Archlinux Netctl Bringup

[Rich Lees]

I have been banging my head a bit with this one, especially as I am sure it *used* to work although in theory it should never have done! I would imagine a systemd update would have broken things.

I can't get cloud-init to configure the network when using `distro: arch`. What seems to happen is this:

  - systemd looks at current units/services to start and begins boot.
  - cloud-init-local.service runs, mode in cmd/main.py is 'local'.
  - init.apply_network_config happens with bringup=False.
  - arch.py writes out a netctl config and enables it using netctl reenable enp0s3.
  - netctl creates a new systemd unit (netctl@enp0s3) and enables it
  - systemd list of services already resolved, so does not start netctl@enp0s3 as it was created after the boot process started

So after the system is fully brought up, the interface is configured but NOT started. A subsequent reboot makes the network become available.

A few things and thoughts:

  - I tried making bringup=True by force but cloud-init-local is too early in the boot process and netctl barfs when trying to do a restart on an interface here.
  - Debian and RHEL based seem to have their own ways of managing network that involve putting files in a certain place that an *already existing* service then comes along and processes later.
  - Tried from "master" and from 0.7.9.tar.gz

I can't think of a way netctl could ever work with cloud-init. Possibly using systemd-networkd instead would be wise but then things like Vagrant and no doubt other "cloud" providers expect Arch to be using netctl.

Thoughts? Ideas? Even a .patch so I can bodge something to work would be a big help right now but everything I have tried fails for one reason or another.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Marked 'confirmed' just to triage it. I'm open to patches or advice on how to handle this. You've done a good job in the bug description of triaging.

Smeone will have to do some deeper debugging on arch.

[Rich Lees (rlees85)]

I know this is nearly a year old but there is clearly no way to make netctl work nicely due to the nature of it and systemd.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like cloud-init is supporting (or working to support) NetworkManager, which suits me to be honest and I would suggest closing the bug (no point keeping things open that will never be possible).

Cheers

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Tracked in Github Issues as https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/issues/2991