cloud-init?

[Simon Josefsson via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org>]

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Hi

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 think I have three goals with this:

1) Package 'cloud-init' in Guix so that it is possible to create a VM
image that virt-install can install with the --cloud-init parameters,
that has basic support for booting the image and get network and sshd
running.

2) Write a system.scm could eventually be used to prepare an official
Guix "Cloud image".

3) Verify that Guix can be used as the VM host.  I've already tried this
a bit, and never ran into troubles so I don't expect any issues here.
But maybe something is required to support virt-install --cloud-init.

I know the quality of cloud-init infrastructure leaves a lot to be
desired, but I think it has become too widespread to ignore.
Fortunately cloud-init can be ignored once the system is up and running.
I'm using it for VM installation of Debian, and once installed I just
remove the cloud-init tools, and I would expect to do the same with
Guix.  See hints at the end of
https://blog.josefsson.org/2022/08/22/static-network-config-with-debian-cloud-images/

/Simon

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