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Linux
Windows
A startup script is a file that contains commands that run when a virtual
machine (VM) instance boots. Compute Engine provides support for running
startup scripts on Linux VMs and Windows VMs.
Prerequisites
To run scripts stored in metadata on a VM instance, the guest environment must be installed and running.
The guest environment includes the
guest agent (for example, google-guest-agent on Linux)
that reads the script content or URL from the instance's metadata and initiates execution.
All public Compute Engine images come with the guest environment
preinstalled.
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