## Install a necessary packages $ sudo apt-get install kvm cloud-utils genisoimage ## URL to most recent cloud image of 12.04 $ img_url="http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/server/releases/12.04/release" $ img_url="${img_url}/ubuntu-12.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img" ## download the image $ wget $img_url -O disk.img.dist ## Create a file with some user-data in it $ cat > my-user-data <