Please test autoinstalls for 20.04!

Server
#18

This did not work for me. Digging around in the logs now looking for clues.

Some documentation that would be helpful which I have not been able to find (sorry if it exists):

  • What do the kernel parameters “ds” and “s” mean, and what options are available for them?
  • Is it possible to see and/or customize the exact file name the automated installer is trying to load? Relying on the file to be named “user-data” always complicates having multiple configs.
  • Is it possible to see whether the installer is aware it should be running in automated mode or not, e.g. if it noticed the “autoinstall” parameter? And if so, does/can it report why it was unable to load the config file, e.g. a yaml parsing or json schema error?
#19

Dont know all the answers but from nocloud’s website:

Alternatively, you can provide meta-data via kernel command line or SMBIOS “serial number” option. The data must be passed in the form of a string:

ds=nocloud[;key=val;key=val]

or

ds=nocloud-net[;key=val;key=val]

The permitted keys are:

  • h or local-hostname
  • i or instance-id
  • s or seedfrom

With ds=nocloud , the seedfrom value must start with / or file:// . With ds=nocloud-net , the seedfrom value must start with http:// , https:// or ftp://

this is the url: nocloud doc

2 Likes
#20

I myself am having issues. Im trying to use the autoinstall-user-data file that gets generated by the installer as a template. taking the file right after installation and attempting to use it as a config file for the same server fails in a couple areas.

First off the file is missing the version: 1 key to properly read the file

Second after adding that the next failure comes from the toggle: key under keyboard:. the set value in the file is null but that throws an error in the installation:

None is not of type 'string'

changing the value from null to '' gets passed that error

The last error that im up to that I just cannot figure out is configuring the network. I have copied the file exactly and its always the same error:

Command ‘[‘netplan’, ‘apply’]’ returned non-zero exit status 1
…
AttributeError: ‘ScrollBarListBox’ object has no attribute ‘_w’

I even found the default netplan configuration in the squashfs file and used that and netplan apply still returns 1

I do not know how to automatically configure the nextwork and cannot proceed.

i’ll attach images from my kvm sessions if they help any.

screenshot_1587758374451
screenshot_1587758374451.png1024×768 379 KB

1 Like
#22

@Jinxcappa thanks for pointing me to that doc, I didn’t realize cloud-init was a separate project.

@all It appears that cloud-init is not properly downloading the user-data file for some reason. The command cloud-init analyze dump has lots of “SUCCESS” in it. In the directory /var/lib/cloud/seed/nocloud/ , the user-data file is empty, despite the fact that I can curl http://10.0.2.2:8xxx/user-data and see the file is accessible over http.

Perhaps this is not the right forum for this, but two additional questions:

  • Is it feasible to throw a more visible error if, for whatever reason, user-data is not accessible and autoinstall was specified on the kernel command line? Just dropping the user into the non-automated installer is very confusing.
  • Where should I be looking for more information about what cloud-init is trying and failing to do? /var/log/cloud-init.log mentioned in the cloud-init docs does not appear to contain information about this part of the process, it seems to start by reading 0 bytes from /var/lib/cloud/seed/nocloud/user-data .
#24

Works a treat here, much better than hours of trying to debug d-i statements!
Slotted in easily on a CentOS 7 PXE/TFTP server alongside our kickstarts.

Rsyslog implementation would be awesome, I see that is in the pipeline. We use this heavily to validate CentOS builds currently.

Few questions:

Any thoughts on ZFS support? I did some experimentation with adding the curtin zfsroot config but got python exceptions (which I kind of expecting).

Is it possible to run commands in the /target “chroot”, for example I have a template that installs apache2 but I don’t want it to start on default boot until it has been configured by the end customer.

Lastly, what are the credentials to ssh in to a crashed installer to debug?

#25

To follow up on my own question, I managed to have the iso booting with my autoinstall.yml like this:

First I added the .yml to the squashfs:

sudo unsquashfs -d ./squashfs-root -no-progress cd_amd64/casper/installer.squashfs
sudo cp -vf autoinstall.yml squashfs-root/etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/90_autoinstall.cfg
sudo rm cd_amd64/casper/installer.squashfs
sudo mksquashfs squashfs-root cd_amd64/casper/installer.squashfs -no-progress -noappend
sudo rm -rf squashfs-root

Then I modified Grubs txt.cfg to add the autoinstall parameter:

label autoinstall
  menu label ^Install Ubuntu Server unattended
  kernel /casper/vmlinuz
  append   initrd=/casper/initrd autoinstall quiet  ---

This runs the autoinstall with the given .yml file.

Just using the content from the /var/log/installer/autoinstall-user-data file of my previous installation resulted in similar errors as @jinxcappa described:

None is not of type ‘string’

I removed the attribute instead of setting it to ‘’, which worked for me. I also had to add version:1 below autoinstall:.

Now I’m also stuck at the point

Command ‘[‘netplan’, ‘apply’]’ returned non-zero exit status 1

The network section is just:

network:
      ethernets:
        ens160: {dhcp4: true}
      version: 2

ens160 is the correct name of the interface, I can confirm this in a second console.

1 Like
#26

I looked around using the second console. Running the command netplan apply manually results in the following error message:

/etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yml:2:1: Error in network definition: unknown key ‘ethernets’
ethernets:
^

The file /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yml looks like this:

# This is the network config written by 'subiquity'
ethernets:
  ens160:
    dhcp4: true
version: 2

Looking at netplan examples it looks like the top level network branch is missing.

I changed the network configuration in the autoinstall.yml to look like this:

network:
  network:
    ethernets:
      ens160: {dhcp4: true}
    version: 2

With this the installation went through.

#27

@mwhudson Is there any example on how to use USB drive for autoinstall?

  • formatting it to VFAT
  • setting CIDATA label
  • putting user-data and meta-data
  • booting installer with: ‘initrd=/casper/initrd quiet autoinstall ds=nocloud;s=/ —’

all of the above does not work

#28

Next problem: Can I add multiple autoinstall configurations? On my previous ISO I had multiple preseed files with corresponding menu entries on the boot screen.

Trying to do the same with the new method I got the message

Confirmation is required to continue.

Add ‘autoinstall’ to your kernel command line to avoid this

when I booted from the second configuration. It seems that the parameter autoinstall is not just a name for the configuration to load, but a keyword.

How can I place multiple autoinstall configurations on a .iso?

#29

I’m planning a nuke-and-pave for my server now that 20.04 is out and I’m interested in using autoinstall (with either the server or netinstall USB ISOs) to automate the early installation, such as:

  • Partitioning the SSD (ESP/boot.ext4/root.xfs)
  • Set hostname, network (DHCP)
  • Install a few packages (e.g., openssh-server, build-essential, etc.)
  • Add a specified user with SSH authorized key and sudo permissions

Once those steps are complete, I should be able to connect to the server with Ansible and provision it fully from there.

Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to access autoinstall in VirtualBox (6.1.6 as of this writing) to model it before trying it on the live server, but I’m feeling a bit lost. Must the autoinstall be served via HTTP or can it be local? Could I put it on another disk plugged into the machine, like a USB drive? I’m thinking here of the way Kickstart will look for a volume labeled “OEMDRV” and then pull the Kickstart config from there. Here’s a rough screenshot of what I’m talking about. Is that possible with autoinstall? How would I use GRUB’s command line to tell the server/netinstall disc to load an autoinstall (and/or cloud-config) file from a second disk that’s plugged in?

#30

No, we need to write this up. https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/1869291/comments/4 provides a recipe for this but the original reporter didn’t confirm if it worked for them.

#31

Yay, that’s the sort of response we were hoping for! :slight_smile:

Hopefully we can get to it soon. If someone wants to help it would look a bit like this https://code.launchpad.net/~raharper/curtin/trunk.add-journald-reporter/+merge/331457

We’re aiming to have some kind of ZFS support in 20.10 / 20.04.2. It will probably not support many options
.

One aim I had that I admit I have mostly forgotten is to allow people to use curtin storage features that subiquity itself does not support. I should see if I can make that possible somehow.

Yes sure, you can run “curtin in-target – whatever” in late commands, this is even documented at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/AutomatedServerInstalls/ConfigReference#late-commands (although I’m not sure I’ve tried it!).

The long, random password for the ‘installer’ user is in the cloud-init output on the console but probably a bit hard to find in amongst everything else. Or you can put a user config with ssh keys into the user-data you give the live session.

#32

Oops.

Also oops. Both of these should be easy to fix, at least.

Yes, this is a good idea.

There is also /var/log/cloud-init-output.log but I’m not sure it helps with this. It’s always hard to debug why something isn’t happening! Looking in /var/lib/cloud/instance/datasource or the output of ‘cloud-init query’ might help.

Oh argh. I’ll fix this one soon so that the double network key is not necessary (but leave some code in so it works).

You can put ds=nocloud,s=/autoinstall-variant1 on the kernel command line (and put user-data and meta-data files into the /autoinstall-variant1 directory). Or you can have an early-command swap a different yaml file into place depending on a marker you put into the kernel command line.

All this should be very straightforward.

Yes, you can use a filesystem with the cidata (or CIDATA) label for this. As I replied to someone else earlier https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/1869291/comments/4 has a recipe for this, but I do need to write this up somewhere.

#33

The issue is that I can’t use another ISO file, only USB drive.
And when I try to do that I am not seeing that installer copies cloud init seed into ‘/var/…’

#34

I wrote up an example of using a different volume to provide the config: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/AutomatedServerInstalls/QuickStart#Using_another_volume_to_provide_the_autoinstall_config

You can dd an ISO to a USB device just fine?

#35

Does VFAT option works? or only iso9660?

#36

VFAT should work, I haven’t tried though and I’m going to bed now sorry…

#38

I also gave the autoinstall a try and I can’t configure the network:

#cloud-config
autoinstall:
  version: 1
  interactive-sections:
    - network
  apt:
    geoip: true
    preserve_sources_list: false
    primary:
    - arches: [amd64, i386]
      uri: http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
    - arches: [default]
      uri: http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports
  identity: 
    hostname: ubuntu-server
    password: "$6$exDY1mhS4KUYCE/2$zmn9ToZwTKLhCw.b4/b.ZRTIZM30JZ4QrOQ2aOXJ8yk96xpcCof0kxKwuX1kqLG/ygbJ1f8wxED22bTL4F46P0"
    realname: ubuntu
    username: ubuntu
  network:
    network:       
      ethernets:
        enp0s3:
          addresses: [192.168.178.52/24]
          gateway4: 192.168.178.1
          nameservers: 
            addresses: [192.168.178.6]
    version: 2
  keyboard: 
    layout: us
  locale: en_US
  ssh:
    allow-pw: yes
    install-server: true

Command ‘[‘netplan’, ‘apply’]’ returned non-zero exit status 1
…
AttributeError: ‘ScrollBarListBox’ object has no attribute ‘_w’

Even a DHCP network configuration is not workinng same error.

#39

Your version: 2 is incorrectly indented. It should be at the same level as ethernets:.

#40

Thanks a lot this helps. But after the installation the network is still configured dhcp.

#cloud-config
autoinstall:
  version: 1
  apt:
    geoip: true
    preserve_sources_list: false
    primary:
    - arches: [amd64, i386]
      uri: http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
    - arches: [default]
      uri: http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports
  identity: 
    hostname: ubuntu-server
    password: "$6$exDY1mhS4KUYCE/2$zmn9ToZwTKLhCw.b4/b.ZRTIZM30JZ4QrOQ2aOXJ8yk96xpcCof0kxKwuX1kqLG/ygbJ1f8wxED22bTL4F46P0"
    realname: ubuntu
    username: ubuntu
  network:
    network:
      version: 2       
      ethernets:
        enp0s3:
          dhcp4: no
          addresses: [192.168.178.52/24]
          gateway4: 192.168.178.1
          nameservers: 
            addresses: [192.168.178.6]
  keyboard: 
    layout: us
  locale: en_US
  ssh:
    allow-pw: yes
    install-server: true

I added explicitly dhcp4: no. But no luck the network is configured dhcp. enp0s3 is the correct interface name.