NoCloud ======= The data source ``NoCloud`` allows the user to provide user-data and meta-data to the instance without running a network service (or even without having a network at all). You can provide meta-data and user-data to a local vm boot via files on a `vfat`_ or `iso9660`_ filesystem. The filesystem volume label must be ``cidata``. These user-data and meta-data files are expected to be in the following format. :: /user-data /meta-data Basically, user-data is simply user-data and meta-data is a yaml formatted file representing what you'd find in the EC2 metadata service. Given a disk ubuntu 12.04 cloud image in 'disk.img', you can create a sufficient disk by following the example below. :: ## create user-data and meta-data files that will be used ## to modify image on first boot $ { echo instance-id: iid-local01; echo local-hostname: cloudimg; } > meta-data $ printf "#cloud-config\npassword: passw0rd\nchpasswd: { expire: False }\nssh_pwauth: True\n" > user-data ## create a disk to attach with some user-data and meta-data $ genisoimage -output seed.iso -volid cidata -joliet -rock user-data meta-data ## alternatively, create a vfat filesystem with same files ## $ truncate --size 2M seed.img ## $ mkfs.vfat -n cidata seed.img ## $ mcopy -oi seed.img user-data meta-data :: ## create a new qcow image to boot, backed by your original image $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b disk.img boot-disk.img ## boot the image and login as 'ubuntu' with password 'passw0rd' ## note, passw0rd was set as password through the user-data above, ## there is no password set on these images. $ kvm -m 256 \ -net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \ -drive file=boot-disk.img,if=virtio \ -drive file=seed.iso,if=virtio **Note:** that the instance-id provided (``iid-local01`` above) is what is used to determine if this is "first boot". So if you are making updates to user-data you will also have to change that, or start the disk fresh. Also, you can inject an ``/etc/network/interfaces`` file by providing the content for that file in the ``network-interfaces`` field of metadata. Example metadata: :: instance-id: iid-abcdefg network-interfaces: | iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.10 network 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 gateway 192.168.1.254 hostname: myhost .. _iso9660: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660 .. _vfat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table .. vi: textwidth=78