Comment 22 for bug 1374166

On 01/06/15 23:55, trialotto wrote:
> You are very likely to be correct, I saw the specific code (for recent
> versions of cloud-init) and it should be able to reformat disks.
>
> Questions are:
>
> - is the swap created after or before the reformat? (Note: a reformat removes the characteristic "persistent" from persistent swap)

swap is created as part of the reformat; before the reformat we have a
disk with a single NTFS partition. I'm not even sure what it would mean
to create it before the reformat.

Persistent swap is swap that continues to exist after a reboot; it
doesn't retain any data over reboots (any more than RAM does). Unless
you have an application that immediately requires swap on boot, this is
effectively persistent swap. (And if you have such an application, you
probably aren't using an appropriately sized VM for it)

> - is the Azure VM image running the most appropriate and/or recent cloud-init version?

This functionality is in all supported Ubuntu images on Azure; it was
introduced for trusty and backported to precise in April 2014 (i.e.
before trusty was even released).

> It often has been the problem that cloud-init versions on Azure Ubuntu
> VMs are not really up-to-date.

Each release of Ubuntu contains the latest version of cloud-init when it
is released. We then follow Ubuntu's Stable Release Update process[0]
to backport any important functionality (or security fixes) whilst
avoiding regression; the cloud-init versions on official Ubuntu images
in Azure _are_ up-to-date.

> However, I will try to test which issues occur (if any), after thursday
> though.

If you do find issues that aren't simply with the documentation at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AzureSwapPartitions, please open a new bug. :)

Thanks,

Dan

[0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates