Azure Batch Pool Windows Start Up Script Paths not found

Question

I have a Batch Pool of windows virtual machines. I would like the pool to automatically load a folder with program installers, let's say install.exe files, and copy it to the /root/shared/ directory or other accessible directory for a subsequent task or command to install. Currently, I can successfully get it to load the directory into the startup/wd directory simply by selecting the container via the Azure web portal.

I would then like to use in the startup script command line, something like:

xcopy %AZ_BATCH_NODE_STARTUP_DIR%\wd\install.txt %AZ_BATCH_NODE_SHARED_DIR%\install.txt

However, I get the error Invalid Path in the stderr.txt log and the startup script fails.

I have been following this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/batch/files-and-directories for the environment variables and am now at a loss.

Does anyone know what I'm missing, or if there is an easier way to automatically deploy this to a directory where a startup or future task can then access and install the program?

Answer 1

@George Li

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A platform.

It sounds like you are trying to copy a file from the startup directory to the shared directory on a Batch pool of Windows virtual machines, but you are encountering an "Invalid Path" error.

One thing to check is that the shared directory exists on the virtual machines in the Batch pool. By default, the shared directory is located at C:\BatchNode\Shared on Windows virtual machines in a Batch pool. You can check if this directory exists by logging into one of the virtual machines in the pool and navigating to the directory.

If the shared directory does not exist, you can create it by adding a command to your startup script that creates the directory. For example, you can add the following command to your startup script:

mkdir C:\BatchNode\Shared Once the shared directory exists, you can modify your startup script to copy the file from the startup directory to the shared directory. Here is an example command that copies a file named install.txt from the startup directory to the shared directory

xcopy %AZ_BATCH_NODE_STARTUP_DIR%\install.txt C:\BatchNode\Shared\install.txt

Note that in this example, I am assuming that the file you want to copy is named install.txt, not install.exe as mentioned in your question. You will need to modify the command to match the name of the file you want to copy.

If you continue to encounter issues, you can check the stderr.txt log for more information about the error. This log file should contain more detailed information about the error that occurred.

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