Using Cloud-init with NoCloud Compatible Images

SmartOS release 20260306T044811Z introduced support for cloud-init's NoCloud datasource for bhyve guests.

To use this feature, a guest must be provisioned from an image tagged with org.smartos:cloudinit_datasource=nocloud.

Behavior

When an instance is created, SmartOS uses instance metadata to build a 16 MiB FAT disk containing these files:

user-data: populated from customer_metadata['cloud-init:user-data']
meta-data: contains the instance UUID and hostname; if no hostname is set, SmartOS falls back to the alias, then the UUID
vendor-data: reserved for SmartOS or Triton-supplied defaults that users may override with customer_metadata['cloud-init:vendor-data']
network-config: generated automatically from the instance's nics and resolvers metadata

On instance startup, SmartOS rebuilds this filesystem if the source metadata has changed, for example after adding a NIC or changing the hostname.

Instances created from NoCloud-compatible images do not include the mdata tools by default; install them separately if needed.

Examples of SmartOS payloads and image build scripts are available in the triton-nocloud-images repository.