Comment 2 for bug 606373

I modified /boot/grub/menu.lst with the following stanzas to boot with and without a ramdisk with the same kernel cmdline.

| title Ubuntu maverick (development branch), kernel 2.6.32-305-ec2
| root (hd0)
| kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-305-ec2 root=/dev/sda1 ro smnord
| savedefault 0
|
| title Ubuntu maverick (development branch), kernel 2.6.32-305-ec2
| root (hd0)
| kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-305-ec2 root=/dev/sda1 ro smrd
| initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-305-ec2
| savedefault 0

the 'smnord' or 'smrd' is just so i would definitively know that I had booted this stanza by looking at /proc/cmdline.

The result is that cloud-init output does get to the console with smnord and *does* get there with 'smrd'.

So, definitely, the use of ramdisk is stopping output from cloud-init from getting to the console.