Using a pipe in cloud init runcmd fails

Question

How can I use a pipe to redirect the output of a command in my runcmd section of my cloud init script? The following fails:

runcmd:
    - [curl, -sk, https://example.com/packages/current/install.bash, '|', /bin/bash, -s,  agent:certname=XYZ.com]

It ends up creating a script that looks like this:

'curl' '-sk' 'https://example.com/packages/current/install.bash' '|' '/bin/bash' '-s' 'agent:certname=XYZ.com'

Because the pipe becomes quoted, the script fails. How can I get around this problem?

Have you tried something like `[sh, -c, 'curl -sk https://example.com/packages/current/install.bash | /bin/bash -s agent:certname=XYZ.com']`? — Gonfva, Oct 21 '15 at 11:19

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 07 '15 at 20:36

Rather than using an array, use a single string.

runcmd:
    - 'curl -sk "https://example.com/packages/current/install.bash" | /bin/bash -s,  agent:certname=XYZ.com'

1 Answers1