Questions[cloud-init](server)

So, I boot debian 12 bookworm with cloud-init, and it creates the user lui as defined below.

users:
  - name: lui
    ssh_authorized_keys:
      - ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIH7tTbt9XLZ0bGRcD+btgRh5qcuM7/TphfnCPl4fw8q3 la mienne
    sudo: ["ALL=(ALL) ALL"]
    shell: /bin/bash
    gecos: C'est pas moi !,,,
    lock_passwd: false
    plain_text_passwd: elle

However, in cloud-init log I can see this

Cloud config schema errors: users.0: {'gecos': "C'est pas moi !,,,",
'lock_passwd': False, 'name': 'lui', 'plain_text_passwd': 'elle',
'shell': '/bin/bash', 'ssh_authorized_keys': ['ssh-ed25519
AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIH7tTbt9XLZ0bGRcD+byrFUv8cuM7/TphfnCJ6WXwkIq
la mienne'], 'sudo': ['ALL=(ALL) ALL']} is not valid under
any of the given schemas

Connected to the machine with the user lui, I run sudo cloud-init schema --system and effectively get the same error, but no explaination of what is wrong or missing...

So I guess I'm lucky enough for cloud-init not to give up and create the user anyway. One day, I'll run out of luck. So I'd rather fix this now.

I checked with cloud-init reference but haven'nt been able to find my mistake..

What is wrong with this cloud-init user definition?

Using cloud-init, I can specify a runcmd section and do something like this:

runcmd: [
  'MYVAR=VALUE some-command --a A --b B'
]

This works, and runs some-command with MYVAR set to VALUE in the environment. It runs under the shell.

However, I actually want to use the parameterized form, like this:

runcmd: [
  [
    'some-command',
    '--a', 'A',
    '--b', 'B'
  ]
]

The reason is that some of these parameter values will be dynamically substituted, and I don't want the shell trying to interpret them.

So, I can run commands with this array of strings just fine, but how I can I specify the environment for them?

We are running a preseeded Ubuntu installation from disk using ubuntu autoinstall (https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall)

Since upgrading to 20.04.6, we are facing issues when the cloud-init mechanism detects a DHCP server on the network, which crashes the installation.

Is it possible to disable any networking during cloud-init?

Our grub.cfg looks like this:

menuentry "custom install " {
    set gfxpayload=keep
    linux   /casper/vmlinuz quiet autoinstall ds=nocloud\;s=/cdrom/nocloud/ ---
    initrd  /casper/initrd
}

I am performing these steps on Ubuntu 22.04 host:

Download the cloud image

qemu-img create -b ../jammy-server-cloudimg-amd64.img -f qcow2 -F qcow2 myubuntu2204test01-base.img 10G

Create the file meta-data in the directory myubuntu2204test01:

instance-id: myubuntu2204test01
local-hostname: myubuntu2204test01.example.com
network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp1s0: 
    dhcp4: no
    addresses: [192.168.122.146/24]
    nameservers:
         addresses: [192.168.122.1]
    routes:
    - to: 0.0.0.0/0
      via: 192.168.122.1

Create the file user-data in the directory myubuntu2204test01:

#cloud-config
users:
  - name: someuser
    ssh_authorized_keys:
      - ssh-ed25519 somekey comment
    sudo: ["ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL"]
    groups: sudo
    shell: /bin/bash

Generate the ISO image for ci data

genisoimage -output cidata.iso -V cidata -r -J user-data meta-data

Create The VM myubuntu2204test01

virt-install \
--name=testvmubuntu2204 \
--ram=512 --vcpus=1 \
--import \
--disk path=myubuntu2204test01-base.img,format=qcow2 \
--disk path=cidata.iso,device=cdrom \
--os-variant=ubuntu22.04 \
--network bridge=virbr0,model=virtio \
--graphics vnc,listen=0.0.0.0 --noautoconsole

The VM is created. But the VM does not have static IP networking as defined in meta-data. The VM has a default DHCP network configuration.

What is missing or incorrect in this process to create static IP for the guest VM?

I have tried defining the networking in both user-data and meta-data files, both of them fails to create static networking for the guest VM.

After cloud-init runs a user data script on the first boot of an EC2 instance, a state file is presumably written so that cloud-init won't run the script again on subsequent reboots. There are cases where I'd like to delete this state file so that the user data script will run again. Where is it?