Proxmox seems to use outdated cloud-init Module

[nicolaeser]

Hi,


I wasn’t sure where to report this issue, so I’m writing here.


I’m using Cloud-Init with a Debian VM, and on each startup I see the following console message:
[ 23.822737] cloud-init[458]: 2025-07-31 15:54:32,614 - ug_util.py[WARNING]: DEPRECATED: 'user' of type string is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use 'users' list instead.

After some research, I found that there are files in /var/lib/cloud containing the user configuration. As far as I know, Proxmox generates these files. My Cloud-Init configuration doesn’t contain any user entries elsewhere.


It seems that Proxmox might still be using the old user format instead of the users list — or am I mistaken? If this is the case, where should I report it?


Best regards,
Nico Laeser

 

[crowbarz]

I am seeing this deprecation warning as well, and noticed that the deprecated `user` configuration is present in the output of qm cloudinit dump <vmid> user. The Proxmox Cloud-Init Support documentation indicates that this command can be used to obtain the cloud-init config that is automatically generated by Proxmox to be used as a base for custom cloud-init config.

On the Debian 13 cloud image (which includes cloud-init 25.1.4) the error message says that this deprecated key will be removed in cloud-init 27.2. Hopefully this config will be updated by 2027!

I am still running Proxmox 8.4.2, but I didn't see anything cloud-init related in the Proxmox 9.0 release notes.

 

[rachelf42]

i am also seeing the same in pve 9.1.6 (also deb trixie and c-i 25.1.4 like crowbarz)

 

[LnxBil]

The package cloud-init is part of Debian. This version normally fixed for each Debian release, so with the advent of Debian 14 Forky and upcoming PVE 10 the current version available right now is 25.3, so not that much newer. That may for Debian still be no problem, but other guest OSes may run into this.

The correct place to report bugs and feature requests is https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/. There is already a bug report for this here.