virt-install missing parameters

Hello, Hopefully this is the right place to send a question like this... I'm attempting to automate creation of VMs using virt-install and a cloud-init disk image. To get this to work, I need to specify the location of the cloud-init configs by passing smbios key/value pairs. Normally, -smbios is provided to qemu to do this. With virt-install, the Internet says I should use --sysinfo. However, --sysinfo (as well as --qemu-comandline) is reported as an invalid command flag, and it is not present when I look at man virt-install and virt-install --help. I am hoping someone on the list knows why this isn't working or can explain how I might provide the arguments to qemu. The host is Debian 9. It is up-to-date as far as package versions are concerned, as much as Debian 9 can be. I can't find any indication about why the arguments would have been taken away. Thanks!