vsphere: juju ignores local images and download from the internet

[Erlon R. Cruz]

While trying to bootstrap a vsphere cloud controller, I hit a problem where Juju does not pick up the images and binaries pointed in the image metadata folder. Regardless of what I put into the metadata folder, or what parameters are used, Juju always downloads and boots Ubuntu.

Juju version:
2.9.46-ubuntu-amd64

Steps to reproduce:

juju add-cloud
# Enter a name for your vsphere cloud: vsphere
# Enter the vCenter address or URL: 10.230.65.170
# Enter datacenter name: segmaas

juju add-credential vsphere
# Enter user: <email address hidden>
# Enter password:
# Enter vmfolder (optional): vmfolder01
DATA_STORE="SharedImages"
ENDPOINT="10.230.xx.xxx"
STREAM="released"
METADATA_DIR="vsphere7-simplestreams-$STREAM"
JUJUD_BIN_FOLDER="/home/ubuntu/internal_git/juju/_build/linux_amd64/bin"
DC="10.230.xx.xxx"
REGION="DC1"

rm -rf $METADATA_DIR
mkdir -p $HOME/$METADATA_DIR/tools/$STREAM
cp $JUJUD_BIN_FOLDER/jujud $HOME/$METADATA_DIR/tools/$STREAM
pushd $HOME/$METADATA_DIR/tools/$STREAM
tar czf juju-`./jujud version`.tgz ./jujud
popd

## juju 2.9 procedure
juju metadata generate-agents -d $METADATA_DIR --stream $STREAM

juju metadata generate-image -r $REGION -u $ENDPOINT \
    -d $HOME/$METADATA_DIR/ \
    -i "cloud-images/ubuntu-20.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.ova" \
    -s focal --storage $DATA_STORE --stream $STREAM

juju metadata generate-image -r $REGION -u $ENDPOINT \
    -d $HOME/$METADATA_DIR/ \
    -i "cloud-images/centos-7-atomicapp-dev-1-1.x86_64.vsphere.ova" \
    -s centos7 --storage $DATA_STORE --stream $STREAM

juju --debug bootstrap vcenter7 --metadata-source $HOME/vsphere7-simplestreams-$STREAM --config datastore=$DATA_STORE --config primary-network="VM Network" --bootstrap-constraints "zones=$DC" --bootstrap-series focal --show-log

The results for this commands can be seen here[1]. See that, juju complains about a missing image-downloads field, but image-ids is what Juju should really be searching for since this is a local image. Also if I change that to image-downloads, it doesn't work as well[2].

   [1] https://gist.github.com/sombrafam/ddf3a234946175c4fdab8ea887b3e140
   [2] after changing image-ids for image-downloads: https://gist.github.com/sombrafam/537b702a5faae890d59ab51f7d3078a4
   [3] metadata index: https://gist.github.com/sombrafam/d9a3317096d09d4380560d3882c2d2f9