Cloud-init is a powerful configuration tools used in several Linux distributions, but his implementation is not always the best. And on some version of Ubuntu Server it’s making the boot slower and it’s annoning with some console messaging, also after the boot phase.
There are two different approach to disable cloud-init.
Flexible mode: Disable cloud-init from file
This is the safest and the easiest method and is fast to reverse. It require to create a cloud-init.disabled
file in /etc/cloud directory and reboot the system.
- To create empty file, issue this comand:
sudo touch /etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled
- and reboot:
init 6
Permament mode: remove cloud-init package
This second method does not only disable cloud-init but completely remove its package and files from the Ubuntu Server machine.
- Remove cloud-init package
sudo apt purge cloud-init -y
- Remove /etc/cloud folder
sudo rm -rf /etc/cloud && sudo rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/
- Reboot the system
reboot
Anyway it remain an interesting tools to customizing images and there are scenarios where can be used.
Cloud images are operating system templates and every instance starts out as an identical clone of every other instance. It is the user data that gives every cloud instance its personality and cloud-init can be the tool that applies user data to your instances automatically.