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Is adding an external repo via user-data/cloud-init on Ubuntu 24 droplet creation supported?

Posted on September 21, 2024

I’m trying to add a repo source to my cloud init with the following:

apt:
  preserve_sources_list: true
  sources:
    grafana.list:
      source: "deb https://apt.grafana.com stable main"
      key: "https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key"

It doesn’t seem to have an effect. Does anyone know if DO support this type of configuration in cloud-init?

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Bobby

February 19, 2025

Hi there,

I think that DigitalOcean should support cloud-init with Droplet creation, and adding external repositories should work.

I think that you need to make sure your cloud-init script includes an apt_update step after adding the source, eg:

apt:
  preserve_sources_list: true
  sources:
    grafana:
      source: "deb https://apt.grafana.com stable main"
      key: "https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key"

package_update: true
packages:
  - grafana

This uses package_update: true to make sure apt is updated after adding the source.

If it still doesn’t work, you can add a runcmd section as a fallback:

runcmd:
  - wget -q -O - https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key | apt-key add -
  - echo "deb https://apt.grafana.com stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list
  - apt-get update
  - apt-get install -y grafana

- Bobby

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