Use Cloud-Init to Install and Update Software on New Servers
Traducciones al EspañolEstamos traduciendo nuestros guías y tutoriales al Español. Es posible que usted esté viendo una traducción generada automáticamente. Estamos trabajando con traductores profesionales para verificar las traducciones de nuestro sitio web. Este proyecto es un trabajo en curso.
Cloud-init offers a cross-platform, cross-distribution approach to automating server initialization. With Akamai’s Metadata service, you can leverage cloud-init to deploy Compute Instances, employing custom user data scripts to define your desired setup.
In this guide, learn how to manage packages on new servers using cloud-init. Whether you want to upgrade system packages, install packages during initialization, or manage your repositories, this tutorial shows you how.
Before getting started, you should review our guide on how to Use Cloud-Init to Automatically Configure and Secure Your Servers. There, you can see how to create a cloud-config file, which you need to follow along with the present guide. When you are ready to deploy your cloud-config, the guide linked above shows you how.
Upgrade Packages
Cloud-init includes a module for managing package updates and upgrades during initialization. The package_update option, when set to true, applies updates to installed packages and updates the package repositories. This option is generally useful to ensure the server is working from the most up-to-date package references.
- File: cloud-config.yaml
1package_update: true
The package_upgrade option upgrades installed packages to their latest versions. Unless you need specific package versions, running this option during initialization keeps your system more stable and secure.
- File: cloud-config.yaml
1package_upgrade: true
Additionally, cloud-config has an option to ensure that the system reboots for any package upgrades or installations that require it. With this option, you ensure that package upgrades and installations are ready to use immediately after the cloud-init process has finished.
- File: cloud-config.yaml
1 2 3package_update: true package_upgrade: true package_reboot_if_required: true
Install Packages
To install packages with cloud-init, use the packages option in your cloud-config. Provide the option a list of package names, and cloud-init handles installation during the initialization.
Below are examples installing the main components of a LAMP stack, a popular web application setup. Cloud-config requires exact package names, which can vary between distributions, as can the overall prerequisites for a setup. To demonstrate, the examples below show how the setup would look between two different distributions.
Learn more about the LAMP stack, and its package prerequisites, in our guide on How to Install a LAMP Stack. Use the drop down at the top of that guide to see different distributions.
- File: cloud-config.yaml
1 2 3 4 5 6packages: - apache2 - mysql-server - php - libapache2-mod-php - php-mysql
- File: cloud-config.yaml
1 2 3 4 5 6packages: - httpd - mariadb-server - php - php-pear - php-mysqlnd
package_reboot_if_required option covered in the previous section also affects package installations. If set to true, it ensures that the system restarts if any newly installed packages require it.Add Software Repositories
Among the more advanced package manager tools within cloud-init is the ability to add custom repositories during initialization. Cloud-init uses specific modules for managing different package managers, so the steps vary depending on your distribution. What follows covers two of the most popular: APT, most often found on Debian and Ubuntu systems, and Yum/DNF, mostly found on CentOS, Fedora, and other RHEL-based distributions.
Other than these, cloud-init also supports the Zypper package manager, used on openSUSE distributions. You can learn about adding repositories for Zypper in cloud-init’s Zypper Add Repo module reference documentation.
Within cloud-config, the apt option allows for fine-grained management of the APT package manager. You can learn more about the range of features through cloud-init’s APT Configure module reference.
To add third-party repositories to APT, use the sources option within an apt block. The sources option is a dictionary, with one or more repository entries. Each repository entry needs a source string, indicating the repository location, and a set of key-related options, providing the GPG key for the repository.
There are two means of adding the repository, based on how you want to supply the GPG key:
To use a GPG key server, you can supply the key ID and the server location, as in this example.
- File: cloud-config.yaml
1 2 3 4 5 6apt: sources: docker: source: deb [arch="amd64"] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $RELEASE stable keyid: 8D81803C0EBFCD88 keyserver: 'https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg'
In this case, the key ID was obtained from the GPG public key using this set of commands:
wget https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -O docker.gpg.pub.key gpg --list-packets docker.gpg.pub.key | awk '/keyid:/{ print $2 }'The other option is to manually add the GPG key, using the
keyoption, as shown in this example. Replace the example GPG string with a full GPG public key, like the one retrieved with thewgetcommand above.- File: cloud-config.yaml
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15apt: sources: docker: source: deb [arch="amd64"] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $RELEASE stable key: | -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- mQINBFit2ioBEADhWpZ8/wvZ6hUTiXOwQHXMAlaFHcPH9hAtr4F1y2+OYdbtMuth lqqwp028AqyY+PRfVMtSYMbjuQuu5byyKR01BbqYhuS3jtqQmljZ/bJvXqnmiVXh 38UuLa+z077PxyxQhu5BbqntTPQMfiyqEiU+BKbq2WmANUKQf+1AmZY/IruOXbnq ... jCxcpDzNmXpWQHEtHU7649OXHP7UeNST1mCUCH5qdank0V1iejF6/CfTFU4MfcrG YT90qFF93M3v01BbxP+EIY2/9tiIPbrd =0YYh -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
With either method, you can verify the added repository on the new system with a command like this:
sudo apt-cache policyPackage files:
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
release a=now
500 https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu jammy/stable amd64 Packages
release o=Docker,a=jammy,l=Docker CE,c=stable,b=amd64
origin download.docker.com
...Cloud-config uses a dedicated yum_repos option for managing repositories in Yum and DNF. Each repository to be added to the package manager gets an entry beneath the yum_repos option, with an identifier, URL, and other information.
The example here adds the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository, a popular repository for accessing a wider range of packages on RHEL-based systems:
- File: cloud-config.yaml
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8yum_repos: epel-release: name: Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - Release baseurl: http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/8/Everything/$basearch enabled: true failovermethod: priority gpgcheck: true gpgkey: http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-8
The first three options (name, baseurl, and enabled) are specific to cloud-init’s yum_repos. However, yum_repos also supports the use of Yum’s own repository configuration options, which the rest of the options above leverage.
Once initialization has finished, you can verify the added repository using the repolist command for Yum/DNF:
sudo dnf repolistrepo id repo name
...
epel-release Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - Release
...Learn more about the various features the yum_repos option can manage in cloud-init’s Yum Add Repo module reference documentation.
Verify Update and Installation
Cloud-init stores a log at /var/log/cloud-init-output.log with all of the output from cloud-init’s initialization steps. For instance, the example output below shows the portion of the logs for APT installing the apache2 package.
sudo cat /var/log/cloud-init-output.log...
The following additional packages will be installed:
apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils libapache2-mod-php8.1 libapr1
libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libcgi-fast-perl
libcgi-pm-perl libclone-perl libencode-locale-perl libevent-pthreads-2.1-7
libfcgi-bin libfcgi-perl libfcgi0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-template-perl libhttp-date-perl
libhttp-message-perl libio-html-perl liblua5.3-0 liblwp-mediatypes-perl
libmecab2 libprotobuf-lite23 libtimedate-perl liburi-perl mecab-ipadic
mecab-ipadic-utf8 mecab-utils mysql-client-8.0 mysql-client-core-8.0
mysql-common mysql-server-8.0 mysql-server-core-8.0 php-common php8.1
php8.1-cli php8.1-common php8.1-mysql php8.1-opcache php8.1-readline
ssl-cert
Suggested packages:
apache2-doc apache2-suexec-pristine | apache2-suexec-custom www-browser
php-pear libdata-dump-perl libipc-sharedcache-perl libbusiness-isbn-perl
libwww-perl mailx tinyca
The following NEW packages will be installed:
apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils libapache2-mod-php
libapache2-mod-php8.1 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
libaprutil1-ldap libcgi-fast-perl libcgi-pm-perl libclone-perl
libencode-locale-perl libevent-pthreads-2.1-7 libfcgi-bin libfcgi-perl
libfcgi0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-template-perl
libhttp-date-perl libhttp-message-perl libio-html-perl liblua5.3-0
liblwp-mediatypes-perl libmecab2 libprotobuf-lite23 libtimedate-perl
liburi-perl mecab-ipadic mecab-ipadic-utf8 mecab-utils mysql-client-8.0
mysql-client-core-8.0 mysql-common mysql-server mysql-server-8.0
mysql-server-core-8.0 php php-common php-mysql php8.1 php8.1-cli
php8.1-common php8.1-mysql php8.1-opcache php8.1-readline ssl-cert
0 upgraded, 49 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11 not upgraded.
...While the logs’ high level of detail is useful for debugging, it makes verifying upgraded and installed packages somewhat cumbersome. Instead, use commands specific to your system’s package manager to verify package upgrades and installations. Below you can find steps for doing that on Debian/Ubuntu systems (using APT) and RHEL-based systems like CentOS and Fedora (using DNF or Yum).
The APT package manager includes a list command that provides useful functions for reviewing packages. Using the --upgradable option with the command displays a list of packages that have available upgrades.
sudo apt list --upgradableIdeally, the output would be empty, but your system usually has a few packages that do not get upgraded with apt upgrade. Typically, this is due to dependencies. If this is the case, the upgrade command, and the cloud-init logs, should indicate the un-upgraded packages.
- File: /var/log/cloud-init-output.log
1 2 3... 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11 not upgraded. ...
The list command’s --installed option provides a comprehensive list of packages installed with the APT package manager. However, this list can be hard to navigate for verification as it also includes all packages installed as dependencies. To only see the packages that have been installed explicitly, use the --manual-installed option instead.
sudo apt list --manual-installedThe package installation example earlier in this guide only had a few packages, so a short text filter could even further shorten the output. The command below does this by piping to grep. Each \| separates a search term, and each search term identifies one or more of the packages indicated in the cloud-config.
sudo apt list --manual-installed | grep 'apache2\|mysql-server\|php'apache2/jammy-updates,now 2.4.52-1ubuntu4.6 amd64 [installed]
libapache2-mod-php/jammy,now 2:8.1+92ubuntu1 all [installed]
mysql-server/jammy-updates,jammy-security,now 8.0.34-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 all [installed]
php-mysql/jammy,now 2:8.1+92ubuntu1 all [installed]
php/jammy,now 2:8.1+92ubuntu1 all [installed]With the Yum/DNF package manager, the dedicated check-update command shows any packages with available upgrades. After the cloud-init initialization, the output should be empty, indicating that all installed packages are up to date.
dnf, as newer systems most often use the DNF package manager rather than Yum. However, if your system uses Yum instead, the same commands should work, just replace dnf with yum.sudo dnf check-updateTypically, just after initialization, the most straightforward way to verify installed packages is through the history command. The output shows recent commands run by the package manager, including updates and installations.
sudo dnf historyID | Command line | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 | -y install httpd mariadb-server php php-pear php-mysqlnd | 2023-08-09 12:12 | Install | 76
1 | -y upgrade | 2023-08-09 12:11 | I, U | 132With Yum/DNF, you can also more specifically check on installed packages with the list installed command. Below is an example that also pipes the results to a grep text search, allowing you to narrow the output to just matching package names. Here, each search term is separated by \|. This may be useful when you only want to verify a limited range of installed packages.
sudo dnf list installed | grep 'httpd\|mariadb-server\|php'httpd.x86_64 2.4.37-62.module_el8+657+88b2113f @appstream
httpd-filesystem.noarch 2.4.37-62.module_el8+657+88b2113f @appstream
httpd-tools.x86_64 2.4.37-62.module_el8+657+88b2113f @appstream
mariadb-server.x86_64 3:10.3.28-1.module_el8.3.0+757+d382997d @appstream
mariadb-server-utils.x86_64 3:10.3.28-1.module_el8.3.0+757+d382997d @appstream
php.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-cli.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-common.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-fpm.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-mysqlnd.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-pdo.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-pear.noarch 1:1.10.5-9.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-process.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstream
php-xml.x86_64 7.2.24-1.module_el8.2.0+313+b04d0a66 @appstreamMore Information
You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.
This page was originally published on