autoinstall late-commands always fail

[jamesps-ebi]

What happened?

When installing a system using the Desktop ISO (e.g. 23.10.1 Mantic Desktop ISO) and using an autoinstall, any late-commands that are run within the target system (curtin in-target -- ) is generating the errors.

What was expected?

Commands in the late-commands section should run without failing.

The same commands run on a server ISO install do not produce errors.

Steps to reproduce

• Generate a simple autoinstall yaml

autoinstall:
  version: 1
  interactive-sections:
    - keyboard
    - network
  locale: en_GB.UTF-8
  keyboard:
    layout: gb
  kernel:
    flavor: hwe
  identity:
    hostname: unassigned-hostname
    username: test123
    realname: Test User
    password: 'pwd_hash_here'
  storage:
    grub:
      reorder_uefi: false
    layout:
      name: lvm
  user-data:
    timezone: Europe/London
  late-commands:
    - curtin in-target --target=/target -- echo testing123 > /etc/hostname

• Download and run 23.10.1 desktop installer with the autoinstall yaml
• Wait for install to complete and you will see an error pop up. From the logs, you can see the late-commands will have failed.

Additional context

No response

[seb128]

Thank you for your bug report. Could you add the log to the report (or use ubuntu-bug to report the error to launchpad)?

[jamesps-ebi]

Hi @seb128

Here are the installer logs and journal from a recent install.
installer.zip
journal.zip

I tested the curtin in-target both with and without the argument --target=/target. Both times it failed with the same error.

[Mafoelffen1]

I had turned in a Bug Report at launchpad on this, because it affected me, and some others.

It was a regression issue. Please join that Bug report as affected. Test the fix in the beta channel to see if it fixes that for you. The instruction for that are there in the comments, in comment 4. Please comment the results there. We need that feedback so they can push the changes from the Beta Channel to the Stable Channel.

RE: https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/2040654

[jamesps-ebi]

Thanks @Mafoelffen1

I've now tested with the beta channel for the desktop autoinstall, but it doesn't work for me. Looking at the discussion on your bug, it looks like maybe the fix was only released to the beta channel for the server installer??

[seb128]

I've now tested with the beta channel for the desktop autoinstall, but it doesn't work for me. Looking at the discussion on your bug, it looks like maybe the fix was only released to the beta channel for the server installer??

The desktop installer includes a subiquity copy so yes we will need to update that one for the fix to be available in the desktop image

[Mafoelffen1]

This was reported to launchpad by me a while ago (https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/2040654). It was found to be a regression issue. Yes it was released to the Beta channel and we tested it, reported it as working... And asked to have it moved from the Beta Channel to the Stable Channel...

That was around 2023.12.04 or so... We are still waiting for that to get moved over.

So still affects more than just Mantic, until it gets moved over.

[koduck]

Hi everybody, :-)

we are investigating for months how to use Subiqity Autoinstall together with Ubuntu-Desktop-Installer and a Desktop ISO image.

Up until now we thought it was only possible with ubuntu server images. And that seemed to work in general, but came with it's own set of problems.

But reading this thread raised our hopes it is now possible using an ubuntu desktop image.
Is this true? Or are we just misunderstanding the whole situation?

If it is possible, would you be able to point us to information of how to use autoinstall with ubuntu desktop?

[jamesps-ebi]

Hi everybody, :-)

we are investigating for months how to use Subiqity Autoinstall together with Ubuntu-Desktop-Installer and a Desktop ISO image.

Up until now we thought it was only possible with ubuntu server images. And that seemed to work in general, but came with it's own set of problems.

But reading this thread raised our hopes it is now possible using an ubuntu desktop image. Is this true? Or are we just misunderstanding the whole situation?

If it is possible, would you be able to point us to information of how to use autoinstall with ubuntu desktop?

Probably not the place for this discussion, but yes.
S
ince Lunar Lobster (23.04) the desktop installer uses subiquity at the backend. This means autoinstall is also working for the desktop ISO.

See here: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/from-installation-to-provisioning-upgrading-the-ubuntu-desktop-installer