Question

Why "cloud-init" is kept back in a new droplet with Ubuntu 16.04 while doing an "apt upgrade"?

I have checked with “apt-mark hold cloud-init” and got the following mesage: “cloud-init was already set on hold.”

Is it safe to unhold it and upgrade it?


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Accepted Answer

Thank you for the answers.

There is another method to update it, wich is:

apt-mark unhold cloud-init

in the first place to unhold the holded package, and then

apt upgrade

My questions are:

  1. Why it was put on hold?
  2. Is it there a compatibility issue with DO so is kept on hold as they need this package for the control panels?

I would not recomend apt dist-upgrade as it involves updating other staff from vesion to version.

Straight from DO support: “We pin cloud-init to a specified version in order to prevent upgrades from affecting the configuration options within your Droplet. While upgrades to cloud-init should not affect your Droplet, there have been certain situations where changes to the system had been performed due to cloud-init upgrades.”

Based on that, I would say that it “should” be safe to unpin and upgrade it, but why take the chance?

I had the same problem and it seems like a strange situation to me. Anyway, I fixed this by installing the cloud-init package: sudo apt install cloud-init.

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