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+=== Overview ===
+Vendordata is data provided by the entity that launches an instance.
+The cloud provider makes this data available to the instance via in one
+way or another.
+
+Vendordata follows the same rules as user-data, with the following
+caveauts:
+    1. Users have ultimate control over vendordata
+    2. By default it only runs on first boot
+    3. Vendordata runs at the users pleasure. If the use of
+        vendordata is required for the instance to run, then
+        vendordata should not be used.
+    4. Most vendor operations should be done either via script,
+        boot_hook or upstart job.
+
+Vendors utilizing the vendordata channel are strongly advised to
+use the #cloud-config-jsonp method, otherwise they risk that a
+user can accidently override choices.
+
+Further, we strongly advise vendors to not 'be evil'. By evil, we
+mean any action that could compromise a system. Since users trust
+you, please take care to make sure that any vendordata is safe,
+atomic, indopenant and does not put your users at risk.
+
+cloud-init can read this input and act on it in different ways.
+
+=== Input Formats ===
+cloud-init will download and cache to filesystem any vendor-data that it
+finds.  However, certain types of vendor-data are handled specially.
+
+ * Gzip Compressed Content
+   content found to be gzip compressed will be uncompressed, and
+   these rules applied to the uncompressed data
+
+ * Mime Multi Part archive
+   This list of rules is applied to each part of this multi-part file
+   Using a mime-multi part file, the user can specify more than one
+   type of data.  For example, both a user data script and a
+   cloud-config type could be specified.
+
+ * vendor-data Script
+   begins with: #!            or Content-Type: text/x-shellscript
+   script will be executed at "rc.local-like" level during first boot.
+   rc.local-like means "very late in the boot sequence"
+
+ * Include File
+   begins with  #include      or Content-Type: text/x-include-url
+   This content is a "include" file.  The file contains a list of
+   urls, one per line.  Each of the URLs will be read, and their content
+   will be passed through this same set of rules.  Ie, the content
+   read from the URL can be gzipped, mime-multi-part, or plain text
+
+* Include File Once
+   begins with  #include-once      or Content-Type: text/x-include-once-url
+   This content is a "include" file.  The file contains a list of
+   urls, one per line.  Each of the URLs will be read, and their content
+   will be passed through this same set of rules.  Ie, the content
+   read from the URL can be gzipped, mime-multi-part, or plain text
+   This file will just be downloaded only once per instance, and its
+   contents cached for subsequent boots.  This allows you to pass in
+   one-time-use or expiring URLs.
+
+ * Cloud Config Data
+   begins with  #cloud-config or Content-Type: text/cloud-config
+
+   This content is "cloud-config" data.  See the examples for a
+   commented example of supported config formats.
+
+ * Upstart Job
+   begins with  #upstart-job  or Content-Type: text/upstart-job
+
+   Content is placed into a file in /etc/init, and will be consumed
+   by upstart as any other upstart job.
+
+ * Cloud Boothook
+   begins with #cloud-boothook or Content-Type: text/cloud-boothook
+
+   This content is "boothook" data.  It is stored in a file under
+   /var/lib/cloud and then executed immediately.
+
+   This is the earliest "hook" available.  Note, that there is no
+   mechanism provided for running only once.  The boothook must take
+   care of this itself.  It is provided with the instance id in the
+   environment variable "INSTANCE_ID".  This could be made use of to
+   provide a 'once-per-instance'
+
+=== Examples ===
+There are examples in the examples subdirectory.
+Additionally, the 'tools' directory contains 'write-mime-multipart',
+which can be used to easily generate mime-multi-part files from a list
+of input files.  That data can then be given to an instance.
+
+See 'write-mime-multipart --help' for usage.