π ~1 min read
Table of contents
Symptom & Impact
Boot is significantly delayed while cloud-init retries unavailable metadata services.
Environment & Reproduction
Common on cloned images moved between virtualization platforms.
systemd-analyze blame | grep cloud-initRoot Cause Analysis
cloud-init probes unsupported datasources, causing repeated timeout loops during early boot.
Quick Triage
Review cloud-init logs and active datasource detection state.
sudo cloud-init status --longStep-by-Step Diagnosis
Inspect datasource configuration files and timeout parameters.
sudo grep -R datasource_list /etc/cloud /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d
Solution – Primary Fix
Limit datasource list to the platform in use and clean stale instance cache.
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echo 'datasource_list: [ NoCloud ]' | sudo tee /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99_datasource.cfg && sudo cloud-init clean
Solution – Alternative Approaches
Disable cloud-init networking stage on static servers where metadata is unnecessary.
Verification & Acceptance Criteria
Boot completes without long cloud-init waits and `cloud-init status` reaches done quickly.
Rollback Plan
Remove custom datasource override and restore original cloud-init config files.
Prevention & Hardening
Bake platform-specific cloud-init settings into image templates to avoid datasource ambiguity.
Related Errors & Cross-Refs
Related to duplicate hostname assignment, stale instance-id, and netplan overwrite events.
Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
View all Ubuntu 26.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub β
Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.
References & Further Reading
Ubuntu cloud-init datasource and boot performance guidance.
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