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How to disable Cloud-Init in a RHEL Cloud Image

10/19/2017

So this one is pretty simple. However, I found a lot of misinformation along the way, so I figured that I would jot the proper (and most simple) process here.

Symptoms: a RHEL (or variant) VM that takes a very long time to boot. On the VM console, you can see the following output while the VM boot process is stalled and waiting for a timeout. Note that the message below has nothing to do with cloud init, but its the output that I have most often seen on the console while waiting for a VM to boot.

[106.325574} random: crng init done

Note that I have run into this issue in both OpenStack (when booting from external provider networks) and in KVM.

Upon initial boot of the VM, run the command below.

touch /etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled

Seriously, that’s it. No need to disable or remove cloud-init services. See reference.

cloud-init kvm openstack.

Comments

7 responses to “How to disable Cloud-Init in a RHEL Cloud Image”

03/08/2018

Peter

hello, I meet the same problem when I use vsphere to start up vm.
the vm is hang, and displays random: crng init done
did you resolve it? how to resolve it ?
check the discussion here: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/583932
thanks for help.

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05/07/2018

Christopher Zeoli

This was “the best” solution for me! Thank you!!!

Learned a lot on the way about trying to trouble shoot a slow virtualbox vm boot along the way.

Had done the resize a fixed ssd (to include the important reset/reassignment of the UUID in /etc/fstab after having removed and relocated the swap).

Had learned of apt-get ncdu ( prompt:[username]% ncdu / ), i.e. a awesome upgrade to the use of du -h, to find and remove large files.

Clear apt cache and other stuff (not the solution, but hmm probably ought to do this automatically with the other stuff we often do):
du -sh /var/cache/apt/archives/ (this one, to check current cache usage, size)
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
apt-get clean && apt-get autoclean
apt-get autoremove –purge (and this one, to clear cache)
source:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/08/5-ways-free-up-space-on-ubuntu (see gabdub’s post)

Check boot log files (eh, kinda helpful to know about and look at):
/var/log/boot.log
/var/log/bootstrap.log

Check long startup times:
systemd-analyze blame (this is gold; “aha cloud.init.server takes ~ 4min, wth”)

dmesg | less (this is also gold; a finer grain to go with above in trouble-shooting)

also journalctl -b

Looking into cloud-init

Me: “oh, it comes in some of the vm iso copies, useful for ‘cloud’ services (multiple EC2) , snapshots, etc.”

Me: “Well I don’t know if I really want remove this completely; done EC2s on AWS; might need this later with own raspberry-pi cluster, plus the use of the vm “snapshot – merge – snapshot” cycle stuff”

fatmin: “No worries mate! touch /etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled”

Me: Ok cool. Shutdown -> Restart VM -> 30 seconds later -> “tah-dah!”
“drum beat sound” -> Ubuntu 16.04 -> Login [Username: |”blink-blink-blink” ]

Me: Oh my god, Thank you!!!!

And just like that … weeks of like 5-8 min morning bootup times gone!!! VMs are still awesome.

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10/09/2018

Nicolas Maire

This only works with Cloud-Init > 0.7.7. Debian 8 Jessie (I know, oldstable now, migration to 9 Stretch in process …) is still providing cloud-init 0.7.6 …

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12/28/2018

Computer Programmer (@lovclrtxt)

worked for me, thank you!

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08/22/2019

The Problem

doesn’t work, sorry

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1. 08/22/2019
  
  Christopher Paquin
  
  What RHEL version are you using?
  
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09/21/2020

JMiezitis

Worked for me on RHEL 7.7 KVM image.
Also stops resolv.conf and ifcfg-eth0 being overwritten.
Thank you!

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