ec2-init: Move wait for network to top level

[Eric Hammond]

For a while now, I've been recommending that the "wait for network" code be moved out of /usr/sbin/ec2-set-defaults and into something called from the the top level of /etc/init.d/ec2-init , as it doesn't make sense from a code organization perspective to have an important step like this buried inside of a script which has a completely different focus and which just happens to be called first in ec2-init.

I've finally found a bug which is caused by this.

When a running instance is rebundled as a new image and the new image is run as a new instance, the new instance does not wait for the network and may fail to install the public ssh keys correctly, preventing access to the instance. See also bug #308530.

This happens because the call to ec2-set-defaults is inside of a "run once ever" check so the "wait for network" requirement is not run on the new instance of the rebundled image.

This problem may not show up on every instance start as the network may be available more quickly sometimes but not others.

I propose creating a new /usr/sbin/ec2-wait-for-network which does what it says and is called from ec2-init on every boot at the top of "start)".

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

I believe the fix incorporated for bug 308530 (present in karmic/20090811.2/ubuntu-ec2-karmic-amd64.img.gz) should address your concerns that were listed above. In short, the /etc/init.d/ec2-init script now runs ec2-wait-for-meta-data-service before doing anything else in 'start'. and that program will block until meta-data service is up.

Please re-open if you believe this isn't fixed.

[David Favor (davidfavor)]

This bug persists based on today's ec2-init package.

Doing a fresh install of ec2-init hangs forever with "Waiting for EC2 meta-data service".

[Eric Hammond (esh)]

David, that sounds like a completely different problem from what was being tracked in this bug . Please submit a new bug report with detailed information on how to reproduce.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

On Wed, 2 Sep 2009, David Favor wrote:

> Doing a fresh install of ec2-init hangs forever with "Waiting for EC2
> meta-data service".

My guess is that you're seeing bug 419306.

The simple workaround is to pass user data either by '--user-data x' or
'--user-data-file some-file'

It doesn't matter what the data is, but it has to be there.