How to disable cloud-init in Ubuntu

README.md

How to disable cloud-init in Ubuntu

Prevent start

• Create an empty file to prevent the service from starting

    sudo touch /etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled
  

Uninstall

• Disable all services (uncheck everything except "None"):

    sudo dpkg-reconfigure cloud-init
  

• Uninstall the package and delete the folders

    sudo dpkg-reconfigure cloud-init
    sudo apt-get purge cloud-init
    sudo rm -rf /etc/cloud/ && sudo rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/
  

• Restart the computer

    sudo reboot
  

Sources

• https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/boot.html#generator
• https://www.blackmoreops.com/2019/04/19/remove-cloud-init-from-ubuntu/

Heads-up for anyone on a recent release (Debian 13, Ubuntu 24.10+ including 26.04 LTS): two things have changed since the original instructions.

1. Ubuntu split the package. Since 24.10, cloud-init is just a thin metapackage that depends on cloud-init-base, which now holds the actual implementation. This means sudo apt-get purge cloud-init removes only the metapackage and leaves cloud-init installed and running. On these releases you have to purge cloud-init-base too (or detect whichever is present). Debian 13 and Ubuntu 24.04 still ship a single cloud-init package.
2. The netplan.io issue is better fixed by marking it manual. On Ubuntu, cloud-init (via cloud-init-base) depends on netplan.io. A temporary apt-mark hold only protects it during the purge; once you unhold it, netplan.io is left orphaned and the next apt autoremove removes it and breaks networking. Running sudo apt-mark manual netplan.io before purging fixes this for good.

I have updated my script (disable-cloud-init) to handle both cases: it detects and purges cloud-init/cloud-init-base, marks netplan.io as manual, and runs fully non-interactively.

And as others already noted, if you only want to disable cloud-init without removing it, the officially recommended method is still just sudo touch /etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled.