ubuntu server installer serial console not preserved after update

[Michael Richardson]

I booted ubuntu 20.04.1 from a USB key to install a server.
(It would be great if that was a regular option, and if grub could be more easily tuned to include console ttyS1)
Ubuntu nicely discovered that I had booted from serial console, and I opted to stay with the non-rich mode, since I was using an xterm and serial console (SOL) via IPMI.
I agreed to update my installer. Then I lost everything.
It seems that the installer was then running on the tty0.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Exactly what image did you download and were installing?

[Michael Richardson (mcr-sandelman)]

I think that the ubuntu installer is called subiquity now. But, I could be wrong.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

While subiquity is the new server installer for Ubuntu it is not the installer for the Ubuntu Core product, so it'd be helpful if you were to answer my original question.

[Michael Richardson (mcr-sandelman)]

I used: ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso written to a USB key.

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

Hm the installer is definitely *meant* to restart on the serial line after refresh but I haven't tested this in a while. Logs should have been written to the USB stick, can you attach them to this report?

[Michael Richardson (mcr-sandelman)]

This is the time that I tried it.
After this, I just didn't accept the upgrade.
The machine is installed.
I got the console= option on the grub menu by hitting F6, then ESC, and then typing in what I wanted. That used to just involve TAB.
I can't easily edit the grub menus on the USB key, since it is an ISO9660 image really.
Given how difficult it is to do this I'm not surprised this option hasn't been tested.

(I would like to always install VMs with kvm -nographic, but all the stuff makes this so hard.
But my physical servers always get a serial console)

(Note that I ran into some issues with bad HDs, which I eventually solved by using older ones)

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

Well I finally got around to testing this, using kvm -nographic (and booting with -kernel/-initd/-append console=ttyS0) and it seemed to work fine. I agree it would be nice to be able to get grub to run on the serial console but my understanding is that this is harder than it should be on intel platforms.

Are those logs from the attempt where you had issues? I don't see any evidence in the logs of an attempt to update.

[Michael Richardson (mcr-sandelman)]

I may have grabbed the wrong log file, I will search the USB key again.

I also tried to get the process I followed (F6/ESC/type console=ttyS0) to work on KVM, but I couldn't get the serial port to work at all. I have gotten serial consoles to work with KVM in the past, even without -kernel/-initrd.

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

I'm going to mark this incomplete, as far as I can tell the installer restarts on the serial line just fine but I'm certainly interested to hear if you can reproduce the problem or find the logs!

[Michael Richardson (mcr-sandelman)]

Hi, the USB key in question wandered around a bit, but I have it back now.
I am grepping the logs to locate the attempt to upgrade/update the installer.
What should I be looking for?

[Michael Richardson (mcr-sandelman)]

Hi. I got KVM+serial console to work this time. (I think that by default, kvm doesn't give the installer enough ram). Going through my proceedure, I allow the installer to upgrade, and it does in fact continue on the serial console. It also continues on the tty0, so perhaps I was confused by this.
Sorry for the false report.