cloud-init

Recipe card from the charly-distros plugin (Images — the deployable catalog).

cloud-init – cloud instance initialization

Candy Properties

Property	Value
Dependencies	sshd
Install files	run: steps, charly.yml

Packages

• cloud-init (RPM) – cloud instance initialization
• cloud-utils-growpart (RPM) – partition growing utility

Usage

charly.yml

my-cloud-image:
  candy:
    base: "quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:43"
    bootc: true
    candy: [cloud-init]

Used In Boxes

Used in bootc images for VM/cloud deployments. Depends on sshd.

Host-side pairing with kind: vm entities

This candy installs the guest-side cloud-init package — the daemon that reads a NoCloud seed ISO at first boot. The host-side companion is the RenderCloudInit path in the charly binary itself (/charly-internals:cloud-init-renderer), which produces that seed ISO from the structured VmSpec.CloudInit block on a kind: vm entity.

The two sides cooperate across the host/guest boundary:

• /charly-internals:cloud-init-renderer emits user-data + meta-data + network-config + seeds ISO via xorriso.
• This guest-side candy installs cloud-init so the guest reads /dev/sr0 (the seed ISO) at boot.
• The composeUsers adopt-merge pattern (renderer-side) deposits the SSH pubkey in ~<base_user>/.ssh/authorized_keys without useradd.

For cloud_image VMs (source.kind: cloud_image), cloud-init typically comes pre-installed in the upstream qcow2 — this candy isn’t needed; author the VM entity directly in vm.yml. For bootc VMs that want cloud-init provisioning, add this candy explicitly. See /charly-vm:vms-catalog for the authoring guide and /charly-vm:arch-cloud-vm for a worked example.

Related Skills

• /charly-coder:sshd – SSH server dependency
• /charly-distros:qemu-guest-agent — host-guest communication (paired with cloud-init in VMs)
• /charly-vm:vm — VM lifecycle (create, start, stop, ssh) for kind:vm entities
• /charly-vm:vms-catalog — kind:vm authoring reference
• /charly-internals:cloud-init-renderer — host-side renderer producing the NoCloud seed ISO this candy reads
• /charly-image:layer — candy authoring reference

When to Use This Skill

Use when the user asks about:

• Cloud-init configuration or NoCloud datasource
• VM instance provisioning
• Cloud instance bootstrapping
• Partition growing with growpart
• System services: cloud-init-local, cloud-init, cloud-config, cloud-final

Related

• /charly-check:check — declarative testing (check: block, charly check box, charly check live)