@mwhudson thanks for the hint! Really appreciated.
If you ask me, I would certainly give a big vote to such functionality, as it would simplify the case I have a lot .
Thanks again
Using virt-install and d-i was a beautiful, lightweight way to pxe VMs, losing this functionality for bloated iso management would be a real shame.
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@mwhudson I have tested what you proposed. The only two things to make it working is to put the update_hostname anchor before the usage (so the bucket section before the autoinstall). The second thing - instead of python, python3 should be used. Python is obviously not present in the initrd environment.
With those two changes, works like a charm!
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The mini.iso, which has been a useful tool for years, is being pulled, and for obvious reasons this triggers some concerns.
A lot of users, some of which quite experienced as far as I can judge, are trying to ask a question here only to meet silence.
Is this a ‘discourse’ in the sense that people respect each other’s statements to a degree where a question is acknowledged with an answer?
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I don’t think it’s fair to say the developers are silent, see e.g. this comment. BTW Server installer plans for 20.04 LTS is probably a better thread for the general topic, but that’s gone off in different directions as well.
Good, just hoping that my question from May 2. will eventually be noticed.
Now we have two threads in which people express their wish to keep the mini.iso. It’s not a question of server installs with LUKS, LVM, virtual boxes and other advanced matters, it’s about being able to keep old desktop hardware out of the landfill.
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It has been answered 10 days ago above:
That appears to be this question:
You are effectively asking, in a thread which exists for the purpose of informing users how to netboot the new installer, for the Ubuntu team to justify to you as an individual the roadmap of the Ubuntu project.
That is not something we are going to do.
We are happy to work with users to problem solve how to support their use cases in a future where the debian-installer based install media is no longer provided (although, as noted already, the other discourse thread is generally better for that). But your question doesn’t lead to that. It does not help users make use of the new installer; it does not help Ubuntu developers improve the installer to address additional use cases that we haven’t yet thought to cover, or which haven’t yet been prioritized. It only opens the door for second-guessing the decision by the Ubuntu team to consolidate available engineering resources around a single installer. That is definitely off topic for this thread.
What happened to the netboot.tar.gz? This used to make it very easy to set up pxe boot menus and just add on the latest. The description here is MUCH more complex…! 
So I have to copy by hand the pxelinux.0 file – a file that is dated october, so it doesn’t give me warm fuzzies about matching what focal needs…
Now I need to copy over the focal iso and mount it so I can extract vmlinuz/initrd…and add a module?
I mean, why NOT package these files up? This is like… instead of buying a loaf of bread, now I have to go out and plant a field of wheat first and then…
It is still available, the path was renamed to legacy
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/netboot/
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OK thank you. Makes me wonder about 22.04 though!
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Then we will switch to Debian. Their mini.iso also supports both BIOS and UEFI.
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Several people have expressed their disappointment with this, but I have a unique form of disappointment. A few years ago, I was experimenting with making a netbook into a distraction-free writing machine, and the mini.iso fit the bill so well. All I had to do was install it without a graphical environment, and it was good to go. It even went to sleep when the lid closed, with no tweaking, something no other distro did without a graphical environment. I never did write about my findings in this regard, and maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t, since this nifty little trick won’t be around anymore.
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Ok, but the new live server installer also installs a system without a graphical environment. Have you tried it for your use case? It sounds to me like you’ve assumed it wouldn’t work for your use case but I know of no reason why that would be the case.
First of all, I have to thank all of you people for your work. I’ve be using Ubuntu for years.
But let me see if I get it right.
I have a xen pool and now, to set up a vm, instead of just doing a minimal Ubuntu Server install using mini.iso I’ll have to set up a DHCP/bootp and tftp to use a 908MB iso?
I’m with the people who are complaining about this.
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The mini.iso is a locally booted iso image. If you were using this before, I don’t see any reason why you would change to use a netboot setup instead of locally booting the current server iso. This thread is about how to netboot with the new installer, it is not saying that you have to netboot with the new installer.
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I see. I couldn’t find the link to the new mini.iso file in the repository and read all that discussion about the lack of a mini.iso in this release. Could you provide the link?
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I didn’t mention a new mini.iso file, I suggested using the current server iso (https://releases.ubuntu.com/focal/ubuntu-20.04-live-server-amd64.iso). The mini.iso has never been a supported method of installing Ubuntu.
We do still provide a mini.iso image for 20.04 at http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/netboot/mini.iso but expect to drop this in the 20.10 cycle.
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