⬇️Installation

Installation instructions for PowerShell Universal.

MSI Install (Windows)

The MSI install will create a PowerShell Universal service. By default, PowerShell Universal will be listening on port 5000. You will be able to navigate to http://localhost:5000

MSI downloads are available on our download page.

System installs will run as a Windows service. User installs will run when the user logins into the machine and runs in the user's context.

MSI Parameters

The following table contains the parameters you can specify if running msiexec against our MSI install for automation purposes.

Parameter	Description	Default Value
INSTALLFOLDER	The installation folder for PowerShell Universal	%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Universal
TCPPORT	The TCP port the HTTP server will be listening on.	5000
REPOFOLDER	The repository folder to save the configuration files to.	%ProgramData%\UniversalAutomation\Repository
CONNECTIONSTRING	The SQL, SQLite, or PostgreSQL connection string.	Data Source=%ProgramData%\UniversalAutomation\database.db
DATABASETYPE	SQL, SQLite, or PostgreSQL	SQLite
STARTSERVICE	Whether to start the service after install (0 or 1)	1
SERVICEACCOUNT	The service account to set for the Windows service. Use the format of domain\username.	None
SERVICEACCOUNTPASSWORD	The service account password to set for the Windows Service. The password will be masked with ***'s in the installer log.	None
TELEMETRY	Anonymous telemetry collection	0
ADDPSMODULEPATH	Adds the PowerShell Universal module directory to the PSModulePath environment variable.	1
STARTSERVICE	Whether to start the service after install.	1
INSTALLTYPE	Whether to perform a server or user install.	Server

Example

Below is an example of how to run msiexec.exe to install PowerShell Universal and provide parameters to the installer.

 Start-Process msiexec.exe -ArgumentList "/I C:\Users\adamr\Downloads\PowerShellUniversal.4.2.7.msi /q /norestart /L*V `"C:\users\adamr\desktop\msi.log.txt`" STARTSERVICE=0 SERVICEACCOUNT=contoso\service_account SERVICEACCOUNTPASSWORD=ThisPasswordWillBeReplacedWithAsterisksInTheMSILogs" -Wait -NoNewWindow

ZIP Install

You can also download the ZIP from our Downloads page if you would like to xcopy deploy the files on Windows or Linux.

Windows

You can start Universal by unzipping the contents, unblocking the files and then executing Universal.Server.exe.

Expand-Archive -Path .\Universal.zip -DestinationPath .\Universal
Get-ChildItem .\Universal -Recurse | Unblock-File
Start-Process .\Universal\Universal.Server.exe

Linux

You can use the following command line on Linux to install and start PowerShell Universal.

 wget https://imsreleases.blob.core.windows.net/universal/production/4.2.7/Universal.linux-x64.4.2.7.zip
 sudo apt install unzip 
 unzip Universal.linux-x64.4.2.7.zip -d PSU
 chmod +x ./PSU/Universal.Server
 ./PSU/Universal.Server

Linux Service

You can use systemd to start PowerShell Universal as a service. The below script is an example of downloading a version of PowerShell Universal and installing it as a service.

# ----
# This script will install PowerShell Universal on Linux as a service
# This has been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 (ARM64) on a Raspberry Pi 4
# ----
# Dependencies:
# wget
# unzip
#
# Make sure they are installed
# ----

# These are used to derive the download URL
PSU_VERSION="5.0.0" # Change this to the current version
PSU_ARCH="arm64" # Change this to your desired architecture
PSU_FILE="Universal.linux-${PSU_ARCH}.${PSU_VERSION}.zip"
PSU_URL="https://imsreleases.blob.core.windows.net/universal/production/${PSU_VERSION}/${PSU_FILE}"

# These are used for installing PowerShell Universal
# If you'd like to use a different path, change this
PSU_PATH="/opt/psuniversal"
PSU_EXEC="${PSU_PATH}/Universal.Server"

# These are for installing it as a service
PSU_SERVICE="psuniversal"
PSU_USER="psuniversal"

# ----
# BEGIN
# ----

echo "Creating $PSU_PATH and granting access to $USER"
sudo mkdir $PSU_PATH
sudo setfacl -m "u:${USER}:rwx" $PSU_PATH

echo "Creating user $PSU_USER and making it the owner of $PSU_PATH"
sudo useradd $PSU_USER -m
sudo chown $PSU_USER -R $PSU_PATH

echo "Downloading PowerShell Universal $PSU_VERSION ($PSU_ARCH)"
wget -q $PSU_URL -O $PSU_FILE

echo "Extracting $PSU_FILE to $PSU_PATH"
unzip -o -qq $PSU_FILE -d $PSU_PATH

echo "Make $PSU_EXEC executable"
sudo chmod +x $PSU_EXEC

echo "Creating service configuration"
cat <<EOF > ~/$PSU_SERVICE.service
[Unit]
Description=PowerShell Universal
[Service]
ExecStart=$PSU_EXEC
SyslogIdentifier=psuniversal
User=$PSU_USER
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

echo "Creating and starting service"
sudo cp -f ~/$PSU_SERVICE.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable $PSU_SERVICE
sudo systemctl start $PSU_SERVICE
sudo systemctl status $PSU_SERVICE --no-pager

# If you don't use UFW, you can comment this out
echo "Allow port 5000/tcp"
sudo ufw allow 5000/tcp

# ----
# END
# ----

PowerShell Module

You can use the PowerShell Universal PowerShell module to install the Universal server. To install the module, use Install-Module.

Install-Module Universal

To install the Universal server, you can use Install-PSUServer.

Install-PSUServer -LatestVersion

If you run this command on Windows, a Windows service will be created and started on your machine. If you run this command on Linux, a systemd service will be created and started. If you run this command on Mac OS, the PowerShell Universal server will be downloaded and extracted.

Chocolatey Package (Windows)

Chocolatey packages for PowerShell Universal are usually available within a week of release but will not be available the day of a release.

You can install PowerShell Universal using the Chocolatey package. The package runs the MSI install. It will install Universal as a service and open a web browser after the install.

You can login with the "admin" user and any password.

choco install powershelluniversal

Docker

See the Docker page.

IIS Install

Please visit the IIS hosting documentation for information on how to configure PowerShell Universal as an IIS website.

Antivirus Configuration

PowerShell Universal takes full advantage of PowerShell and the PowerShell SDK. It includes PowerShell scripts directly in the product. You will want to consider configuring antivirus to allow for execution of PowerShell scripts in PowerShell Universal.

Directories

The following directories will contain scripts and executable files that may need to be excluded from antivirus checks.

The following are examples from a standard Windows system. Changing paths within appsettings.json or within the installer will require changing which directories are execluded.

Path	Description
%ProgramData%\PowerShellUniversal	Contains log files and appsettings.json
%ProgramData%\UniversalAutomation	Contains PowerShell scripts and artifacts. Contains the single file database when not using SQL integration.
%ProgramFiles(x86)\Universal	Contains PowerShell Universal application executables, libraries and modules.

Executables

It may be necessary to exclude certain executables that will run PowerShell scripts. The below is a list of executables that will run PowerShell from PowerShell Universal.

Name	Description
Universal.Server.exe	The PowerShell Universal core service.
Universal.Agent.exe	The PowerShell Universal agent environment executable.
pwsh.exe	PowerShell 7.x
PowerShell.exe	PowerShell 5.x

Default Admin Name and Password

You can use the $ENV:PSUDefaultAdminName and $ENV:PSUDefaultAdminPassword environment variables to change this behavior. These values are only used if no administrator account already exists. This is useful for cloud-based installations.

Agent

The PowerShell Universal Agent is used for executing Event Hub actions. Depending on your environment, you will install it in different ways.

Windows (MSI)

The PowerShell Universal Agent MSI is available on our download page. After installing the MSI, you will have a PowerShell Universal Agent service running on your machine. You will need to configure it to connect to PowerShell Universal.

ZIP

There are ZIP files for each platform we support on our downloads page. Each ZIP will contain a PowerShellUniversal.Agent.exe or PowerShellUniversal.Agent file that can be used to start an agent. You will need to run the process as a service for it to start whenever the machine is rebooted.

Next Steps

At this point, Universal is up and running. You can navigate to the admin console by visiting http://localhost:5000 by default. Login with the default admin name and password or create a default admin account.