udev rules from persistent usb-stick leak to installs

[Matthias Niess]

The problem happens with a live-USB stick created with the Startup Disk Creator with persistence turned on. As expected, every network interface of every machine the stick is booted on gets an entry in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules.

The unexpected behavior here is, that the file ends up on installations made with the USB stick. On a vanilla install you end up with your interfaces named wlan8 and eth12. I experienced cases were no network connections were possible until the huge list of rules was deleted.

I attached an anonymized example of 70-persistent-net.rules.

This bug-report was created out of a vanilla install of Ubuntu in a virtualbox vm.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: ubiquity (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-32.51-generic-pae 3.2.30
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-32-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu12
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Nov 12 16:18:18 2012
InstallCmdLine: noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- debian-installer/language=de keyboard-configuration/layoutcode?=de
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release i386 (20120817.3)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Tim Booth (tbooth)]

I had this issue when using live-boot sticks for training purposes, and as I was repacking the image anyway I made the following changes:

dpkg-divert --local --rename --divert /lib/udev/write_net_rules.real /lib/udev/write_net_rules
dpkg-divert --local --rename --divert /lib/udev/write_cd_rules.real /lib/udev/write_cd_rules

tee /lib/udev/write_net_rules /lib/udev/write_cd_rules <<X
#!/bin/sh

# Patch for Bio-Linux
# Only actually do this if not booted from Casper
if ! grep -q ' boot=casper\( \|$\)' /proc/cmdline ; then
    exec "$0".real "$@"
fi
X

chmod 755 /lib/udev/write_*_rules

It's crude but should be effective so long as this bug is open.

TIM

[Matthias Niess (mniess)]

Some developers on IRC told me this is expected behavior. Sticks with persistence are not supposed to be used for installs. I stopped using them alltogether because of this bug.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]