After a recent migration of a Linux VM (Ubuntu 16.04) from a data centre to Azure using Azure Migrate, it didn’t include the installation of WALinuxAgent
Why is this needed?
This agent is how the Virtual Machine communicates with Azure, it manages the Linux provisioning and VM interaction with the Azure Fabric Controller, pretty much it is used to provide all the functionality between VM and Azure for Linux IaaS Deployments.
If the agent is not installed/configured, you will see agent status within VM properties as below:-
Agent Status: Not ready
Agent version: Unknown
The installation process
Simple installation of this agent , done via apt-get
apt-get install walinuxagent
After this installation I had noticed the Azure Portal had not updated in some time with the Agent Status changing.
Reviewing the walinuxagent log in /var/log/walinuxagent.log , I found
2020/04/15 21:20:07.049590 INFO Daemon Azure Linux Agent Version:2.2.45
2020/04/15 21:20:07.051646 INFO Daemon OS: ubuntu 16.04
2020/04/15 21:20:07.052432 INFO Daemon Python: 3.6.8
2020/04/15 21:20:07.053536 INFO Daemon CGroups Status: The cgroup filesystem is ready to use
2020/04/15 21:20:07.056045 INFO Daemon Run daemon
2020/04/15 21:20:07.061357 INFO Daemon cloud-init is enabled: True
2020/04/15 21:20:07.064921 INFO Daemon Using cloud-init for provisioning
2020/04/15 21:20:07.075452 INFO Daemon Clean protocol
2020/04/15 21:20:07.077083 INFO Daemon Running CloudInit provisioning handler
2020/04/15 21:20:07.078624 INFO Daemon Waiting for cloud-init to copy ovf-env.xml to /var/lib/waagent/ovf-env.xml [1800 retries remaining, sleeping 1s]
2020/04/15 21:20:07.083156 WARNING Daemon cloud-init does not appear to be running
2020/04/15 21:20:08.084520 INFO Daemon Waiting for cloud-init to copy ovf-env.xml to /var/lib/waagent/ovf-env.xml [1799 retries remaining, sleeping 1s]
2020/04/15 21:20:08.094260 WARNING Daemon cloud-init does not appear to be running
2020/04/15 21:20:09.096189 INFO Daemon Waiting for cloud-init to copy ovf-env.xml to /var/lib/waagent/ovf-env.xml [1798 retries remaining, sleeping 1s]
2020/04/15 21:20:09.102416 WARNING Daemon cloud-init does not appear to be running
2020/04/15 21:20:10.104823 INFO Daemon Waiting for cloud-init to copy ovf-env.xml to /var/lib/waagent/ovf-env.xml [1797 retries remaining, sleeping 1s]
2020/04/15 21:20:10.110031 WARNING Daemon cloud-init does not appear to be running
After some investigation and read some blog posts, nothing resolved the issue; with some posts mentioning editing /etc/waagent.conf but didn’t resolve this issue.
Decided to create a blank Linux VM to see the agent configuration of it, within /var/lib/waagent folder there was ovf-env.xml – had a look and it looked very generic apart from a couple of fields that were related to the newly created Virtual Machine
ovf-env.xml file output from newly created VM
<ns0:Environment xmlns:ns0="http://schemas.dmtf.org/ovf/environment/1" xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windowsazure" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<ns1:ProvisioningSection>
<ns1:Version>1.0</ns1:Version>
<ns1:LinuxProvisioningConfigurationSet>
<ns1:ConfigurationSetType>LinuxProvisioningConfiguration</ns1:ConfigurationSetType>
<ns1:UserName>tamopsuser1</ns1:UserName>
<ns1:DisableSshPasswordAuthentication>false</ns1:DisableSshPasswordAuthentication>
<ns1:HostName>vm-linux</ns1:HostName><ns1:UserPassword>REDACTED</ns1:UserPassword></ns1:LinuxProvisioningConfigurationSet>
</ns1:ProvisioningSection>
<ns1:PlatformSettingsSection>
<ns1:Version>1.0</ns1:Version>
<ns1:PlatformSettings>
<ns1:KmsServerHostname>kms.core.windows.net</ns1:KmsServerHostname>
<ns1:ProvisionGuestAgent>true</ns1:ProvisionGuestAgent>
<ns1:GuestAgentPackageName xsi:nil="true" />
<ns1:RetainWindowsPEPassInUnattend>true</ns1:RetainWindowsPEPassInUnattend>
<ns1:RetainOfflineServicingPassInUnattend>true</ns1:RetainOfflineServicingPassInUnattend>
<ns1:PreprovisionedVm>false</ns1:PreprovisionedVm>
<ns1:EnableTrustedImageIdentifier>false</ns1:EnableTrustedImageIdentifier>
</ns1:PlatformSettings>
</ns1:PlatformSettingsSection>
</ns0:Environment>
Copied this file across and edited the below to correlate with the affected VM
UserName: changed to the current user I was logged into
<ns1:UserName>tamopsuser1</ns1:UserName>
<ns1:HostName>vm-linux</ns1:HostName>
Restarted the service
service walinuxagent restart
Checked log again /var/log/walinuxagent.log
2020/04/15 22:05:02.874146 INFO Daemon Run daemon
2020/04/15 22:05:02.881507 INFO Daemon cloud-init is enabled: True
2020/04/15 22:05:02.881898 INFO Daemon Using cloud-init for provisioning
2020/04/15 22:05:02.882427 INFO Daemon Clean protocol
2020/04/15 22:05:02.882606 INFO Daemon Running CloudInit provisioning handler
2020/04/15 22:05:02.885639 INFO Daemon Detect protocol endpoints
2020/04/15 22:05:02.887207 INFO Daemon Clean protocol
2020/04/15 22:05:02.896640 INFO Daemon WireServer endpoint is not found. Rerun dhcp handler
2020/04/15 22:05:02.907398 INFO Daemon Test for route to 168.63.129.16
2020/04/15 22:05:02.915481 INFO Daemon Route to 168.63.129.16 exists
2020/04/15 22:05:02.917519 INFO Daemon Wire server endpoint:168.63.129.16
2020/04/15 22:05:02.939251 INFO Daemon Fabric preferred wire protocol version:2015-04-05
2020/04/15 22:05:02.940071 INFO Daemon Wire protocol version:2012-11-30
2020/04/15 22:05:02.941771 INFO Daemon Server preferred version:2015-04-05
2020/04/15 22:05:03.105044 INFO Daemon Found private key matching thumbprint XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
2020/04/15 22:05:03.122504 INFO Daemon ssh host key found at: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
2020/04/15 22:05:03.192874 INFO Daemon Thumbprint obtained from : /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
2020/04/15 22:05:03.199286 INFO Daemon Finished provisioning
2020/04/15 22:05:04.217528 INFO Daemon RDMA capabilities are not enabled, skipping
2020/04/15 22:05:04.222667 INFO Daemon Installed Agent WALinuxAgent-2.2.45 is the most current agent
2020/04/15 22:05:04.353251 INFO ExtHandler Agent WALinuxAgent-2.2.45 is running as the goal state agent
2020/04/15 22:05:04.353683 INFO ExtHandler Distro info: ubuntu 16.04, osutil class being used: Ubuntu16OSUtil, agent service name: walinuxagent
2020/04/15 22:05:04.377540 INFO ExtHandler Wire server endpoint:168.63.129.16
2020/04/15 22:05:04.401516 INFO ExtHandler Start env monitor service.
2020/04/15 22:05:04.402254 INFO ExtHandler Configure routes
2020/04/15 22:05:04.403130 INFO ExtHandler Gateway:None
2020/04/15 22:05:04.407057 INFO ExtHandler Routes:None
2020/04/15 22:05:04.408095 INFO ExtHandler Hostname record does not exist, creating [/var/lib/waagent/published_hostname] with hostname [tamops-vm-01]
2020/04/15 22:05:04.414483 INFO ExtHandler Wire server endpoint:168.63.129.16
2020/04/15 22:05:04.433086 INFO ExtHandler WALinuxAgent-2.2.45 running as process 22437
2020/04/15 22:05:04.438408 INFO ExtHandler CGroups Status: The cgroup filesystem is ready to use
2020/04/15 22:05:04.443231 INFO ExtHandler Started tracking new cgroup: walinuxagent.service, path: /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/system.slice/walinuxagent.service
2020/04/15 22:05:04.449400 INFO ExtHandler Started tracking new cgroup: walinuxagent.service, path: /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/system.slice/walinuxagent.service
2020/04/15 22:05:04.554364 INFO ExtHandler Created slice for walinuxagent extensions system-walinuxagent.extensions.slice
2020/04/15 22:05:04.555469 INFO ExtHandler Wire server endpoint:168.63.129.16
Checking in Azure Portal and agent status is correct
Agent Status: Ready
Agent Version: 2.2.46
Thomas Thornton 
Thomas I noticed on RHEL7 Linux the Virtual CDROM /dev/sr0 is not mounting, this virtual device contains the ovf-env.xml file which provides provisioning details to waagent and cloud-init.
The error I receive in waagent.log (if I set Provisioning.UseCloudInit=y in waagent.conf then in cloud-init.log) indicates it is unable to mount sr0 device.
Could you private mail me on twitter?
Azure uses a UDF cdrom to provide the cloud-init data. Make sure that the udf driver is not disabled in /etc/modprobe.d/udf.conf.
See also https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/datasources/azure.html
Note: Provisioning.UseCloudInit=y is deprecated and replaced by Provisioning.Agent=auto|cloud-init|…
Hi Thomas,
thank you for this post. it was extremely helpful. had the same issue for some ubuntu vms migrated with azure migrate. your post was a life saver.
thanks again
Hi Shihan, really glad to hear it assisted you! Good luck with the rest of the migration
Thanks
Thomas
I have failed to upgrade the agent in my Debian machine after following MS Docs. ..so How to upgrade the agent to the latest version?
Hello, What part has failed?