The data source 'NoCloud' and 'NoCloudNet' allow the user to provide user-data and meta-data to the instance without running a network service (or even without having a network at all) You can provide meta-data and user-data to a local vm boot via files on a vfat or iso9660 filesystem. These user-data and meta-data files are expected to be in the format described in doc/example/seed/README . Basically, user-data is simply user-data and meta-data is a yaml formated file representing what you'd find in the EC2 metadata service. Given a disk 12.04 cloud image in 'disk.img', you can create a sufficient disk by following the example below. ## create user-data and meta-data files that will be used ## to modify image on first boot $ { echo instance-id: iid-local01; echo local-hostname: cloudimg; } > meta-data $ printf "#cloud-config\npassword: passw0rd\nchpasswd: { expire: False }\nssh_pwauth: True\n" > user-data ## create a disk to attach with some user-data and meta-data $ genisoimage -output seed.iso -volid cidata -joliet -rock user-data meta-data ## alternatively, create a vfat filesystem with same files ## $ truncate --size 2M seed.img ## $ mkfs.vfat -n cidata seed.img ## $ mcopy -oi seed.img user-data meta-data :: ## create a new qcow image to boot, backed by your original image $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b disk.img boot-disk.img ## boot the image and login as 'ubuntu' with password 'passw0rd' ## note, passw0rd was set as password through the user-data above, ## there is no password set on these images. $ kvm -m 256 \ -net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \ -drive file=boot-disk.img,if=virtio \ -drive file=seed.iso,if=virtio Note, that the instance-id provided ('iid-local01' above) is what is used to determine if this is "first boot". So if you are making updates to user-data you will also have to change that, or start the disk fresh. Also, you can inject an /etc/network/interfaces file by providing the content for that file in the 'network-interfaces' field of metadata. Example metadata: instance-id: iid-abcdefg network-interfaces: | iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.10 network 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 gateway 192.168.1.254 hostname: myhost