write_files recursively sets ownership to root:root, ignores owner directive.

[Chris Glass]

The "write_files" cloud init directive tramples on folder permissions while ignoring the "owner" directive, resulting in wrong ownership of "root:root" being set all along the file path.

Provider: LXD (maybe/probably others too)

Cloud-init version:
17.1-46-g7acc9e68-0ubuntu1~16.04.1

Sample cloud config:

#cloud-config
write_files:
- content: |
    Example content.
  path: /home/ubuntu/example
  owner: ubuntu:ubuntu
  permissions: '0600'

Expected behavior:

A "/home/ubuntu/example" file is created, with "ubuntu:ubuntu" as owner and a permission of 600. Permissions of the parent /home/ubuntu folder do not change.

What actually happens:

A "/home/ubuntu/example" file is created, with an owner of "root:root" and a permission of 600.
The "/home/ubuntu" folder now *also* has "root:root" as owner, resulting in a non-writable home for the "ubuntu" user.

The permissions should:

1) Honor the chosen user:group pair
2) Only set permission on parent folders if they do not already exist.

[Chris Glass (tribaal)]

/var/log/cloud-init.log -> https://paste.ubuntu.com/26483428/

(notice the python stacktrace)

/var/log/cloud-init-output.log -> https://paste.ubuntu.com/26483440/

[Chris Glass (tribaal)]

This bug might be a duplicate of 1486113, although 1486113 fails to capture "changing the parent directory's permissions"

[Mohammad Bhuyan (mohammad-bhuyan)]

This also helped me to understand what was happening:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34095839/cloud-init-what-is-the-execution-order-of-cloud-config-directives