ovf user-data and character encoding

[dalo]

I'm struggling with the character encoding for user-data.

I try to submit the user-data in a here-string:

$userData = @"

#cloud-config

users:

- name: ubuntu

   groups: docker

"@

then I convert the string and set the ova value:

$ovaConfig.Common.user_data.Value = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($userData))

If I deploy the VM the user-data seems to be in a wrong format, I get a error in cloud-init-output.log :

2020-06-08 12:40:04,628 - util.py[WARNING]: Failed loading yaml blob. Invalid format at line 3 column 1: "while scanning a simple key

  in "<unicode string>", line 3, column 1:

     - name: ubuntu

    ^

could not find expected ':'

  in "<unicode string>", line 4, column 1:

       groups: docker

    ^"

The File "looks" ok:

head /var/lib/cloud/instance/user-data.txt

#cloud-config

users:

- name: ubuntu

   groups: docker

I tried the same with reading the data from a windows text file and this works:

# get external user-data

$userData = Get-Content -Encoding UTF8 -raw .\user-data.txt

# encode and set user-data

$ovaConfig.Common.user_data.Value = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($userData))

But not inline as explained above.

[LucD · Accepted solution]

I suspect you might be hitting the strict syntax rules of YAML.

This Cloud config example show that you will need 2 blanks before the dash.

In my blog post Cloud-Init – Part 2 – Advanced Ubuntu you find another example

PS: I'm not a fan of these strict cloud init yaml rules :smileygrin:

[dalo]

Thank you, that was the issue. I was not aware of the two blanks rule.

You have really a good eye :smileylaugh:

[LucD]

​Believe me, I was hit by this several times when I was doing that cloud init series :smileygrin: