1

As I read most of the cloud-init documentation and watched some youtube videos about cloud-init I am still confused about how to use this software.

Can someone help me understand?

As I understood so far cloud-init should configure a linux machine (instance) from outside, so that I dont have to login manually and configure e.g. disk setup, network, users, and so on...

Now I have first use case. A physical computer with an empty hard-disk and I want to install ubuntu on it without manual interaction using cloud-init. How can this be archived?

Or another use-case: I run proxmox (kvm) on debian and want to create an new vitrual machine running ubuntu.

Does anyone know how to do that?

Thomas Aichinger
  • 2,946
  • There is no way I know of to solve the problem with the physical machine. I was interested to get this to work to and had lots of things to research and try out, also looking at Fedora/Red Hat. The most simple thing I can sink of is to start wrrting your own cloud-init user-data file, while looking at examples and test until it works. I have set up a raspberry PI this way. The PI Ibuntu image comes with cloud-init preinstalled, but you put the root filesystem image on the sdcard or SSD with the PI imager. It's like removing the drive from you server and dd'ing the image first. – LiveWireBT Jan 26 '21 at 23:51
  • To install automatically to a physical machine you need to look at autoinstall. Fedora uses Kickstart, Ubuntu pre 18.04 only had d-i preseed. Someone has put a gist on Github: https://gist.github.com/s3rj1k/55b10cd20f31542046018fcce32f103e#file-howto I'm working on a better and more extensive solution, which may never make it to the public judging by the amount of work and uncertainty I'm facing. :( Having done automated Windows installations 15 years ago, I think media literacy to find good and clear documentation is key here to get this to work. But there are also commercial products. – LiveWireBT Jan 26 '21 at 23:59
  • Proxmox sould be easy, fetch an image compatible with your hypervisor, supply the user-data file or volume and you are good to go. https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall-quickstart Once you have written your first few lines and seen them work it's not so difficult anymore. Red Hat Virtualization also works with cloud-init files and has options similar to cloud providers, if you are used to Proxmox and Vmware you may have adopted different workflows. For kickstart and autoinstall looking at /root/anaconda-ks.cfg and /var/log/installer/autoinstall-user-data (Ubuntu) helps too. – LiveWireBT Jan 27 '21 at 00:15

0 Answers0