Installation and configuration of cloud-init on the Linux server

IBM® Cloud Infrastructure Center uses cloud-init as its activation engine. It works well with cloud-init 18.5 for RHEL7.7 RHEL7.8, RHEL8.1 and RHEL8.2.

If you are using a different version of cloud-init, specify the commands below as required for your version of cloud-init.

During cloud-init installation, some dependency packages might be required. You can use yum to easily resolve these dependencies.

Follow these steps to install and configure the cloud-init service:

Installing and configuring cloud-init in RHEL Linux server

Use ssh or virsh console to connect to the Linux® server, then run the following to install cloud-init:
```
yum install cloud-init
```
Install cloud-utils-growpart to allow partitions to resize:
```
yum install cloud-utils-growpart
```
Optionally, the default /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file supports login by ssh key. If you want to log in by user name and password via ssh, configure the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file:
```
ssh_pwauth：1
```
Optionally, to enable root login, you can configure the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file:
```
disable_root: 0
```

Enable and start the cloud-init related services by running the following commands:

systemctl enable cloud-init-local.service
systemctl start cloud-init-local.service
systemctl enable cloud-init.service
systemctl start cloud-init.service
systemctl enable cloud-config.service
systemctl start cloud-config.service
systemctl enable cloud-final.service
systemctl start cloud-final.service

If you experience problems the first time you start cloud-config.service and cloud-final.service, try to restart them.

Ensure all cloud-init services have an active status by running the following commands:

systemctl status cloud-init-local.service
systemctl status cloud-init.service
systemctl status cloud-config.service
systemctl status cloud-final.service

To verify the cloud-init configuration, issue the following command. If no errors occur, cloud-init is installed correctly:
```
cloud-init init --local
```
Remove the /var/lib/cloud directory (if it exists) so that cloud-init does not run after a restart:
```
rm -rf /var/lib/cloud
```