windows_task, ArgumentError: invalid date

When the windows_task resource is called to “create” a Windows Scheduled Task that already exists, an error message is returned. In the past, the “modify” action was responsible for the modification of the scheduled tasks, since Chef 13 the “create” action would update the task if exists.

ArgumentError: …[…] (…:… line …) had an error: ArgumentError: windows_task[…] (… line …) had an error: ArgumentError: invalid date

C:/opscode/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/chef-13.6.4-universal-mingw32/lib/chef/provider/windows_task.rb:507:in `strptime’
C:/opscode/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/chef-13.6.4-universal-mingw32/lib/chef/provider/windows_task.rb:507:in `parse_day’
C:/opscode/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/chef-13.6.4-universal-mingw32/lib/chef/provider/windows_task.rb:239:in `convert_user_date_to_system_date’
C:/opscode/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/chef-13.6.4-universal-mingw32/lib/chef/provider/windows_task.rb:99:in `action_create’

It looks like Chef tries to get a date from the existing scheduled task, and cannot parse it successfully.

As we currently cannot update existing tasks, we need to put a guard into the windows_task resource to prevent the execution if the task exists.

 
startup_task_name = 'chef-client-at_startup'

windows_task "create #{startup_task_name}" do
  task_name "#{startup_task_name}"
  ...
  guard_interpreter :powershell_script
  only_if "(Get-ScheduledTask | Where-Object {$_.TaskName -eq "#{startup_task_name}"}).TaskName.Length -eq 0"
end