VM-Ubuntu - Team Services Build Agent and Cross-Platform SDKs installation

This template allows you to create an Ubuntu VM with a full cross-platform development environment to support:

• OpenJDK 7 and 8;
• Ant, Maven and Gradle;
• npm and nodeJS;
• groovy and gulp;
• Gnu C and C++ along with make;
• Perl, Python, Ruby and Ruby on Rails;
• latest .NET Core;
• go;
• Docker Engine and Compose; and
• the VSTS CoreCLR Linux Build Agent. (Build Agent available here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vsts-agent).

Alternately, you can use Docker to deploy an equivalent capability by using the Dockerfile provided here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vsts-dockerfiles/tree/master/ubuntu-xplat-build

To learn more about Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) support for Java, check out: http://java.visualstudio.com/

Before you Deploy to Azure

To create the VM, you will need to:

1. Know the Team Services URL (e.g. https://myaccount.visualstudio.com)

2. Create or obtain a Personal Access Token (PAT) from Team Services which has "Build (read and execute)" and "Agent Pools (read, manage)" priviledges/capabilities (see https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/setup-admin/team-services/use-personal-access-tokens-to-authenticate).

3. Create or obtain a build agent pool in Team Services (see https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/release/getting-started/configure-agents)

4. Decide on a name for your build agent (i.e. the name for your agent within the above pool).

Verifying the Agent

Once the VM is successfully provisioned, Team Services build agent installation and initialization can be verified by accessing the the Agent pools tab under the Control panel for the Team Services account (e.g. https://myaccount.visualstudio.com/_admin/_AgentPool). You should be able to click on the build agent pool (from #3 above) and see your agent listed by the name (used in #4 above). If all is well, the colored bar to the left of the pool name should be green. If the colored bar is red, or if the agent name does not appear in the specified pool, see below for debugging hints.

Debugging Agent Failures

If the Azure portal under Virtual machines shows that your VM is Running (in the Status column) but either the build agent name does not show up under the build Agent Pool in Team Services OR the agent name does show up but has a red colored bar to the left of the name, then you can SSH into the VM and check the installation log. To do this:

• SSH into the VM using the name (or IP number) of the VM, and account name and the password you specified when setting up the VM. (You can SSH from the command line of another computer or use a free tool such as MobaXterm).
• Once logged onto the VM, in the top directory of the account should be a file called "vsts.install.log.txt". Use the cat command to display its contents (i.e. cat vsts.install.log.txt). Look for any errors in this file to indicate what failed in starting up the VSTS build agent. The most common mistake is not having the correct permissions for the PAT (see #2 above for more guidance).
• If the agent started sucessfully and is running but an expected tool or software is not working from a build task (e.g. a build task can't find maven or java or ...), then you can check the file "install.progress.txt" in the top level directory to see if one of the packages may have failed to install or had errors (cat install.progress.txt).