Geco-cloudbase-init

This is an implementation of Cloudbase-Init to Windows virtual machines running in a Proxmox Node in order to use cloud-init with those vms.

What can you do with this implementation? Use Cloudbase-Init with Windows VMs to:

• Create a new user with username or enable administrator.
• Set a password on the new user or administrator.
• Set static ip or dhcp on network adapters.
• Set machine hostname.
• Insert public ssh keys to "user/.ssh/authorized_keys" file of created/enabled user.
• Expand partition volumes automatically when there's a resized disk.

You can do all below on system startup with the data provided by the cloud-init section of the proxmox gui.

There is two files that we need to modify Qemu.pm and Cloudinit.pm.

• Qemu.pm to get password as cleartext in meta_data drive when it is a Windows VM.
• Cloudinit.pm to generate a metadata json file with variables that are compatible with Cloudbase-Init.

Install Proxmox patch

We have provided patch file for two different versions, if you are on those versions you can simply download it and apply the patch by doing;

# Check the version of your qemu-server
apt show qemu-server |grep "Version"

# If your version is 6.4-2 or 7.1-4 download the corresponding patch from this repo and continue, if not continue manual patching below.

# Launch below as a test to see if you can apply the patch file, change path to where you downloaded the files and run this for two .patch files.
patch --force --forward --backup -p0 --directory / --input "/absolute/path/to/patchfile.pm.patch" --dry-run && echo "You can apply patch" || { echo "Can't apply patch!";}

# If the result is "Can't apply patch!", you can type "apt reinstall qemu-server" to reinstall the qemu-server files(If you have made changes to qemu-server source files they will be lost!)

# Apply the patch if the result is "You can apply patch"
patch --force --forward --backup -p0 --directory / --input "/absolute/path/to/patchfile.pm.patch"

If you want to revert the patch: patch --force --reverse --backup -p0 --directory / --input "/absolute/path/to/patchfile.pm.patch"

If you want to apply the patch manually you can follow these steps: Manual Patching

Windows VM Configuration

• Create a Windows VM in proxmox
• Go to Hardware section of your VM, add Cloud-Init Drive and Serial Port 0

Then configure Windows to your needs and proceed to Cloudbase-Init installation.

Install Cloudbase-Init

Install Cloudbase-Init Continous Build from the official website.

Why Continous Build? Because the stable build dates from 2020 and doesn't include functionalities we use.

Cloudbase-Init LocalScripts

We have two scripts that do some fonctionality that Cloudbase-Init doesnt have;

• Enabling administrator user when it's name is given to the Cloudbase-Init.
• Enabling DHCP on the network adapters.

Move those scripts into Cloudbase Solutions\Cloudbase-Init\LocalScripts\ in your program files of your Windows VM.

Configure Cloudbase-Init

Deploy these two conf files to C:\Program Files\Cloudbase Solutions\Cloudbase-Init\conf.

Inside those two files modify the groups=Administrators to the Windows group that you want your created user to be in.

Run PowerShell Script

This powershell script has a few uses.

• Deletes the "cloudbase-init" user, delegates "cloudbase-init" service to local Systeme user and modifies execution path of the script also to use local system user.
• Installs OpenSSH-Server from optional features of Windows.
• Removes a store language package that causes an error when generelazing for sysprep.

Run this script after installing and configuring Cloudbase-Init Continous Build.

Run SysPrep

When everything is installed simply run below in powershell to launch sysprep:

cd ‘C:\Program Files\Cloudbase Solutions\Cloudbase-Init\conf’
C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /unattend:Unattend.xml