Ubuntu
cloud-init package

user_add silently ignores numeric uid

Bug #1875772 reported by eric gundrum on 2020-04-29

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	cloud-init (Ubuntu)	Fix Released	High	Unassigned

Bug Description

Given content of 'user-data' such as
```
users:
  - default
  - name: eric
    uid: 1742
  - name: archivist
    uid: '1724'
```
the created account as listed in '/etc/passwd' are
```
eric:x:1000:1000::/home/eric:/bin/bash
archivist:x:1724:1724::/home/archivist:/bin/bash
ubuntu:x:1725:1725:Ubuntu:/home/ubuntu:/bin/bash
```

Notice that account 'eric' has `uid=1000` even though the 'user-data' config specifies `uid: 1742`. No error, warning or other obvious message appears in 'cloud-init.log'.

The relevant source code appears to begin around [line 458 of cloudinit/distros/__init__.py](https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/blob/7276aa5240b8cb84671a56d795d811f15dfba8e2/cloudinit/distros/__init__.py#L458): `if key in useradd_opts and val and isinstance(val, str)`.

The ubuntu image where this occurs is `ubuntu-20.04-preinstalled-server-arm64+raspi.img.xz`; although I expect it exists everywhere cloud-init version 20.1 is used.

A moderately helpful fix is to add error reporting to the conditional when `isinstance(val, str)` fails. A more user-friendly fix is to simply convert `val` to a string.

Revision history for this message

eric gundrum (ericgundrum) wrote on 2020-04-29:

apport.cloud-init.vtu1o72j.apport Edit (89.9 KiB, text/plain)

Revision history for this message

Ryan Harper (raharper) wrote on 2020-04-29:

Thanks for filing the bug.

Changed in cloud-init (Ubuntu):
importance:	Undecided → High
status:	New → Triaged

Revision history for this message

Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote on 2022-02-26:

This bug was fixed in the package cloud-init - 22.1-14-g2e17a0d6-0ubuntu1~22.04.1

---------------
cloud-init (22.1-14-g2e17a0d6-0ubuntu1~22.04.1) jammy; urgency=medium

  * debian/apport-launcher.py: Fix string and whitespace formatting
  * New upstream snapshot.
    - check for existing symlink while force creating symlink (#1281)
      [Shreenidhi Shedi]
    - Do not silently ignore integer uid (#1280) (LP: #1875772)
    - tests: create a IPv4/IPv6 VPC in Ec2 integration tests (#1291)
    - Integration test fix ppa (#1296)
    - tests: on official EC2. cloud-id actually startswith aws not ec2 (#1289)
    - test_ppa_source: accept both http and https URLs (#1292)
      [Paride Legovini]
    - Fix apt test on azure
    - add "lkundrak" as contributor [Lubomir Rintel]
    - Holmanb/integration test fix ppa (#1287)
    - Include missing subcommand in manpage (#1279)
    - Clean up artifacts from pytest, packaging, release with make clean
      (#1277)
    - sources/azure: ensure retries on IMDS request failure (#1271)
      [Chris Patterson]
    - sources/azure: removed unused saveable PPS paths (#1268)
      [Chris Patterson]