cloud-init is the defacto multi-distribution package that handles early initialization of a cloud instance.
In-depth documentation for cloud-init is available here: https://cloudinit.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
Photon Container OS (Minimal)Photon Full OS (All)
Photon supports cloud-init starting with the following capabilities
run commands- execute a list of commands with output to console.
configure ssh keys- add entry to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys for the configured user
install package- install additional packages on first boot
configure networking- update /etc/hosts, hostname etc
write files- write arbitrary file(s) to disk
add yum repo- add a yum repository to /etc/yum.repos.d
create groups and users- add groups and users to the system. set user/group properties
run yum upgrade- upgrade all packages
reboot- reboot or power off when done with cloud-init
photon cloud config has ec2 datasource turned on by default so an ec2 configuration is accepted.
However, for testing, the following methods provide ways to do cloud-init with photon standalone.
This will be using the nocloud datasource. In order to init this way, an iso file needs to be created
with a meta-data and an user-data file as shown below
$ { echo instance-id: iid-local01; echo local-hostname: cloudimg; } > meta-data
$ printf "#cloud-config\nhostname: testhost\n" > user-data
$ genisoimage -output seed.iso -volid cidata -joliet -rock user-data meta-data
Attach the above generated seed.iso to your machine and reboot for the init to take effect.
In this case, the hostname is set to testhost
To init using local disk files, do the following
mkdir /var/lib/cloud/seed/nocloud
cd /var/lib/cloud/seed/nocloud
$ { echo instance-id: iid-local01; echo local-hostname: cloudimg; } > meta-data
$ printf "#cloud-config\nhostname: testhost\n" > user-data
testhost
cloud-init modules have pre-determined frequencies. Based on the frequency setting, multiple runs will yield different results.
For the scripts to run always, remove instances folder before reboot.
rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/instances
| Name | Frequency |
|---|---|
| disable_ec2_metadata | Always |
| users_groups | Instance |
| write_files | Instance |
| update_hostname | Always |
| final_message | Always |
| resolv_conf | Instance |
| growpart | Always |
| update_etc_hosts | Always |
| power_state_change | Instance |
| phone_home | Instance |