Install debian without default user via cloudinit

Cloudinit provides means to initialize a VM instance after it has been provisioned by an image. Many images create a default user but you can skip this step.

The snippet allows you to only create a root user with a predefined ssh key. It has only been tested with Debian but should work as well for other distributions.

#cloud-config
timezone: Europe/Berlin
disable_root: false
users: []
autoinstall:
  ssh:
    allow-pw: false
    authorized-keys:
      - "ssh-ed25519 YOURKEY"
    install-server: true