chefctl on windows doesn't produce logs in /var/chef/outputs about chef-utils

[jaymzh]

The code to get both logs going to the same place is pretty gnarly, and I don't know the windows stuff well enough to debug this... any idea on the fix?

[svmastersamurai]

@natewalck Have you tried setting windows_subshell to false? The branch of code that writes to console and the log file is not hit unless this value is false:
https://github.com/facebook/chef-utils/blob/master/chefctl/src/chefctl.rb#L1017-L1038

FWIW I was able to see logs in both console and the app created a directory appropriately with this config:

PS> cat $env:temp\chefctl-test\chefctl-config.rb
## THIS FILE IS MANAGED BY CHEF
### LOCAL CHANGES WILL BE OVERRIDDEN
log_dir 'C:\Users\svmastersamurai\AppData\Local\Temp\chefctl-test\outputs'
lock_file "C:/chef/chefctl.lock"
default_chef_options ["--fatal-windows-admin-check"]
chef_client "C:/opscode/chef/bin/chef-client.bat"
lock_time 1800
max_retries 1
windows_subshell false

PS> C:\opscode\chef\embedded\bin\ruby.exe C:\Users\svmastersamurai\github\chef-utils\chefctl\src\chefctl.rb --config $env:temp\chefctl-test\chefctl-config.rb -i

PS> dir $env:temp\chefctl-test\outputs
    Directory: C:\Users\svmastersamurai\AppData\Local\Temp\chefctl-test\outputs
Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----         6/5/2019   2:45 PM         160361 chef.20190605.1444.1559771097.out
-a---l         6/5/2019   2:44 PM              0 chef.cur.out
-a---l         6/5/2019   2:45 PM              0 chef.last.out

PS> cat $env:temp\chefctl-test\outputs\chef.cur.out -first 10
INFO: Registering FB::CpeinfoReport as a handler for types: report, exception
INFO: Registering FB::TableauReport as a handler for types: report
INFO: Registering FB::ChefRunsReport as a handler for types: report, exception
INFO: Registering FB::FbagentReport as a handler for types: report, exception
INFO: Running on
[2019-06-05T14:45:05-07:00] INFO: *** Chef 14.12.9 ***
[2019-06-05T14:45:05-07:00] INFO: Platform: x64-mingw32
[2019-06-05T14:45:05-07:00] INFO: Chef-client pid: 15864
...

[gleason86]

This issue can be closed; this issue was caused by plugin_path 'C:/chef/chefctl_hooks.rb' in chefctl-config.rb. More specifically, the function def pre_start was altering Chefctl::Config.path which should be set to nil when windows_subsystem is set to false.