Azure Custom Script Virtual Machine Extension (2.0)

Image	Status
Canonical UbuntuServer 14.04.5-LTS
Canonical UbuntuServer 16.04-LTS
Canonical UbuntuServer 18.04-LTS
Credativ Debian 8
Credativ Debian 9
OpenLogic CentOS 6.9
OpenLogic CentOS 7.4
RedHat RHEL 6.9
RedHat RHEL 7-RAW
SUSE SLES 12-SP2

This documentation is current for version 2.0.6 and above.

CustomScript extensions runs scripts on VMs. These scripts can be used to bootstrap/install software, run administrative tasks, or run automation tasks. CustomScript can run an inline script you specify or download a script file from the Internet or Azure Storage.

You can add CustomScript extension to your VM using:

• Azure CLI (python based / Cloud Shell)
• Azure XPlat CLI (node based)
• Azure PowerShell
• Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates
• Azure Virtual Machines REST API

ℹ️ Please read the Using the Azure Custom Script Extension with Linux Virtual Machines page for detailed usage instructions.

Custom Script Extension Reference Guide

1. Extension Configuration

You can specify files to download and commands to execute in the configuration section of the extensions. If your commandToExecute, script, or fileUris contain secrets, please use protected settings instead of public settings.

The specified command will be executed only once. If you change anything in the extension configuration and deploy it again, the command will be executed again.

If you would like to execute the same command again you must updated the configuration otherwise the command will not re-executed. The easiest way to do this is with the timestamp setting. Simply increment the timestamp value to re-execute the command.

1.1. Public Settings

Schema for the public configuration file looks like this:

• commandToExecute: (required if script not set, string) the entry point script to execute
• script: (required if commandToExecute not set, string) a base64 encoded (and optionally gzip'ed) script executed by /bin/sh.
• skipDos2Unix: (optional, boolean) skip dos2unix conversion of script-based file URLs or script.
• fileUris: (optional, string array) the URLs for file(s) to be downloaded.
• timestamp (optional, 32-bit integer) use this field only to trigger a re-run of the script by changing value of this field. Any integer value is acceptable; it must only be different than the previous value.

{
  "fileUris": ["<url>"],
  "commandToExecute": "<command-to-execute>"
}

Examples:

{
  "fileUris": ["https://gist.github.com/ahmetalpbalkan/b5d4a856fe15464015ae87d5587a4439/raw/466f5c30507c990a4d5a2f5c79f901fa89a80841/hello.sh"],
  "commandToExecute": "./hello.sh"
}

{
  "commandToExecute": "apt-get -y update && apt-get install -y apache2"
}

1.2. Protected Settings

The configuration provided in these keys are stored encrypted and are only decrypted inside your VM.

• commandToExecute: (optional, string) the entry point script to execute. Use this field instead if your command contains secrets such as passwords.
• script: (optional, string) a base64 encoded (and optionally gzip'ed) script executed by /bin/sh.
• fileUris: (optional, string array) the URLs for file(s) to be downloaded.
• storageAccountName: (optional, string) the name of storage account. If you specify storage credentials, all fileUris must be URLs for Azure Blobs.
• storageAccountKey: (optional, string) the access key of storage account

{
  "commandToExecute": "<command-to-execute>",
  "storageAccountName": "<storage-account-name>",
  "storageAccountKey": "<storage-account-key>"
}

1.3. Public vs. Protected Settings

Public settings are sent in clear text to the VM where the script will be executed. Protected settings are encrypted using a key known only to the Azure and the VM. The settings are saved to the VM as they were sent, i.e. if the settings were encrypted they are saved encrypted on the VM. The certificate used to decrypt the encrypted values is stored on the VM, and used to decrypt settings (if necessary) at runtime.

The following values can be set in either public or protected settings.

• commandToExecute
• script
• fileUris

The extension will reject any configuration where the above values are set in both public and protected settings.

The following values can only be set in public settings.

• skipDos2Unix
• timestamp

The follow values can only by set in protected settings.

• storageAccountName
• storageAccountKey

1.3 skipDos2Unix

The default value is false, which means dos2unix conversion is executed.

The previous version of CustomScript, Microsoft.OSTCExtensions.CustomScriptForLinux, would automatically convert DOS files to UNIX files by translating \r\n to \n. This translation still exists, and is on by default. This conversion is applied to all files downloaded from fileUris or the script setting based on any of the following criteria.

• If the extension is one of .sh, .txt, .py, or .pl it will be converted. The script setting will always match this criteria because it is assumed to be a script executed with /bin/sh, and is saved as script.sh on the VM.
• If the file starts with #!.

The dos2unix conversion can be skipped by setting the skipDos2Unix to true.

{
  "fileUris": ["<url>"],
  "commandToExecute": "<command-to-execute>"
  "skipDos2Unix": true
}

1.4 script

CustomScript supports execution of a user-defined script. The script settings to combine commandToExecute and fileUris into a single setting. Instead of the having to setup a file for download from Azure storage or GitHub gist, you can simply encode the script as a setting. Script can be used to replaced commandToExecute and fileUris.

The script must be base64 encoded. The script can optionally be gzip'ed. The script setting can be used in public or protected settings. The maximum size of the script parameter's data is 256 KB. If the script exceeds this size it will not be executed.

For example, given the following script saved to the file /script.sh/.

#!/bin/sh
echo "Updating packages ..."
apt update
apt upgrade -y

The correct CustomScript script setting would be constructed by taking the output of the following command.

cat script.sh | base64 -w0

{
  "script": "IyEvYmluL3NoCmVjaG8gIlVwZGF0aW5nIHBhY2thZ2VzIC4uLiIKYXB0IHVwZGF0ZQphcHQgdXBncmFkZSAteQo="
}

The script can optionally be gzip'ed to further reduce size (in most cases). (CustomScript auto-detects the use of gzip compression.)

cat script | gzip -9 | base64 -w 0

CustomScript uses the following algorithm to execute a script.

1. assert the length of the script's value does not exceed 256 KB.
2. base64 decode the script's value
3. attempt to gunzip the base64 decoded value
4. write the decoded (and optionally decompressed) value to disk (/var/lib/waagent/custom-script/#/script.sh)
5. execute the script using _/bin/sh -c /var/lib/waagent/custom-script/#/script.sh.

2. Deployment to a Virtual Machine

For ARM templates, see this documentation to create an extension resource in your template.

For Azure CLI, create a public.json (and optionally protected.json) and run:

$ az vm extension set --resource-group <resource-group> --vm-name <vm-name> \
    --name CustomScript --publisher Microsoft.Azure.Extensions --version 2.0 \
    --settings ./public.json \
    --protected-settings ./protected.json

For Azure XPlat CLI, create a public.json (and optionally protected.json) and run:

$ azure vm extension set <resource-group> <vm-name> \
    CustomScript Microsoft.Azure.Extensions 2.0 \
    --auto-upgrade-minor-version \
    --public-config-path public.json \
    --private-config-path protected.json

3. Troubleshooting

Your files are downloaded to a path like: /var/lib/waagent/custom-script/download/0/ and the command output is saved to stdout and stderr files in this directory. Please read these files to find out output from your script.

You can find the logs for the extension at /var/log/azure/custom-script/handler.log.

Please open an issue on this GitHub repository if you encounter problems that you could not debug with these log files.

4. Build Badges

The Custom Script extension is tested across a variety of distributions. There are tests cases to exercise all of the settings supported by Custom Script. This includes the following:

1. public and protected commandToExecute
2. public and protected script
3. public and protected script that has been gzip'ed
4. public and protected fileUris
5. invalid script
6. scripts that are too big are rejected

Tests are executed with the version that ships with the Linux distro being tested.

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This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.