Thanks for the help.
This has been added in the new config file:
# This preverts apt/sources.list to be updated at boot time, which
# may be annoying.
apt_preserve_sources_list: true
And this has been added to the original file:
mount_default_fields: [~, ~, 'auto', 'defaults,nofail', '0', '2']
manage_etc_hosts: true
I went with the original file 