Hi Simon, On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 4:16 AM Simon Josefsson via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution. <guix-devel@gnu.org> wrote: > > I would like to deploy Guix VM's and in many VM hosting environments, > having cloud-init on the Guix VM image would be useful for configuration > of network interfaces etc. I tried searching the mailing list archives > and bug database, but could not find anything except that the > cloud-utils package has been added to Guix. > > The philosophy of cloud-init and Guix system configuration is probably > at odds, but basic support for booting and starting sshd and printing > the SSH fingerprint, and possibly some DHCP/network config is probably > not too difficult to achieve. A 'cloud-init' package in Guix could do > as much as is possible to do, or at least document the gap between > philosophies. > > I haven't looked into packaging cloud-init, but first wanted to ask if > anyone is aware of work in this area? Are people interested in this?
I can only cite my experiences doing devops on AWS for the past 5 years, but I personally avoid relying on cloud-init on EC2 and try to catch when other developers use it to do something because there's always a better way. That better way is almost always to add a one-shot systemd service (these are not Guix System servers) to the VM image that starts on boot. What are some situations in which cloud-init is unavoidable? I wouldn't think cloud-init would need to start sshd since the init system would automatically do that. None of this is to say that I wouldn't be in favor of having cloud-init support. I'm just trying to understand if it's a necessity in a certain context or if it would be for the purpose of providing a familiar tool to help people who are used to using it with other distros. - Dave