Login failure after installing cloud-Init and reboot on an ARM machine

[shixuantong]

As mentioned in the title, I just installed cloud-Init on an ARM machine with a newly installed OS, then reboot. Then the account can't be logged in. I used the root account.

I also tested it on an x86 machine and the results were normal.

This problem seems to be related to the following commit:
https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/commit/7f85a3a5b4586ac7f21309aac4edc39e6ffea9ef

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Can you create a user manually before doing the reboot? Then you should be able to login and run a "cloud-init collect-logs" and upload the tarball here.

Can you provide the platform (such as VM, physical hardware, cloud, etc) and cloud-init version used?

Why do you think the problem is related to that commit? That commit allows cloud-init to run even if we can't detect DMI data due to being on ARM. Without it, cloud-init definitely won't run on ARM.

[shixuantong (sxt1001)]

I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with this area. It's a problem that happens in my environment. My environment information is as follows：

OS: openEuler 22.03 (LTS-SP1)
kernel: 5.10.0
cloud-init: 21.4

I will try to collect log information and upload.

[shixuantong (sxt1001)]

After installing the cloud-init package and reboot the machine, I find that the value of PasswordAuthentication in /etc/ssh/sshd_config is changed to no.

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Cloud-init is intended for first boot configuration of a machine. If you install and run it locally, it can make changes you may not have been expecting. In this case, setting "ssh_pwauth: true" in your cloud-config should allow you to continue using password auth, though cloud-init shouldn't be changing it by default. Please attach the tarball generated by running "cloud-init collect-logs --include-userdata". If you have sensitive userdata, leave off the --include-userdata flag.

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Based on your latest comments in https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/pull/1924 , I can see what's happening. This is by design though. As mentioned before, cloud-init has issues detecting the datasource properly on openstack ARM devices, so it will attempt to run regardless. I see that this is causing some side-effects on your machine, but without understanding your use case, it's hard to know the best course of action.

If you're not wanting cloud-init to run, you can touch a file at "/etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled", and cloud-init won't run. If that doesn't work for you, can you help me understand how and why you're running cloud-init?

[shixuantong (sxt1001)]

Thank you very much for your reply. I understand the cause of the problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for cloud-init because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Tracked in Github Issues as https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/issues/4057