App Settings

Describes how to set application settings and a definition of the settings.

Application settings can be found within the appsettings.json file within the installation directory. This file defines various settings you can apply to Universal. Although you can edit this file directly, it's recommended that you use one of the following methods to persist settings as the appsettings.json file in the installation directory will be overridden on upgrades.

When installed from the MSI, the installation directory for PowerShell Universal is ${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Universal.

ProgramData AppSettings.json

You can create an appsettings.json file within the $Env:ProgramData\PowerShellUniversal folder. You can use a subset of the settings from within the appsettings.json file. For example, if you wanted to override the JWT settings, you could have an appsettings.json file like this.

{
  "Jwt": {  
    "SigningKey": "PleaseUseYourOwnSigningKeyHere",  
    "Issuer": "IronmanSoftware",
    "Audience": "PowerShellUniversal"
  }
}

Environment Variables

You can also set environment variables for your settings. Environment variables should have an underscore between each subset of the appsettings.json file*. For example, if you want to change the JWT signing key via environment variable, you would set the variable $Env:Jwt__SigningKey. If you wanted to set the external API URL, you would set $Env:Api__Url.

Examples

Using an environment variable for the OpenID Connect secret.

$Env:Authentication__OIDC__ClientSecret = "mySecret"

Using an environment variable for JWT signing key.

$Env:Jwt__SigningKey = "mySigningKey"

* It is possible to set the License by assigning the environment variable PSULICENSE to the entire content of your license file.

figure shows setting the License by way of environment variables

Command Line

You can specify the location of the appsettings.json file by using the --appsettings command line argument for Universal.Server.exe .

.\Universal.Server.exe --appsettings C:\appsettings.json

Setting Descriptions

Kestrel / Endpoints

Default Value

"Kestrel": {
  "Endpoints": {
    "HTTP": {
      "Url": "http://*:5000"
    }
  },
  "RedirectToHttps": "false"
},

The Kestrel endpoints section allows you to configure the web server. This settings are not used when hosting in IIS. In this section you can configure options like HTTPS and the port that Universal is listening on.

Kestrel is the web server implementation for ASP.NET Core that PowerShell Universal uses. For more information on the configuration options for Kestrel, visit this Microsoft Documentation page.

Key	Description
RedirectToHttps	When true, the web server will redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS
BasePath	Required when configuring PowerShell Universal as a nested site within IIS. This should contain the nested IIS route. Such as /psu
Hsts \ MaxAgeDays	Sets the max age in days for HTTP Strict Transport Security.
CookiePolicy	When set to SameSiteNone, the SameSite=None value will be set on cookies in PSU. This is useful for when hosting PSU in iframes.

Application Insights

Default value

"ApplicationInsights": {
  "InstrumentationKey": ""
},

Key	Description
InstrumentationKey	Sets the instrumentation key for Application Insights.

Logging

Default Value

"Logging": {
  "Path": "%PROGRAMDATA%/PowerShellUniversal/log.txt",
  "RetainedFileCountLimit": 31,
  "LogLevel": {
    "Default": "Information",
    "Microsoft": "Warning",
    "Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime": "Information"
  }
},

The logging options define the level of logging exposed by Universal. The core Universal logging setting Logging / LogLevel / Default can be adjusted to increase the level of logging by the Universal components.

Key	Description
Path	Path to the log file.
RetainedFileCountLimit	The number of log files to retain. A new log file will be created each day.
LogLevel	The log levels for various portions for the Universal server. You can set values such as Debug, Information, Warning and Error.

AllowedHosts

Default Value

    "AllowedHosts": "*",

The hosts that are allowed to connect to the webserver. Defaults to any host.

CorsHosts

Default Value

    "CorsHosts": "",

Configures the hosts that are allowed to make cross-origin resource sharing requests (CORS) to the server. To allow multiple hosts, separate each host by a semicolon.

"CorsHosts" : "https://www.google.com;https://login.microsoftonline.com"

Data

Default Value

"Data": {
  "RepositoryPath": "%ProgramData%\\UniversalAutomation\\Repository",
  "ConnectionString": "%ProgramData%\\UniversalAutomation\\database.db",
  "GitRemote": "",
  "GitUserName": "",
  "GitPassword": "", 
  "GitBranch": "",
  "ConfigurationScript": "",
  "Mode": "automatic"
},

Key	Description
RepositoryPath	Path to the storage location of the configuration files used by Universal.
ConnectionString	Path to the database used by Universal.
GitRemote	Git remote used to sync to Universal.
GitBranch	Git branch to checkout when syncing to Universal.
GitUserName	Git user name used to sync to the GitRemote. When using a PAT, this can be any value.
GitPassword	The Git user password or personal access token used to sync to the GitRemote.
ConfigurationScript	Location of a custom configuration script to load. You can return objects like scripts, dashboards and endpoints from this script.
Mode	Sets the git mode. It can be either manual or automatic. Defaults to manual.

API

Default Value

"Api": {
  "Url": ""
},

Key

Description

Url

Sets the external URL used internally by Universal. This is necessary when running Universal from within a reverse proxy like IIS. When using cmdlets like Get-UAScript from within a running job, the Universal server needs to determine where the web server. When running within a proxy, it cannot determine this itself. You will want to configure this to point to the name and port of the IIS website in this configuration.

Authentication

Default Value

    "Authentication" : {
    "Windows": {
      "Enabled": "false"
    },
    "WSFed": {
      "Enabled": "false",
      "MetadataAddress": "",
      "Wtrealm": "",
      "CallbackPath": "/auth/signin-wsfed",
      "Wreply": "",
      "UseTokenLifetime": true,
      "CorrelationCookieSameSite": ""
    },
    "OIDC": {
      "Enabled": "false",
      "CallbackPath": "/auth/signin-oidc",
      "ClientID": "",
      "ClientSecret": "",
      "Resource": "",
      "Authority": "",
      "ResponseType": "",
      "SaveTokens": "false",
      "CorrelationCookieSameSite": "",
      "UseTokenLifetime": true
    },
    "SessionTimeout": "25"
  },

Windows

Key	Description
Enabled	Enables or disables Windows Authentication.

OIDC

OpenID Connect authentication settings.

Key	Description
Enabled	Whether OIDC is enabled.
CallbackPath	The path that the OIDC provider will call back to.
ClientID	The configured OIDC client ID.
ClientSecret	The configured OIDC client secret.
Resource	Resources granted with this OIDC token.
Authority	The authority to invoke when authenticating. This is the URL of your OIDC provider.
ResponseType	The type of response returned by the provider. This most common value here is code
SaveTokens	Whether to save the token so it is available to endpoints like dashboards.
CorrelationCookieSameSite	Correlation cookie same settings.
UseTokenLifetime	If set to true, the cookie life time will be set to the token life time. This overrides the session time out value.
GetUserInfo	Returns additional user information for use within roles.ps1 files. You can access the additional information using the $UserInfo variable.

WSFed

WS-Federation authentication settings.

Key	Description
Enabled	Whether WS-Fed is enabled.
MetadataAddress	The metadata address to retrieve information about the WS-Fed instance.
Wrealm
Wreply
CallbackPath	The path that the OIDC provider will call back to.
UseTokenLifetime	If set to true, the cookie life time will be set to the token life time. This overrides the session time out value.
CorrelationCookieSameSite	Correlation cookie same settings.

JWT

JSON Web Token configuration settings

Default Value

"Jwt": {  
  "SigningKey": "PleaseUseYourOwnSigningKeyHere",  
  "Issuer": "IronmanSoftware",
  "Audience": "PowerShellUniversal"
},

Key	Description
SigningKey	The signing key for the JWT tokens.
Issuer	The issuer that will be included in the token.
Audience	The audience that will be included in the token.

Secrets

Options for configuring the default secret vaults.

Default Value

"Secrets": {
  "SecretStore": {
    "Password": "PSUSecretStore"
  },
  "Database": {
    "EncryptionKey": "=b0ywQA@VOSdr&R7an5g&XK6NVO%s4Tf"
  }
}

Key	Description
SecretStore \ Password	The password for the PSUSecretStore vault. This uses the Microsoft SecretStore module.
Database \ EncryptionKey	The AES 128 encryption key used to encrypt secrets stored in the database.

Generating an Encryption Key

Encryption keys are 128-bit and require the proper length. They are encoded as a base64 string and converted to bytes on startup.

You can use the following code to generate a secret key of the proper length.

$random = [System.Security.Cryptography.RandomNumberGenerator]::Create();
$buffer = New-Object byte[] 16;
$random.GetBytes($buffer);
[Convert]::ToBase64String($buffer)

UniversalAutomation

Settings for automation specific features.

Default Value

"UniversalAutomation": {
    "Queues": [],
    "JobHandshakeTimeout": 5,
    "JobDebugging": false,
    "ContinueJobOnServerStop": false
  }

Key	Description
Queues	Custom queues that this PSU instance is a part of.
JobHandshakeTimeout	The number of seconds to wait before failing a job after starting the PowerShell process to execute it if the process does not communicate back to the server.
JobDebugging	Whether to generate files in the temporary directory when starting job. This is useful for debugging if jobs are timing out before starting.
ContinueJobOnServerStop	Whether to continue running a job after the service has stopped. Job progress will fail to be reported but the script will continue to run.

HideAdminConsole

Prevents the service from serving the admin console. This will prevent the admin console from being used by any user, including administrators.

NodeName

The node name option is used to change the name of the PowerShell Universal instance. By default, this is the local computer's name. When using PowerShell Universal in a container, this can become probematic because the name can change whenever the container is restarted.

To set a static node name, change this parameter.

Profiling

Enables profiling of scripts within PowerShell Universal. This is disabled by default as there is a memory impact when enabling profiling.