Importing virtual disk on GCE

Question

I have transformed a VMDK disk of a Ubuntu 16.04 host into a raw image using qemu-img convert. Everything seems fine, I can mount it and check its contents. I uploaded it to a GCS bucket, following the instructions.

However, it doesn't seem to boot, so I'm following these official instructions to make that image bootable.

The conversion job always fails with this message:

[import-from-image.translate-disk.translate-disk.wait-for-translator]: 2018-10-08T12:42:49Z WaitForInstancesSignal: Instance "inst-translator-import-from-image-translate-disk-transla-95yyp": watching serial port 1, SuccessMatch: "TranslateSuccess:", FailureMatch: "TranslateFailed:".
[import-from-image]: 2018-10-08T12:45:19Z Error running workflow: step "translate-disk" run error: step "translate-disk" run error: step "wait-for-translator" run error: WaitForInstancesSignal FailureMatch found for "inst-translator-import-from-image-translate-disk-transla-95yyp": "TranslateFailed: error: sh: E: Package 'cloud-init' has no installation candidate"
[import-from-image]: 2018-10-08T12:45:19Z Workflow "import-from-image" cleaning up (this may take up to 2 minutes).
[Daisy] Errors in one or more workflows:
import-from-image: step "translate-disk" run error: step "translate-disk" run error: step "wait-for-translator" run error: WaitForInstancesSignal FailureMatch found for "inst-translator-import-from-image-translate-disk-transla-95yyp": "TranslateFailed: error: sh: E: Package 'cloud-init' has no installation candidate"

Has anyone seen this Package 'cloud-init' has no installation candidate error?

Answer 1

install cloud-init before trying to convert - then it won't need installation candidates.

this means, boot the vmdk and then run sudo apt-get cloud-init.