Bug#1040979: write_files: defer not working any more

[Sven Strickroth <email@cs-ware.de>]

Package: cloud-init
Version: 22.4.2-1
Severity: important
X-Debbugs-Cc: email@cs-ware.de

Dear Maintainer,

starting with the shipped version in Debian 12 the write_files feature with defer option does not work any more.

Example:
#cloud-config
locale: de_DE.UTF-8
timezone: Europe/Berlin
package_update: true # Implied with `package_upgrade: true`
package_upgrade: true
packages: ['joe','mariadb-server','aptitude','psmisc','bzip2','fail2ban','postfix','apticron','nagios-nrpe-server','monitoring-plugins','libmariadb3','borgbackup','logwatch']
write_files:
- content: |
    [mysqldump]
    max_allowed_packet     = 60M
  path: /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/51-dump.cnf
  defer: true

The file /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/51-dump.cnf is not created any more (compared to Debian 11; 20.4.1-2+deb11) by cloud-init. Nothing can be seen in the logs.

This significantly limits how cloud-init can be used to set up new machines.

Providing an updated version as backport etc. does not help as cloud-init is particularly used to set up a machine from a plain base image. It would be important to get a fix in the next point release.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.0
  APT prefers stable-security
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-10-amd64 (SMP w/3 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages cloud-init depends on:
ii  eject                      2.38.1-5+b1
ii  fdisk                      2.38.1-5+b1
ii  gdisk                      1.0.9-2.1
ii  isc-dhcp-client            4.4.3-P1-2
ii  locales                    2.36-9
ii  lsb-release                12.0-1
ii  procps                     2:4.0.2-3
ii  python3                    3.11.2-1+b1
ii  python3-configobj          5.0.8-1
ii  python3-jinja2             3.1.2-1
ii  python3-jsonpatch          1.32-2
ii  python3-jsonschema         4.10.3-1
ii  python3-netifaces          0.11.0-2+b1
ii  python3-oauthlib           3.2.2-1
ii  python3-requests           2.28.1+dfsg-1
ii  python3-serial             3.5-1.1
ii  python3-yaml               6.0-3+b2
ii  sysvinit-utils [lsb-base]  3.06-4
ii  util-linux                 2.38.1-5+b1

Versions of packages cloud-init recommends:
ii  cloud-guest-utils  0.33-1
ii  eatmydata          130-2
ii  sudo               1.9.13p3-1

Versions of packages cloud-init suggests:
ii  btrfs-progs  6.2-1
ii  e2fsprogs    1.47.0-2
ii  xfsprogs     6.1.0-1

-- no debconf information