generic (cloud) image problems

[Christian Tramnitz <chris.ace@gmx.net>]

I'm trying to use the Buster generic image
(https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/cloud/buster/20191117-80/debian-10-generic-amd64-20191117-80.qcow2)
to automate deployment of KVM-based VMs. The reason that I'm not using
the genericcloud or OpenStack image is that I'm passing through
network VFs that require "hardware" drivers not included in the other
images.

However, I'm running into multiple problems staging a system through cloud-init.
Without the packages
- bridge-utils
- vlan
- gnupg2
it is virtually impossible to use the image for cloud-init based deployment:
While cloud-init can also install missing packages, the install would
happen *after* package installation and network setup. bridge-utils
and vlan are required if the network setup has either a vlan or a
bridge and gnupg2 is required to add 3rd party repos (otherwise
"apt-key add" won't work). Both - network access and 3rd party repos -
may be required for further steps of an deployment (i.e. to install
automation tools like salt, chef or puppet).

So it would be great if the above mentioned packages could be included
at least in the generic build (not sure if this is also a typical
requirement for the other images).


Also, the file "/etc/network/interfaces" is using an include line that
will *not* process the cloud-init generated
"/etc/network/interfaces.d/50-cloud-init.cfg":

source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d


Instead, sth like:

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*.cfg

would be needed to process cloud-init generated network config - or -
the cloud-init generated network config should not have the ".cfg"
suffix.



Best regards,
   Christian