[improvement] no easy way to add packages required by apt before apt stage

This bug was originally filed in Launchpad as [LP: #1813399](https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-init/+bug/1813399)

Launchpad details

affected_projects = []

assignee = None

assignee_name = None

date_closed = None

date_created = 2019-01-26T14:01:45.960398+00:00

date_fix_committed = None

date_fix_released = None

id = 1813399

importance = undecided

is_complete = False

lp_url = https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-init/+bug/1813399

milestone = None

owner = till.riedel

owner_name = Till Riedel

private = False

status = confirmed

submitter = till.riedel

submitter_name = Till Riedel

tags = ['debian']

duplicates = []

_Launchpad user **Till Riedel(till.riedel)** wrote on 2019-01-26T14:01:45.960398+00:00_

I am running cloud-init on a libvirt/virsh with this image: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/openstack/archive/9.6.5-20190122/debian-9.6.5-20190122-openstack-amd64.qcow2

This is not really a bug, because I believe it is rather a packaging problem of many distros. So please close this asap if you do not feel responsible ;)

This is why I also posted this problem on the debian-cloud mailing list, but maybe this can be fixed also in cloud-init.

If apt-transport-https or dirmngr are not installed (they are no dependencies of cloud-init).

apt:
sources:
docker:
source: 'deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian stretch stable'
keyserver: keyserver.ubuntu.com
keyid: 0EBFCD88

you will run into problems like:

[ 14.011339] cloud-init[469]: E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found.
[ 14.013524] cloud-init[469]: Cloud-init v. 0.7.9 running 'modules:config' at Wed, 23 Jan 2019 16:28:06 +0000. Up 10.01 seconds.
[ 14.016921] cloud-init[469]: 2019-01-23 16:28:10,921 - util.py[WARNING]: Running module apt-configure () failed

and

[ 14.460293] cloud-init[448]: Command: ['gpg', '--keyserver', 'keyserver.ubuntu.com', '--recv', '0EBFCD88']
[ 14.463206] cloud-init[448]: Stderr: gpg: failed to start the dirmngr '/usr/bin/dirmngr': No such file or directory

Unfortunatedly I could not find a way to call anything to add those packages before apt is run so that I had to patch the images.

One solution would be to allow multistage apt install in one way or the other (I know it adds complexity), so that one could install the relevant packages before the package list is modified and updated. Actually checking if a line contains https or a keyid and installing the appropriate dependencies could also work.

Probably it would be much easier to fix the package dependency on cloud-init itself for the relevant distros. The downside of this is that it adds a bunch of packages as further dependencies, so I guess distros are not really willing to do that...

Thanks in advance,

Till

PS: I can live with having written some scripts patching the images after download...