NetworkManager activator failed to apply DataSourceNoCloudNet network configuration

[xiachen-rh]

Bug report

I tested “(NoCloudNet): Add network-config support” (24.3+) with a RHEL KVM instance and found that when network-config contains static IP, cloud-init created configuration file but it was ineffective.
The root cause is the command ['systemctl', 'reload-or-try-restart', 'NetworkManager.service'] does not apply the changes to an active connection.

We may need the solution that Ani mentioned before, see this comment
#5512 (comment)

I also have another question about "“Applying network configuration from fallback” in " "init-local" stage, which created the DHCP network configuration, is it expected or not?

Steps to reproduce the problem

Prepare network data in http server and then launch a KVM instance
For example, using rhel9 guest image which contains cloud-init 24.4 to create a KVM instance,

• local network define

br1.xml

<network>
<name>br1</name>
<bridge name='virbr1'/>
<forward/>
<ip address='10.0.2.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
<dhcp>
<range start='10.0.2.2' end='10.0.2.254'/>
</dhcp>
</ip>
</network>

virsh net-define br1.xml
virsh net-start br1

• prepare network data as below and start http server “python3 -m http.server 8000 &”

network-config
#cloud-config
network:
config:
- name: eth0
subnets:
- address: 10.0.2.2/24
gateway: 10.0.2.1
type: static
type: physical
- type: nameserver
interface: eth0
address:
- 8.8.8.8
- 4.4.4.4
search:
- example.com
version: 1

• launch an KVM instance by virt-install command

sudo virt-install --name ${DOMAIN_NAME} --disk /var/lib/libvirt/images/${RHEL_CLOUD_IMAGE},device=disk,bus=virtio,format=qcow2 --os-variant rhel-unknown --network bridge=virbr1,model=virtio --graphics none --sysinfo system.serial="ds=nocloud;s=http://10.0.2.1:8000/" --import

• virsh console login and got that IP is DHCP configured, the static IP configured in ifcfg-eth0 but it did not take effect

2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 52:54:00:f5:77:1c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
altname enp1s0
inet 10.0.2.182/24 brd 10.0.2.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute eth0
valid_lft 2806sec preferred_lft 2806sec
inet6 fe80::5054:ff:fef5:771c/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
 
$ nmcli -f NAME,FILENAME c show
NAME FILENAME
System eth0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
lo /run/NetworkManager/system-connections/lo.nmconnection
 
 
$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
# Created by cloud-init automatically, do not edit.
#
AUTOCONNECT_PRIORITY=120
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
DEVICE=eth0
GATEWAY=10.0.2.1
IPADDR=10.0.2.2
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
USERCTL=no

Environment details

• Cloud-init version: cloud-int 24.4
• Operating System Distribution: rhel9
• Cloud provider, platform or installer type:KVM

cloud-init logs

cloud-init_rhel9.log

[xiachen-rh]

RHEL internal ticket https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-81703