Installing Cloud-Init

Scenarios

To ensure that you can use the user data injection function to inject initial custom information into ECSs created from a private image (such as setting the ECS login password), install Cloud-Init on the ECS used to create the image.

  • You need to download Cloud-Init from its official website. Therefore, you must bind an EIP to the ECS.

  • If Cloud-Init is not installed, you cannot configure an ECS. As a result, you can only use the password in the image file to log in to the created ECSs.

  • By default, ECSs created from a public image have Cloud-Init installed. You do not need to install or configure Cloud-Init on such ECSs.

  • For ECSs created using an external image file, install and configure Cloud-Init by performing the operations in this section. For how to configure Cloud-Init, see Configuring Cloud-Init.

Note

Cloud-Init is open-source software. If the installed version has security vulnerabilities, you are advised to upgrade it to the latest version.

Prerequisites

  • An EIP has been bound to the ECS.

  • You have logged in to the ECS.

  • The ECS uses DHCP to obtain IP addresses.

Procedure

  1. Check whether Cloud-Init has been installed.

    For details, see Check Whether Cloud-Init Has Been Installed.

  2. Install Cloud-Init.

    You can install Cloud-Init using either of the following methods: (Recommended) Install Cloud-Init Using the Official Installation Package and Install Cloud-Init Using the Official Source Code Package and pip.

Check Whether Cloud-Init Has Been Installed

Perform the operations provided here to check whether Cloud-Init has been installed. The methods of checking whether Cloud-Init is installed vary depending on the OSs.

  • If you are in a Python 3 environment, run the following command to check whether Cloud-Init is installed (Ubuntu 22.0.4 is used as an example):

    which cloud-init

    • If information similar to the following is displayed, Cloud-Init has been installed:

      /usr/bin/cloud-init
      
    • If information similar to the following is displayed, Cloud-Init is not installed:

      /usr/bin/which: no cloud-init in (/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin)
      
  • If you are in a Python 2 environment, run the following command to check whether Cloud-Init is installed (CentOS 6 is used as an example):

    which cloud-init

    • If information similar to the following is displayed, Cloud-Init has been installed:

      cloud-init-0.7.5-10.el6.centos.2.x86_64
      
    • If no information is returned, Cloud-Init is not installed.

      Note

      To confirm Cloud-Init is really not installed, you are advised to run rpm -qa |grep cloud-init to check again. If either of which cloud-init and rpm -qa |grep cloud-init shows that Cloud-Init has been installed, Cloud-Init is installed.

If Cloud-Init has been installed, perform the following operations:

  • Check whether to use the SSH certificate in the ECS OS. If the certificate is no longer used, delete it.

    • If the certificate is stored in a directory of user root, for example, /$path/$to/$root/.ssh/authorized_keys, run the following commands:

      cd /root/.ssh

      rm authorized_keys

    • If the certificate is not stored in a directory of user root, for example, /$path/$to/$none-root/.ssh/authorized_keys, run the following commands:

      cd /home/centos/.ssh

      rm authorized_keys

  • Run the following command to delete the cache generated by Cloud-Init and ensure that the ECS created from the private image can be logged in by using the certificate:

    sudo rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/*

Note

Do not restart the ECS after performing the configuration. Otherwise, you need to configure it again.

Install Cloud-Init Using the Official Source Code Package and pip

The following operations use Cloud-Init 0.7.9 as an example to describe how to install Cloud-Init.

  1. Download the cloud-init-0.7.9.tar.gz source code package (version 0.7.9 is recommended) and upload it to the /home/ directory of the ECS.

    Download cloud-init-0.7.9.tar.gz from the following path:

    https://launchpad.net/cloud-init/trunk/0.7.9/+download/cloud-init-0.7.9.tar.gz

  2. Create a pip.conf file in the ~/.pip/ directory and edit the following content:

    Note

    If the ~/.pip/ directory does not exist, run the mkdir ~/.pip command to create it.

    [global]
    index-url  = https://<$mirror>/simple/
    trusted-host = <$mirror>
    

    Note

    Replace <$mirror> with a public network PyPI source.

    Public network PyPI source: https://pypi.python.org/

  3. Run the following command to install the downloaded Cloud-Init source code package (select --upgrade as needed during installation):

    pip install [--upgrade] /home/cloud-init-0.7.9.tar.gz

    Note

    For details about how to install a Cloud-Init source code package, see Cloud-Init Documentation

  4. Run the cloud-init -v command. Cloud-Init is installed successfully if the following information is displayed:

    cloud-init 0.7.9
    
  5. Enable Cloud-Init to automatically start upon system boot.

    • If the OS uses SysVinit to manage automatic start of services, run the following commands:

      chkconfig --add cloud-init-local; chkconfig --add cloud-init; chkconfig --add cloud-config; chkconfig --add cloud-final

      chkconfig cloud-init-local on; chkconfig cloud-init on; chkconfig cloud-config on; chkconfig cloud-final on

      service cloud-init-local status; service cloud-init status; service cloud-config status; service cloud-final status

    • If the OS uses Systemd to manage automatic start of services, run the following commands:

      systemctl enable cloud-init-local.service cloud-init.service cloud-config.service cloud-final.service

      systemctl status cloud-init-local.service cloud-init.service cloud-config.service cloud-final.service

Caution

If you install Cloud-Init using the official source code package and pip, pay attention to the following:

  1. Add user syslog to the adm group during the installation. If user syslog exists, add it to the adm group. For some OSs (such as CentOS and SUSE), user syslog may not exist. Run the following commands to create user syslog and add it to the adm group:

    useradd syslog

    groupadd adm

    usermod -g adm syslog

  2. Change the value of distro in system_info in the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file based on the OS release version, such as distro: ubuntu, distro: sles, distro: debian, and distro: fedora.