OEM install does not work on Ubuntu GNOME or Kubuntu

[Chris Harvey]

Apologies if I have filed this in the wrong place, this is my first bug report.

I have tried the OEM installations on Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu GNOME and Kubuntu. It works fine on both Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE, but on Ubuntu GNOME and Kubuntu, the system crashes and becomes un-bootable after the initial setup. I have tried this on 3 different machines and a VirtualBox VM, and the same issue occurs. This is the same on both 16.04 and 16.10.

The install process works fine, and booting into the OEM configuration works fine, but after clicking "prepare for end-user", the system boots fine and presents the end-user setup screen, but after completing the initial setup, the splash screen appears and hangs there forever. After hard resetting the machine, it just gets stuck on the boot splash screen.

Also, minor quibble with the Ubuntu GNOME initial setup is that it shows the standard Ubuntu welcome images (showcasing the Unity desktop etc) when it is configuring the system after the end-user initial setup is complete. Should this not show the Ubuntu GNOME welcome images when setting up (the same ones used in the non-OEM installer)?

If there is any more information you need me to provide then let me know and I'll happily find it.

[mattebuntu (mattebuntu-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

What are the specs of the machines affected by this bug?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Artyom Zorin (azorin)]

It looks like it might be a problem with GDM.

After dropping to text mode when the splash screen hangs (by pressing the Esc key), the following message is displayed indefinitely:
A start job is running for Hold until boot process finishes up ([minutes and seconds elapsed] / no limit)

According to this page, this error message is related to GDM: http://www.rffuste.com/2016/10/01/ubuntu-16-04-a-start-job-is-running-for-hold-until-boot-finishes-up-error/
It makes sense that the above is the source of this OEM install issue as Ubuntu GNOME is the only Ubuntu respin that uses GDM.

[Artyom Zorin (azorin)]

I can confirm that this issue has been fixed in Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 (using GDM 3.24) onwards.

When trying to do an OEM install with Ubuntu Gnome 16.10, the issue still occurred as before. However in my 2nd try with UG 16.10, when I rebooted into the "oem" preparatory account after the hard drive installation, I installed the "gdm3_3.24.1-0ubuntu0.1", "libgdm1_3.24.1-0ubuntu0.1" and "gir1.2-gdm-1.0_3.24.1-0ubuntu0.1" .deb packages from the Ubuntu 17.04 repositories before preparing the system for the end-user. This ended up fixing the issue with that installation, confirming that the issue is present in GDM versions earlier than 3.24.

I used Ubuntu 16.10 instead of 16.04 in the above tests because 16.10 includes the oldest version of gnome-shell (3.20) supported by GDM 3.24 (as a dependency).

The work from this point on would be to find what fixed this issue between gdm_3.20 and gdm_3.24, and patch gdm_3.18 to fix this issue in Ubuntu 16.04 (which still needs to be supported until 2021).