Azure devops interactive agent as admin

Question

I have a Windows 10 Enterprise VM running an Azure Devops Agent in Interactive mode. The agent runs using the only user the machine has, and it is an Administrator with UAC disabled. However, when executing tasks that require an elevated command prompt, as registering dlls, the command fails with the following error message:

##[error]Cmd.exe exited with code '5'.

And this message is when I'm trying to COPY files into Windows\SysWow64

##[error]Error: Failed cp: cp: copyFileSync: could not write to dest file (code=EPERM):C:\windows\SysWow64\test.txt

My testes also fail with the following error message:

Test method TestesRegressaoPGB.Autenticacao.AutenticarNoPGBL02 threw exception:
System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. (The requested operation requires elevation.) ---> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The requested operation requires elevation.
TestCleanup method TestesRegressaoPGB.Autenticacao.Cleanup threw exception. System.NullReferenceException: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object..

How do I run all commands while elevated?

Vito Liu Vito Liu · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-29T02:56:51

In the Azure DevOps, If you want to access local file in the azure devops pipeline via self-hosted agent, It accesses the file via service account instead of Personal account.

Workaround

We could open check the file permission and configure the service account permission. service account format User/Administrator/Administrators({Agent.ComputerName}\User/Administrator/Administrators)

Also, we could change the agent service account to your owner account.

Steps: Open service on the agent machine and search the agent service account, check the pic below, just change the account name and password to yours, then It will use this account to perform the operation.

Azure devops interactive agent as admin

2 Answers