provide name to a powershell process

Question

I have created a long running process from powershell which runs a command for quite some time as follows:

Start-process "powershell" "long running command"

I want to give this process a custom name or some kind of tag of type string to refer the process later.

Is this possible to name a powershell process launched from powershell ?

I can't use pid in my case because we have to provide our client process-search ability using a name provided by him.

Answer 1

You could have your script modify the WindowTitle property at the start of its execution, as follows:

$host.ui.RawUI.WindowTitle = 'Your Custom Title'

You could then identify your specific process by using Get-Process powershell and checking the MainWindowTitle property.

Get-Process PowerShell | Where-Object { $_.MainWindowTitle -eq 'Your Custom Title' }

There are likely other options also, such as running the process under a specific user account or by targetting a specific PowerShell configuration endpoint and then specifying that when running the PowerShell.exe process via the -ConfigurationEndpoint switch. These require config to be added in advance however, where as modifying the title to something you know will be unique is quite a simple solution.

Answer 2

The MainWindowTitle property may not always be set, such as with the terminal that runs inside VS Code, or sessions started with Start-Job. I found two alternatives, that may be used separately or in combination. In the examples below, each block can be run in a separate window.

1. Use the CustomPipeName parameter

This parameter is intended for debugging, but we could also just use it as a way to label a process:

First, start a process with a custom label applied:

# Start a test process, and have it tell us about itself so we can verify
$myLabel = 'MyImportantScript'
$argList = @(
    '-NoLogo'
    '-NoProfile'
    '-ExecutionPolicy Bypass'
    '-NoExit'
    '-Command "& { Get-Process -Id $PID | Format-List -Property Name,Id,Path,CommandLine }"'
    "-CustomPipeName '$myLabel'"
)
Start-Process -FilePath 'pwsh.exe' -ArgumentList $argList

Then, find the process by using the label:

# Look for that process by label
$myLabel = 'MyImportantScript'
$p       = Get-Process -Name 'pwsh' | Where-Object CommandLine -like "*-CustomPipeName '$myLabel'*"
$p | Format-List Name,Id,Path,CommandLine

2. Use a custom named executable

This requires some preparation, but may be useful when needing to group and identify larger volumes of processes.

First, create a copy of the PowerShell executable with a new name. This only needs to be done once.

#Requires -RunAsAdministrator

# Get the path of the executable from the current process
$psExecPath = Get-Process -Id $PID | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Path

# Make a copy of the executable with a custom name
$myExecName = 'MyImportantStuff'
$psExecDir  = Split-Path -Path $psExecPath -Parent
$myExecPath = Join-Path -Path $psExecDir -ChildPath "$myExecName.exe"
Copy-Item -Path $psExecPath -Destination $myExecPath -PassThru | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName
# C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\MyImportantStuff.exe

Then, run stuff with that new executable:

# Start a test process with that executable, and have it tell us about itself so we can verify
$myExecPath = 'C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\MyImportantStuff.exe'
$argList    = @(
    '-NoLogo'
    '-NoProfile'
    '-ExecutionPolicy Bypass'
    '-NoExit'
    '-Command "& { Get-Process -Id $PID | Format-List -Property Name,Id,Path }"'
)
Start-Process -FilePath $myExecPath -ArgumentList $argList

And finally, find processes by the executable name:

# Find that process by name
$myExecName = 'MyImportantStuff'
Get-Process -Name $myExecName | Format-List -Property Name,Id,Path