Desktop installer does not allow a fully non-interactive autoinstall

[Siegfried]

Description:
According to the doc, the subiquity server installer should allow for a truly hands-off autoinstall if you provide the 'autoinstall' kernel parameter. But even when providing the kernel parameter in 23.10, the desktop installer still asks for a single confirmation at the disk partitioning part. The rest of the install is non-interactive.

I could not find a desktop documentation, neither on ubuntu.com nor launchpad.net not github.com/{subiquity or ubuntu-desktop-installer}, so I have to assume the server docs are also relevant for desktop and this is a bug.

Used commandline to install: (the desktop iso is mounted in /mnt)
kvm -no-reboot -m 4096 -cpu host \
    -drive file=ubuntulatest.qcow2,format=qcow2,cache=none,if=virtio \
    -cdrom ubuntu-23.10.1-desktop-amd64.iso \
    -kernel /mnt/casper/vmlinuz \
    -initrd /mnt/casper/initrd \
    -append 'autoinstall ds=nocloud-net;s=http://myserver/autoinstall/ubuntulatest/'

Relevant part of the used user-data yaml:
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
  storage:
    layout:
      match:
        path: /dev/vda
        size: largest
      name: direct
      sizing-policy: all

Expected behaviour:
The desktop version is automatically installed with 0 user interaction - just as described in the server docs at ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall under 'Run a truly automatic autoinstall'

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

I'm not completely sure about this but I *think* the install is still proceeding in the background even though the UI for confirmation is still showing.

[Siegfried (o-gott-wir-werden-alle-sterben)]

I just tried and now can confirm this. The installer indeed runs in the background and eventually restarts, even though the confirmation dialog was displayed the whole time.

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

Yeah, it's not the optimal experience for sure.

[Dan Bungert (dbungert)]

Thanks for the bug report.

I just tried this and wasn't able to confirm the bug. I used a similar configuration - kvm, the supplied cloud-config updated with 'version: 1', ubuntu-23.10.1-desktop-amd64.iso.

If you can think of anything else that might help to reproduce the issue, that might help.

[Dan Bungert (dbungert)]

Also, to be clear, I didn't have to manually acknowledge the confirm dialog, and I'm using 'autoinstall' on the kernel command line.

[Siegfried (o-gott-wir-werden-alle-sterben)]

After some more testing, I think I found the culprit: it's the updated installer.
With the original installer provided by the iso file, it works as you described without any weirdness.

But my yaml also contained this:
  refresh-installer:
    update: true

Once you add that to your yaml, you will see that window.

[Jeff Hillman (jhillman)]

Doing a test with the 23.10.1 ISO at https://releases.ubuntu.com/23.10.1/ubuntu-23.10.1-desktop-amd64.iso...

Using this simple autoinstall file:

```
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
  version: 1

  apt:
    geoip: true
    preserve_sources_list: false
    primary:
    - arches: [amd64, i386]
      uri: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
    - arches: [default]
      uri: http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports

  kernel:
    package: linux-generic-hwe-22.04

  codecs:
    install: false
  drivers:
    install: false

  oem:
    install: auto
  source:
    id: ubuntu-desktop-minimal
    search_drivers: false
  timezone: America/Chicago
  updates: security

  identity:
    hostname: tiny
    password: $6$NtXwPsM/enBpRMOS$lxsTsJPuSzovFVWJdN3TF89yaqVzLTeqthUD8feRljnTs6EENgkOqttrkd3fiNWJFqRqi.5/m7RUi6.IgKkwb0
    username: ubuntu
  keyboard:
    layout: us
    toggle: null
    variant: ''
  locale: en_US
  #refresh-installer:
  # update: yes

  storage:
    layout:
      name: hybrid
      encrypted: yes

  ssh:
    allow-pw: true
    install-server: true
    authorized-keys:
      - [key_1]
```

WITHOUT setting refresh_install to update: yes, it will boot to the desktop environment, and present me with the ready to install screen.

I let it sit here, idle for 10 minutes. at which point I just hit the Install button, at which point the isntaller actually kicked off and then it took 3:52 minutes to actually do the autoinstall (configured LUKs and all)

i then used the same ISO, changed the user-data file to update: yes and proceeded.

This time around, I never got the Ready to install screen, instead i get a screen with a spinning whell that says "welcome to ubuntu", with a Preparing ubuntu message, and all buttons grayed out.

I can confirm that the ubuntu_desktop_installer is running, but no logs are being updated in /var/log/installer, and no crash report is being created.

As of the time of writing this bug, the installer has been sitting at the same screen for over 30 minutes.

To summarize, it appears the 23.10.1 ISO containers a working version of the installer, except that it does require a manual touch of 1 button to begin the install.

The updated installed 0+git.4edfab2b doesn't appear to work with autoinstall at all.