Metadata service warning on Eucalyptus

[John Gallucci]

When running cloud-init on an instance in Eucalyptus version 4.4.2, the following warning now appears when the service starts. Please add Eucalyptus to the list of known EC2 endpoints.

[ 15.499595] cloud-init[741]: # This system is using the EC2 Metadata Service, but does not #

[ 15.499698] cloud-init[741]: # appear to be running on Amazon EC2 or one of cloud-init's #

[ 15.499792] cloud-init[741]: # known platforms that provide a EC2 Metadata service. In the #

[ 15.499883] cloud-init[741]: # future, cloud-init may stop reading metadata from the EC2 #

[ 15.499992] cloud-init[741]: # Metadata Service unless the platform can be identified #

[ 15.500102] cloud-init[741]: # #

[ 15.500207] cloud-init[741]: # If you are seeing this message, please file a bug against #

[ 15.500294] cloud-init[741]: # cloud-init at https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-init/+filebug #

[ 15.500381] cloud-init[741]: # Make sure to include the cloud provider your instance is #

[ 15.500478] cloud-init[741]: # running on. #

[ 15.500568] cloud-init[741]: # #

[ 15.500658] cloud-init[741]: # For more information see #

[ 15.500745] cloud-init[741]: # https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-init/+bug/1660385 #

[ 15.500831] cloud-init[741]: # #

[ 15.500917] cloud-init[741]: # After you have filed a bug, you can disable this warning by #

[ 15.501013] cloud-init[741]: # launching your instance with the cloud-config below, or #

[ 15.501106] cloud-init[741]: # putting that content into #

[ 15.501195] cloud-init[741]: # /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99-ec2-datasource.cfg #

[ 15.501283] cloud-init[741]: # #

[ 15.501369] cloud-init[741]: # #cloud-config #

[ 15.501462] cloud-init[741]: # datasource: #

[ 15.501553] cloud-init[741]: # Ec2: #

[ 15.501640] cloud-init[741]: # strict_id: false #

[ 15.501726] cloud-init[741]: # #

[ 15.501811] cloud-init[741]: ****************************************************************

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Hi,
A related bug in Eucalpytus is
 https://eucalyptus.atlassian.net/browse/EUCA-13331

If there is no way to identify Eucalyptus as a system that will
have an EC2 metadata service, then there isn't really anything we can do
at the moment.

In my opinion, the right way to fix this is to have Eucalyptus identify
themselves as Eucalyptus rather than ec2. There is an example of doing
that in bug 1661693.

However, it looks like they plan to fix this by identifying themselves
as Ec2. That is quite unfortunate as it gives the user no way to know
that they are *not* in Amazon.

The difference between running in Eucalyptus and Amazon is likely a real
difference no matter how hard the platform tries to hide it. For example,
cloud-init may quite reasonly try to use mirrors in amazon if it is told
that it is running in amazon, but those mirrors are less than ideal if
running in Eucalyptus.

[John Gallucci (john.gallucci)]

Scott,

How does cloud-init detect it is a REAL Amazon instance? I ask because it was publicly announced the availability of an [AWS Secret Region](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-the-new-aws-secret-region/), so I'm curious if cloud-init will be broken here too, in addition to Eucalyptus.

The benefit of Eucalyptus masking itself as EC2 is being able to detect issues such as this when going onto the gov't regions in which the region names and endpoints are not publicly known.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Hi John,
sorry for the slow reply.
  Cloud-init identifies "the real amazon" via
 http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/identify_ec2_instances.html

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

It appears there is nothing for cloud-init to do here, that Eucalyptus will likely make a change to look like ec2 so cloud-init wouldn't know any difference.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Just to be clear... If there is some way that we can identify that cloud-init is running on eucalyptus, we'll happily take patches or doc.

Also we do intend to support "explicit" configuration indicating that cloud-init should use the ec2 metadata service. Its possible that that works:
  datasource_list: ["Ec2", "None"]

Unfortunately I'm not sure that works either (bug 1683038).

Lets make this work better.

[rich wolski (richwolski)]

Hi All,

I spoke with the eucalyptus upstream supporters and they say that it is fixed in the current release -- 4.4.4. I will test the fix but it sounds like it might resolved. I filed a duplicate bug for 4.3 which is an earlier version.

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Tracked in Github Issues as https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/issues/3067