Comment 3 for bug 2003121

Resetting machine-id at runtime would be a pretty big break from current expectations, and correct implementation would require foreknowledge of services using machine-id that are provided in an image. The potential for bugs due to implementation complexity, potential for boot speed regression caused by services delaying until after machine-id is reset, and expected future burden of such a feature due to changes in services and variation in Ubuntu and other distros makes the perceived risk of this feature outweigh the benefit. These complexity, risk, and potential boot speed issues are not present when machine-id is correctly set at boot time, so I'm hesitant to move forward with this request.

I'll mark this "Won't Fix" for now.

In the meantime, I'd like to point users experiencing the same issue towards our build recommendation[1], specifically the --machine-id option.

[1] https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/cli.html#clean