Autoinstall config file can't be recognized by installer for Ubuntu 20.10 live server

[vmware-gos-Yuhua]

Description:
  Autoinstall config file can't be recognized and read by installer

Steps:
  1) Create file autoinstall.yaml as attached

  2) Create iso with lable "CIDATA" and add the autoinstall.yaml to iso
with the following command
        mkisofs -J -r -V "CIDATA" -o autoinstall.iso -v ./autoinstall.yaml
         or
        mkisofs -r -V "CIDATA" -o autoinstall.iso -v ./autoinstall.yaml

     (Note: try both upper two commands)

  3) check the autoinstall.iso:
      1) mount the iso and find the file autoinstall.yaml in direcotry "/"
      2) it has label "CIDATA"
      3) umount autoinstall.iso

  4) Create a VM in ESXi with two CD/DVDS

  5) One CD/DVD is mounted with focal-live-server-amd64.iso(daily build 24/Mar/2020) and the other is mounted with autoinstall.iso

  6) power on the VM, the focal-live-server-amd64.iso is recognized and start to install guestOS.

  7) the installer stop and wait to input . It seems like the autoinstall.yaml can't be recognized.

Expect:
  For step 7: we wish the installer can read file autoinstall.yaml and finished installation without interaction

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Richard Harding (rharding)]

Can you please test out the autoinstall to assist with this? https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/please-test-autoinstalls-for-20-04

[Ryan Harper (raharper)]

I'm not sure this configuration you suggest will work, I don't see any documentation that suggests you can put the autoinstall.yaml file on a secondary device.

In any case, providing an iso with CIDATA as a label is going to trigger cloud-init to attempt to use this iso as a datasource.

Your autoinstall.yaml is not a valid cloud-init datasource. I suspect that's why nothing is happening in your autoinstall method.

You could construct your autoinstall file with 'cloud-localds', like so:

cat >user-data <<EOF
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
    version: 1
    early-commands:
        - ls -al
    locale: en_US
    keyboard:
        layout: en
        variant: uk
    proxy: http://proxy.vmware.com:3128/
    storage:
        layout:
            name: lvm
    identity:
        realname: zouy
        hostname: ubuntu
        username: vmware
        password: ca$hc0w
EOF
echo "instance-id: $(uuidgen || echo i-abcdefg)" > meta-data
cloud-localds seed.iso user-data metadata

The contents of the iso are:
seed.iso
/user-data
/meta-data

cloud-image-utils provides cloud-localds

Then you can attach that iso and should allow subiquity to pickup the
autoinstall config.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Please also be sure to use the latest version of the live server installer and there have been many changes in the past few weeks.

[vmware-gos-Yuhua (yhzou)]

with https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/please-test-autoinstalls-for-20-04, the autoinstall configuration in seed.iso be can recognized by installer subiquity.

mark this bug as invalid.

[vmware-gos-Yuhua (yhzou)]

Thanks for reopen this issue.
This issue happened in ubuntu 20.10 live server daily build.

[vmware-gos-Yuhua (yhzou)]

with https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/please-test-autoinstalls-for-20-04, the autoinstall configuration in seed.iso be can recognized by installer subiquity.
But the same configuration in seed.iso can not be recognized in ubuntu 20.10 live server daily build 17-Sep-2020.

[vmware-gos-Yuhua (yhzou)]

The content of user-data is
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
  version: 1
  early-commands:
    - ping -c 10 127.0.0.1
  refresh-installer:
    update: yes
  locale: en_US
  keyboard:
    layout: en
    variant: uk
  storage:
    layout:
      name: lvm
  identity:
    realname: ubuntu
    hostname: ubuntu
    username: XXX
    password: XXX
  ssh:
    allow-pw: yes
    install-server: true
  packages:
    - openssh-server
  user-data:
    chpasswd:
      list: |
        root:XXX
      expire: false
    disable_root: false
    ssh_pwauth: true
    disable_root: false
  late-commands:
    - sed -ie 's/#PermitRootLogin prohibit-password/PermitRootLogin yes/' /target/etc/ssh/sshd_config

[vmware-gos-Yuhua (yhzou)]

I did not hit this issue with ubuntu-20.10-beta-live-server-amd64.iso