Thank you @Littlecog for filing this bug and improving cloud-init. From the looks of things cloud-init's warning could be a lot more informative than just "device /dev/sdb with label=cidata not a valid seed".
It should have also told you the reason why. I'm guessing from your bug report that you /dev/sdb has a user-data file and no meta-data file and that's why it is being rejected. If this is not the case please feel free to reopen this bug. In the Ubuntu installer how to[1] it recommends that an empty meta-data file is also present on the disk in order to get detected properly. Per cloud-init's NoCloud datasource code[2], it requires both meta-data and user-data files on a disk labelled CIDATA to be valid. vendor-data and network-config files are optional. References: [1]: installer how to for nocloud user-data https://canonical-subiquity.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/howto/autoinstall-quickstart.html#using-another-volume-to-provide-the-autoinstall-configuration [2] https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/blob/25.3/cloudinit/sources/DataSourceNoCloud.py#L101 what I think I a seeing here is ** Changed in: cloud-init (Ubuntu) Status: New => Invalid -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2127511 Title: Cloud-init consumes valid user-data but reports not a valid seed To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cloud-init/+bug/2127511/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
