Specify post-installation script when creating an instance in OpenStack [python-novaclient]

Question

I have a working python program which is able to create instances on OpenStack thanks to the python-novaclient library.

Now I'd like to give a post-installation script at the creation time. I looked at the documentation of the Servers .create() method but it doesn't seem to be implemented.

Did anyone faced this problem?

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EDIT

In Horizon, when we create an instance, there is this information next to the textarea for the post-installation script:

The "Customisation Script" field is analogous to "User Data" in other systems.

Does it mean userdata is the parameter I need?

userdata – user data to pass to be exposed by the metadata server this can be a file type object as well or a string.

Answer 1

Indeed the solution is on userdata

Here's the Python code I wrote to solve my problem:

## Return the new created instance
# @param name Name of the instance to create in a String format
# @param image OpenStack image to deploy on the virtual machine
# @param flavor OpenStack flavor to use for the virtual machine
# @param keypair Name of the keypair to copy on the instance
# @param sec_groups List of security groups to link to the instance
def create_instance(self,name,image,flavor,keypair=None,sec_groups=None):
  instance = self.client.servers.create(
    name=name,
    image=image,
    flavor=flavor,
    key_name=keypair,
    security_groups=sec_groups,
    userdata="#!/bin/bash \n echo 'AMAZING TEST' > /root/test"
  )
  return instance

Answer 2

Try enabling config drive. The user data can be sent to VM via config drive.