Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Rocky Generic Cloud Image 9.4 - Image Prep, Cloud-Init and VMware Tools

 

I just fixed an issue on these Rocky 9.x generic cloud images not booting properly on a VMWare platform. It turns out, that if you don't include in your vmx file a CD-ROM - in a connected state - then cloud-init will not run. Which of course makes perfect sense (how can it run if there is no virtual cdrom to boot from?).

I thought the CMP we were using was auto-adding the CD-ROM and mounting the cloud-init iso. And indeed it may be trying to do this. But when you load that OVF up on the first upload, and there is no xml in that OVF file describing a cd-rom drive, then bad things happen as far as initializing the VM properly.

Without cloud-init, you cannot log into one of these generic cloud images. There is no default user and password baked into the image like the old days. So cloud-init is quite important.

Also, Rocky doesn't include VMware Tools (open-vm-tools) as a package on these images. That's a big hassle if you're on VMWare. You have to convert the qcow2 to VMWare (vmx files and ovftool and also generating a cloud-init iso to mount), then load it up on a network that can get to the internet, install open-vm-tools, clean and shut down the VM, then export the OVF files back out - and then reload the thing back into your CMP. Quite the hassle, though yes, it can be (and has been) automated on most of these steps. 

UPDATED NOTE: 

Morpheus VMs need a CD-ROM per their documentation

https://docs.morpheusdata.com/en/latest/getting_started/guides/vmware_guide.html

See "Creating a CentOS/RHEL Image

 

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