TINY-CLOUD.CONF(5)

📦 version 3.4.1, in alpine 3.24

🦋 tiny-cloud.conf(5) — the config file, bestie edition 🦋

okay so this is the tiny-cloud.conf manual page, section 5 of the File Formats Manual, and honestly? it's giving "tiny file, huge main character energy." let's get into it 💅

✨ NAME ✨

tiny-cloud.conf — the configuration file for tiny-cloud 🎀

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

tiny-cloud.conf is literally the config file for tiny-cloud(8). here's the tea: the file gets sourced by the tiny-cloud shell code during startup, so it's not some fancy custom format — it's just shell-style variable assignments. periodt. 🐚

the default system configuration file is /etc/tiny-cloud.conf. remember that path, bestie, you'll need it 🌸

📝 FORMAT 📝

the file is made of shell variable assignments that look like this:

NAME=value

blank lines and shell comments? ignored. not invited to the party. bye 🙈

👑 VARIABLES 👑

this is the part you actually came for, so buckle up 🫶

  • CLOUD=<provider> — picks your cloud provider. default is auto, which turns on provider autodetection (she'll figure it out herself, she's smart like that ✨). supported values rn include aws, azure, digitalocean, gcp, hetzner, incus, nocloud, oci, openstack, and scaleway 🌈
  • CLOUD_USER=<user> — the default user account for instance SSH keys and default-user setup. default is alpine. iconic name choice ngl 🏔️
  • TINY_CLOUD_INIT_SYSTEM=<init_system> — which init system gets used for service management. supported values are auto, openrc, and systemd. default is auto, which sniffs out the running init system for you 👃✨
  • IMDS_API_VERSION=<version> — the provider's API version to use. providers that have versioned APIs come with built-in default values already, so you don't gotta worry 💅
  • IMDS_ENDPOINT=<address[:port]> — the provider endpoint IP address or hostname to use. defaults to 169.254.169.254 for many providers 🫡
  • IMDS_ENDPOINTS=<endpoint> ... — a whitespace-separated list of provider endpoints. defaults to IMDS_ENDPOINT. endpoints are tried in order, and the most recently working endpoint gets tried first on later queries (she remembers what worked, queen behavior 👑). IPv6 endpoints must use brackets, for example [fd00:ec2::254] or [fd00:ec2::254]:80 ⚠️
  • IMDS_ENDPOINT_WAIT_ATTEMPTS=<number> — how many times to check for routes to any IMDS endpoint before just trying metadata requests anyway. default is 10 🔁
  • IMDS_TOKEN_TTL=<seconds> — metadata token lifetime in seconds for AWS metadata access. only the AWS provider uses this one. default is 5 ⏳
  • AZURE_WIRESERVER=<address> — the Azure WireServer address used to report provisioning readiness. only the Azure provider uses this. default is 168.63.129.16 ☁️
  • AZURE_READY_ATTEMPTS=<number> — how many attempts to make when reporting provisioning readiness to Azure. default is 5 🎯
  • AZURE_READY_RETRY_DELAY=<seconds> — the delay between Azure provisioning-readiness attempts. default is 5 ⏱️
  • TINY_CLOUD_DHCP_TIMEOUT=<seconds> — max number of seconds to wait for temporary bootstrap DHCP. default is 10 📡
  • TINY_CLOUD_DHCP_CLIENT=<auto|dhcpcd|udhcpc> — which DHCP client to use for temporary bootstrap networking and generated network configuration. default auto uses dhcpcd when it's available and otherwise falls back to udhcpc. heads up: selecting dhcpcd requires it to be installed, and selecting udhcpc disables use of dhcpcd entirely 🫶
  • PRESERVE_NETWORK_INTERFACES=<0|1> — when set to 1 and /etc/network/interfaces already exists, keep that file instead of replacing it with datasource-provided network configuration. if the file doesn't exist, normal datasource and fallback processing carries on like nothing happened 💫 default is 0. this currently affects NoCloud, aka the provider that supports datasource-provided network configuration 👀
  • TINY_CLOUD_VAR=<path> — the state directory tiny-cloud uses. default is /var/lib/cloud 📁
  • TINY_CLOUD_LOGS=<path> — the log directory tiny-cloud uses. default is /var/log 🪵
  • TINY_CLOUD_LV_ALLOCATE=<percentage> — how much space to allocate when expanding the "/" LVM logical volume, as a percentage. default is 85 percent of the volume group's space 💾
  • SKIP_INIT_ACTIONS=<action> ... — whitespace-separated list of init actions to skip during phase execution. common action names include expand_root, set_hostname, set_ssh_keys, save_userdata, and run_userdata 🙅‍♀️
  • NONFATAL_INIT_ACTIONS=<action> ... — whitespace-separated list of init actions whose failure gets logged without stopping the phase. default is set_ephemeral_network save_userdata 🩹

🌟 EXAMPLES 🌟

force the AWS provider:

CLOUD=aws

use a different default login account:

CLOUD_USER=ec2-user

force systemd service management:

TINY_CLOUD_INIT_SYSTEM=systemd

preserve image-provided network interfaces:

PRESERVE_NETWORK_INTERFACES=1

skip hostname and SSH key setup:

SKIP_INIT_ACTIONS="set_hostname set_ssh_keys"

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

tiny-cloud(8), imds(1) — go read those too, they're literally so good 🧚

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's from the File Formats Manual, dated 2026-08-24 — tape it to your mirror and go configure something iconic 💜✨

📦 where this page comes from