Today I investigated an issue we had in one of our build pipelines. For an unknown reason the build suddenly started to fail.
In the build logs we found the following error message:
==============================================================================
Generating script.
Arguments passed sanitization without change.
Formatted command: . 'D:\b\2\_work\135\s\Certificates\Import-PfxCertificate.ps1' -PfxFilePath ***2024.pfx -Password ***
========================== Starting Command Output ===========================
"C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoLogo -NoProfile -NonInteractive -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Command ". 'D:\b\2\_work\_temp\e3fa7d9e-bd6e-490f-8f71-182a958e03d7.ps1'"
Importing store certificate 'D:\b\2\_work\135\s\Certificates\***2024.pfx'...
Exception calling "Import" with "3" argument(s): "The profile for the user is a temporary profile.
"
At D:\b\2\_work\135\s\Certificates\Import-PfxCertificate.ps1:10 char:1
+ $cert.Import($absolutePfxFilePath, $Password, [System.Security.Crypto ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CryptographicException
Here is the powershell script that was called:
This script is used to import a certificate in the local certificate store that is later used inside the build pipeline to sign a clickonce package.
Based on the error message, it seems that there is something wrong with the build service user profile. A temporary profile doesn’t have it’s own certificate store so that would explain the error.
But until that time the user profile was always loaded correctly. What happened that made this profile corrupt?
Inside the event viewer we noticed the following event:
Probably due to a memory usage the user profile service can no longer load the user profile for the build service account. We fixed it by restoring a backup from the ntuser.dat file for this specific profile.