User.user-data not applying to already created container

Hi,

I’m attempting to set user.user-data on an already created container, however as far as I can tell, it has not actually done anything to the container.

I’ve checked /var/lib/cloud/instance/user-data.txt and it appears to just have the blank placeholder in there.

Is user.user-data a special configuration that is only set once on launch?

I am aware that cloud-init is typically an inital configuration tool, however I’m doing a cloud-init clean before exporting my instance to allow for further deployment, so it does make sense to allow for user-data to be edited even after a container is spawned in my case.

As cloud-init is only supposed to run on first start, we don’t have LXD waste time generating the config files on subsequent boot.

You can force it though with lxc config set NAME volatile.apply_template create

Great, thanks for that!

Perhaps I’ve just missed it, but is there a canonical way to create a new LXD image (using lxc publish and lxc image export) which allows for the use of cloud-init (and configuration of that through user.user-data)?

E.g: I create a container using lxc launch ubuntu:20.04, make some changes to it, install some new software, and then I’d like to save an image of that container which can then be imported and launched (with cloud-init working fully with user.user-data).

For now I’ll just be running cloud-init clean and exporting as described, and then setting this apply_template you suggested.

If you run cloud-init clean, then stop the instance and publish it as a new image, instances created from that new image will get apply_template=create set during creation and so will run cloud-init.