Cloud images are operating system templates and every instance starts out as an identical clone of every other instance. It is the user data that gives every cloud instance its personality and cloud-init is the tool applies user data to your instances automatically.
Use cloud-init to configure:
- Setting a default locale
- Setting the hostname
- Generating and setting up SSH private keys
- Setting up ephemeral mount points
Works with many popular operating systems
While cloud-init started life in Ubuntu, it is now available for most major Linux and FreeBSD operating systems. For cloud image providers, then cloud-init handles many of the differences between cloud vendors automatically — for example, the official Ubuntu cloud images are identical across all public and private clouds.
Source code
Git
Browse and branch from Git.
GitHub
Browse, branch, fork or clone from GitHub.
Download
Download the offically released archives.
Support
Read the docs
Always read the manual — perhaps your question has already be answered?
Chat on freenode
We have an active IRC community on #cloud-init — get involved!
Search on Stack Exchange
Ask questions and search for answers at StackExchange.
Report a bug
Help us improve the software by flagging bugs and issues you find on Launchpad.
About
cloud-init is developed and released as free software under both the GPLv3 open source license and Apache License version 2.0 . It was originally designed for the Ubuntu distribution of Linux in Amazon EC2, but is now supported on many Linux and UNIX distributions in every major cloud.
