python gunk

gistfile1.py

cptuser@cptadotfvm000000:/tmp$ sudo cloud-init query userdata
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/cloud-init", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('cloud-init==19.4', 'console_scripts', 'cloud-init')()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/cmd/main.py", line 893, in main
    get_uptime=True, func=functor, args=(name, args))
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/util.py", line 2558, in log_time
    ret = func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/cmd/query.py", line 124, in handle_args
    instance_data['userdata'] = util.load_file(user_data_fn)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/util.py", line 1372, in load_file
    return decode_binary(contents)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/cloudinit/util.py", line 146, in decode_binary
    return blob.decode(encoding)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x8b in position 1: invalid start byte