Hi I would like to deploy Guix VM's and in many VM hosting environments, having cloud-init on the Guix VM image would be useful for configuration of network interfaces etc. I tried searching the mailing list archives and bug database, but could not find anything except that the cloud-utils package has been added to Guix.
The philosophy of cloud-init and Guix system configuration is probably at odds, but basic support for booting and starting sshd and printing the SSH fingerprint, and possibly some DHCP/network config is probably not too difficult to achieve. A 'cloud-init' package in Guix could do as much as is possible to do, or at least document the gap between philosophies. I haven't looked into packaging cloud-init, but first wanted to ask if anyone is aware of work in this area? Are people interested in this? I think I have three goals with this: 1) Package 'cloud-init' in Guix so that it is possible to create a VM image that virt-install can install with the --cloud-init parameters, that has basic support for booting the image and get network and sshd running. 2) Write a system.scm could eventually be used to prepare an official Guix "Cloud image". 3) Verify that Guix can be used as the VM host. I've already tried this a bit, and never ran into troubles so I don't expect any issues here. But maybe something is required to support virt-install --cloud-init. I know the quality of cloud-init infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired, but I think it has become too widespread to ignore. Fortunately cloud-init can be ignored once the system is up and running. I'm using it for VM installation of Debian, and once installed I just remove the cloud-init tools, and I would expect to do the same with Guix. See hints at the end of https://blog.josefsson.org/2022/08/22/static-network-config-with-debian-cloud-images/ /Simon
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