Install cloud-init for Linux images - User Guide| Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

If you need to create an ECS instance using an existing image, you can import the image to configure the instance. To guarantee successful configuration of the hostname, NTP source, and yum source of the imported Linux image, you are advised to install cloud-init in your on-premise server, virtual machine (VM), or cloud host before import.

Limitations

Currently, cloud-init supports the following Linux distributions: CentOS, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), and Ubuntu.
If cloud-init has been installed on your on-premise server, VM, or cloud host, make sure that the cloud-init version is later than 0.7.9 because images using an earlier-version cloud-init may cause instance configuration failure in NTP, hostname, and yum.
1. Log on to your on-premise server, VM, or cloud host.
2. Run cloud-init --version to query the cloud-init version.
  You can use the cloud-init if its version is later than 0.7.9. Otherwise, do as instructed in Install cloud-init.

Prerequisites

You have installed the following software on your on-premise server, VM, or cloud host:

git: Source code package of cloud-init
Command for installing yum: yum install git.
Python2.7: Basis of cloud-init installation and running.
Command for installing yum: yum install python
pip: Python library on which cloud-init installation depends.
Command for installing yum: yum install python-pip

yum installation is used as an example. If you manage packages using zypper or apt-get, the installation methods are similar to yum.

Install cloud-init

Do as follows to install cloud-init:

Log on to your on-premise server, VM, or cloud host.
Run git clone https://git.launchpad.net/cloud-init to download the cloud-init source code package.
Run cd cloud-init to go to the cloud-init directory.
Run python setup.py install to install setup.py, which is the cloud-init installation file.

Run vi /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg to modify the cloud.cfg configuration file.

Modify cloud_init_modules configurations to the following:

# Example datasource config
 # The top level settings are used as module
 # and system configuration.
 # A set of users which may be applied and/or used by various modules
 # when a 'default' entry is found it will reference the 'default_user'
 # from the distro configuration specified below
 users:
    - default
 user:
     name: root
     lock_passwd: False
 # If this is set, 'root' will not be able to ssh in and they 
 # will get a message to login instead as the above $user
 disable_root: false
 # This will cause the set+update hostname module to not operate (if true)
 preserve_hostname: false
 syslog_fix_perms: root:root
 datasource_list: [ AliYun ]
 # Example datasource config
 datasource:
     AliYun:
         support_xen: false
         timeout: 5 # (defaults to 50 seconds)
         max_wait: 60 # (defaults to 120 seconds)
 #      metadata_urls: [ 'blah.com' ]
 # The modules that run in the 'init' stage
 cloud_init_modules:

Troubleshooting

The libraries missing from images may be different. You can install the missing libraries through pip and repeat step 4.

When the six and oauthlib libraries are missing

The six library is missing from Python if the following message is displayed during installation. You can run pip install six to install the six library through pip.
```
File "/root/cloud-init/cloudinit/log.py", line 19, in <module>
      import six
  ImportError: No module named s  )
```
The oauthlib library is missing from Python if the following message is displayed during installation. You can run pip install oauthlib to install the six library through pip.
```
File "/root/cloud-init/cloudinit/url_helper.py", line 20, in <module>
      import oauthlib.oauth1 as oauth1
  ImportError: No module named oauthlib.oaut  )
```

When an error message does not indicate missing libraries

You can run pip install -r requirements.txt to install all dependency libraries according to the library information in the requirements.txt file of cloud-init.

Next step

You can import the image to ECS.

Reference

cloud-init Alibaba Cloud (AliYun)