: 4.0.4
           Mako: 0.9.1

Any input appreciated
Barry

[Barry Laffoy]

Actually, I just tried running this command remotely from the master, and the output looks okay:

blaffoy@master:~$ sudo salt minion cmd.run "/env/service/Scripts/nssm.exe get myService application"
minion.cfpartners.local:
    /env/service/Scripts/myService.exe

Now I'm even more confused.

[Barry Laffoy]

On closer inverstigation, it's not whitespace: every char in the returned strings have been wrapped in ascii null characters.

On Friday, 27 February 2015 14:26:45 UTC, Barry Laffoy wrote:

[David Boucha]

I haven't seen this issue before. Do you think it's nssm that's returning some extra data or Salt?

If you think it's Salt specific, could you open an issue on Github for this? That way we won't lose track of it.

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[Barry Laffoy]

Okay, after a bit more work, I've seen similar behaviour coming from nssm straight from the command line when called in a remote powershell session. That makes me pretty sure that this isn't a Salt problem. Whether that makes it a Powershell, WinRM, or nssm problem isn't clear right now, but it's not appropriate for this list either way.

Cheers for the feedback anyway.

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[Peder Schmedling]

Did you get to the bottom of this?

I'm experiencing the same using just Powershell and nssm, trying to capture the output from several calls to nssm form powershell.

best regards

Peder 

[Barry Laffoy]

Sorry, I stopped working on this almost a year ago. I don't remember exactly what the outcome was, but I'm pretty sure I never solved the problem.

[Peder Schmedling]

For future reference if anyone should stumble onto this thread (as I did):

I solved my issue in powershell by issuing this command before capturing console output from nssm:

[Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode

Peder

[Barry Laffoy]

Oh, well done. I did not think of that.