freebsd 12.0 azure and azure-agent (waagent)

[Wei Hu]

Not running waagent on guest could cause problems in Azure. Fortunately Li-Wen 
Hsu from FreeBSD Foundation has recently updated the agent code to use Python 3.x.
He is also working on publishing the 12.1 image on Azure Marketplace. You can 
check with him directly. 

You can enable the boot diagnostics feature on Azure portal and check the serial
console output for the VMs running in Azure. 

Wei


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-virtualization at freebsd.org <owner-freebsd-
> virtualization at freebsd.org> On Behalf Of tech-lists
> Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2020 8:04 PM
> To: freebsd-virtualization at freebsd.org
> Subject: freebsd 12.0 azure and azure-agent (waagent)
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm considering upgrading a freebsd instance originally installed onto azure via
> their marketplace. It's freebsd-12.0 and I'd like to bring it to 12.1 via freebsd-
> update.
> 
> I notice that when it was provisioned, it seems azure-agent (waagent) was
> installed manually, presumably by azure themselves. It was not installed via the
> pkg install method. It's dependent on python27 which is now obsolete.
> Apart from that, it looks just like a standard basic vm.
> 
> What I'd like to know:
> 
> is waagent required for the VM to function? If I upgrade, and something goes
> wrong with waagent, will the vm come back up? Or will it be stopped if
> waagent is non-functional?
> 
> As 12.0 -> 12.1 involves default python going 27 -> 3[6-7] what do I need to
> look out for regarding waagent? I presume I'm going to have to install azure-
> agent (python37) over the top.
> 
> All this is an issue because there's no ILO functionality exposed to the customer
> in Azure.
> 
> thanks,
> --
> J.