Develop Reference

Process starts a new CMD instance

I have a command line application that calls a 'netsh' process and changes some IP information. The problem that I have is that every time I call my app in CMD or PowerShell, it starts a new instance of CMD(opens a new CMD window and closes it after it's finished executing)
I would like to know if there is a way to have everything happen in the same window
here is the code that starts a process:
Process p = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo("netsh", queryStr);
p.StartInfo = psi;
p.Start();
Console.WriteLine("netsh query string is: " + "***" + queryStr + "***");
This is my first question, please don't judge too harshly

I hope I understood your question correctly. You could hide the Shell, while redirecting the ouput. For example,
Process p = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo("netsh", queryStr);
psi.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
psi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
psi.UseShellExecute = false;
p.StartInfo = psi;
p.Start();
var output = p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
ProcessStartInfo.WindowStyle allows to set the state of Window when the process starts. In the current scenario, you could set it to ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden
ProcessStartInfo.UseShellExecute indicates whether to use the OS's Shell. Disabling this would help in redirecting the output.
ProcessStartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput indicates whether the output is written to StandardOutput. By setting it to true, you can redirect the output stream and use the Process.StandardOutput to read the output and display as per application design

Trigger Apache Nutch Crawl Programmatically

I'm trying to create a ASP.NET web api to trigger a crawl event to happen. I can't seem to get cygwin to process any of the commands I give it. The only thing I can really do is get it to open a terminal. Once the terminal is open I'd have to redirect the pwd to another location and then trigger my command I want.
Process p = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo();
info.CreateNoWindow = false;
info.RedirectStandardInput = true;
info.UseShellExecute = false;
info.FileName = "C:\\cygwin64\\bin\\mintty.exe";
p.StartInfo = info;
p.Start();
StreamWriter sw = p.StandardInput;
if (sw.BaseStream.CanWrite)
{
sw.WriteLine(#"cd C:\Users\UName\Desktop\apache-nutch-2.3-mongodb\runtime\local\");
sw.WriteLine("bin/autoCrawl");
}
sw.Close();
p.WaitForExit();
I've tried many approaches, this is the last one I've tried but it just does nothing. Is there a way to launch this crawl from my .NET application? I've looked into the NutchApi about creating a new job with a type of crawl but I'm not sure if that applies here or not.

I ended up figuring out how to use the NutchApi to answer my question.

Log Process execution

I am trying to restart a windows service from the same windows service with this piece of code
var proc = new Process();
var psi = new ProcessStartInfo();
psi.CreateNoWindow = true;
psi.FileName = "cmd.exe";
psi.Arguments = "/C net stop \"EmailService-3.1.0\ && net start \"EmailService-3.1.0\"";
psi.LoadUserProfile = false;
psi.UseShellExecute = false;
psi.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
proc.StartInfo = psi;
It is not working and I have no idea why, is there anything I can do to log or determine what is happening or get the output of what is happening when the net stop command is called?

You can redirect the output of the net stop command, but as per TomT's comment, this seems a very roundabout way to restart a service.
psi.Arguments = "/C net stop \"EmailService-3.1.0\" > C:\\svclog.txt "; //&& net start \"EmailService-3.1.0\"";

I can see a missing quotation mark after the name of your service in the stop command. Otherwise it can be a permission issue. Maybe the user with whom your service has logged in does not have enough privileges to stop a service.

Passing arguments to running process in C#

I've some troubles with running processes and passing args to them.
I know how to run process with some args
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo("cmd.exe", "/c something");
Process p = Process.Start(psi)
The problem is that after script is executed process is terminated. That's why there is "/c"
But I'm running multiple scripts and I would like to run them in one process ("cmd.exe") not to start new process every time.
Is there some solutions for it ?
I hope somebody understand what I'm talking about ;)

I recommend you utilize a batch file to script the execution of your executables and call your batch file instead. Or, you can do this -
Process p = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo();
info.FileName = "cmd.exe";
info.RedirectStandardInput = true;
info.UseShellExecute = false;
p.StartInfo = info;
p.Start();
using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(p.StandardInput))
{
if (sw.BaseStream.CanWrite)
{
sw.WriteLine("mysql -u root -p");
sw.WriteLine("mypassword");
sw.WriteLine("use mydb;");
}
}

It sounds like you ought to investigate redirecting the standard input - be sure to also set psi.UseShellExecute to false. You'll probably also want to redirect standard output, so you can have some way of knowing what your child process is doing.
Read more about redirection here.

Start command windows and run commands inside

I need to start the command window with some arguments and run more commands inside.
For example, launch a test.cmd and run mkdir.
I can launch the test.cmd with processstartinfo , but i am not sure how to run further commands. Can I pass further arguments to the test.cmd process?
How do I go about this?
Unable to add comments to answer... SO writing here.
Andrea, This is what I was looking for. However the above code doesnt work for me.
I am launching a test.cmd which is new command environment (like razzle build environment) and I need to run further commands.
psi.FileName = #"c:\test.cmd";
psi.Arguments = #"arg0 arg1 arg2";
psi.RedirectStandardInput = true;
psi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
psi.CreateNoWindow = true;
psi.UseShellExecute = false;
Process p = new Process();
p.StartInfo = psi;
p.Start();
p.StandardInput.WriteLine(#"dir>c:\results.txt");
p.StandardInput.WriteLine(#"dir>c:\results2.txt");

You can send further commands to cmd.exe using the process
standard input. You have to redirect it, in this way:
var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
{
FileName = "cmd.exe",
RedirectStandardInput = true,
RedirectStandardOutput = true,
UseShellExecute = false,
CreateNoWindow = true
};
var process = new Process {StartInfo = startInfo};
process.Start();
process.StandardInput.WriteLine(#"dir>c:\results.txt");
process.StandardInput.WriteLine(#"dir>c:\results2.txt");
process.StandardInput.WriteLine("exit");
process.WaitForExit();
Remember to write "exit" as your last command, otherwise the cmd process doesn't terminate correctly...

The /c parameter to cmd.
ProcessStartInfo start = new ProcessStartInfo("cmd.exe", "/c pause");
Process.Start(start);
(pause is just an example of what you can run)
But for creating a directory you can do that and most other file operations from c# directly
System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(#"c:\foo\bar");
Start a cmd from c# is useful only if you have some big bat-file that you don't want to replicate in c#.

What are you trying to achieve? Do you actually need to open a command window, or do you need to simply make a directory, for example?
mkdir is a windows executable - you can start this program in the same way you start cmd - there's no need to start a command window process first.
You could also create a batch file containing all the commands you want to run, then simply start it using the Process and ProcessStartInfo classes you're already using.

How come this doesn't work?
var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
{
FileName = "cmd.exe",
RedirectStandardInput = true,
RedirectStandardOutput = true,
UseShellExecute = false,
CreateNoWindow = false
};
var process = new Process { StartInfo = startInfo };
process.Start();
process.StandardInput.WriteLine(#" dir");
process.WaitForExit();