Problem

One of my Azure VM running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS suddenly gives a warning message "<vm name> virtual machine agent status is not ready. Troubleshoot the issue". I recently did some updates and cleaned up the system, it seems the VM agent was destroyed. I've fixed the issue and would like to share the solution.

Solution

Check agent status

Check if walinuxagent is there

SSH into the VM and run 

apt list --installed | grep walinuxagent

If the agent is alive, it should be listed. In my case, this command did not find the agent.

edi@****:~$ apt list --installed | grep walinuxagent

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

Reinstall Azure Linux Agent

Run

sudo apt-get install walinuxagent -y

Configure auto update for agent

Run

cat /etc/waagent.conf

If you see AutoUpdate.Enabled=y is comment out like this

# Enable or disable goal state processing auto-update, default is enabled
# AutoUpdate.Enabled=y

Run

sudo sed -i 's/# AutoUpdate.Enabled=n/AutoUpdate.Enabled=y/g' /etc/waagent.conf

Start agent

Run

sudo service walinuxagent restart

Refresh Azure portal

Wait for a few minutes, then refresh Azure portal web page. Do not click the refresh button, it won't update. Refresh the browser with F5! 

Now the VM is running fine without warning.

Root Cause

The root cause for me is that I removed Python packages from the system yesterday. Azure Linux Agent uses python. So please do not remove Python packages.