How to run EXE on VSTS Agent hosted machine

1
votes

We have release pipeline in the VSTS that runs on a private server using VSTS agent.

At the end of release pipeline there is a commmand line step to start executable (Nginx) file. Which succeeds but executable does not start the nginx process.

I believe process dies as soon as the parent CMD or Powershell window dies.

I have tried both CMD and Powershell (Start "exe" and Start-Process) to execute exe but none seem to be working.

Those commands run perfectly on local computer but not when running by VSTS agent on server.

powershellnginxcmdazure-devopsazure-pipelines-release-pipeline
You'll want to start nginx as a service, not as an executable as part of the release I suppose. – jessehouwing
Nginx runs as background process when nginx.exe is executed. It is not running as service. – kashpatel
But the agent keeps track of what is launched and will kill things to be sure it's not leaving stuff around. You could schedule a task to run nginx. – jessehouwing
I see. As I have looked in to this more and more. Scheduling a task might be the only option. – kashpatel
Create a task scheduler that watches for the output of VSTS folder every 5 minutes, i'm hoping that's an msi or build output! Task sheduler is an built in option inside windows. So if the particular output msi is found, then you can trigger a PowerShell / cmd script whatever. – HariHaran