templater.py: KeyError 'u' on cloud-final.service.tmpl

[richard hornsby]

cloud-init version: 22.4
source: https://launchpad.net/cloud-init/trunk/22.4/+download/cloud-init-22.4.tar.gz
target platform: Rocky Linux 9, aarch64
hypervisor: Parallels 18
error output included at the bottom
--

Have successfully used this same process to build cloud-init during the packer image creation on Rocky (CentOS) 8 for x86 vbox and AMIs for a couple of years, and Rocky 7 before that. Obviously this was done on x86 hardware.

None of this might matter, but for the sake of transparency - I'm now trying to build a Rocky 9 Parallels VM on an M1 mac (so aarch64), as above, using packer. I can't compare to Rocky 8 arm because Parallels won't boot a Rocky 8 arm iso, and virtualbox won't boot much of anything on arm.

cloud-init appears to build (python3 setup.py build) fine, but is crashing during the install phase, trying to do something with a template.

> File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/cloudinit/templater.py", line 93, in replacer
> return str(selected_params[key])

I don't think I'm doing anything special. The provisioner script[1] that packer is running to build/install cloud-init is pretty simple.

As to the python error specifically, I see two references to a var named 'u' in cloud-final.service.tmpl:

> ExecStartPost=/bin/sh -c 'u=NetworkManager.service; \
> out=$(systemctl show --property=SubState $u) || exit; \
> [ "$out" = "SubState=running" ] || exit 0; \
> systemctl reload-or-try-restart $u'

but I'm still trying to figure out what the replacer() method is doing when it tries to return and hits the KeyError.

[1] https://gist.github.com/rjhornsby/359ad009d0bd7ff2f6976a97d9b29f20

Error output:

[root@rockylinux-9 cloud-init-22.4]# python3 setup.py install --init-system=systemd
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/./tools/render-cloudcfg", line 67, in <module>
    main()
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/./tools/render-cloudcfg", line 63, in main
    templater.render_cloudcfg(args.variant, args.template, args.output)
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/cloudinit/templater.py", line 171, in render_cloudcfg
    contents = (render_string(contents, tpl_params)).rstrip() + "\n"
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/cloudinit/templater.py", line 163, in render_string
    return renderer(content, params)
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/cloudinit/templater.py", line 95, in basic_render
    return BASIC_MATCHER.sub(replacer, content)
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/cloudinit/templater.py", line 93, in replacer
    return str(selected_params[key])
KeyError: 'u'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/setup.py", line 145, in <module>
    "systemd": [
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/setup.py", line 146, in <listcomp>
    render_tmpl(f)
  File "/tmp/packer/cloud-init/cloud-init-22.4/setup.py", line 121, in render_tmpl
    subprocess.run(
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.9/subprocess.py", line 528, in run
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, process.args,
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/usr/bin/python3', './tools/render-cloudcfg', 'systemd/cloud-final.service.tmpl', 'RENDERED_TEMPDg9hznmwx/cloud-final.service']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

[richard hornsby (smoketree)]

Have mysteriously resolved this while working on what I thought were unrelated dependency/permissions issues in the x86 vbox version of the same box. Wish I had a better answer to provide as to why this was happening, but seems to be fixed now.

[richard hornsby (smoketree)]

Closing as resolved/invalid, can no longer reproduce.

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Tracked in Github Issues as https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/issues/4071