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aseq
Asked: 2022-04-14 21:05:02 +0800 CST

How to use d-i and preseeding on 22.04

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I am trying to set up an automated installation environment for ubuntu 22.04. We have this already working in production for 20.04 and previous LTS releases for many years. We use pxe/isolinux and a tftp and dhcp server to perform the network and cd boot. And some trickery to get uefi working.

I am unable to find working vmlinuz and initrd images which allow me to start an automated ubuntu 22.04 installation using preseeding and the debian installer (d-i).

I use the following to install 20.04, this does not work on 22.04:

linuxefi /path/to/2004/amd64/linux auto=true priority=critical url=http://example.com/ubuntu/2004/amd64/seed_ub_uefi.cfg console-setup/layoutcode=us interface=auto
initrdefi /path/to/2004/amd64/initrd.gz

I have tried extracting the vmlinuz and initrd.gz images from 22.04 ubuntu CD iso images. However no matter what I try it even fails to find a root filesystem. I am guessing the images do not have d-i and preseed functionality built in anymore?

If such images don't exist how would I go about creating my own? I don't feel too happy migrating to whatever automated installation method canonical wants to enforce. Our whole infrastructure is based on the previously mentioned method and we install multiple OSes in a similar way.

ubuntu debian ubuntu-22.04

2 Answers

  1. Preceeding has been deprecated since 20.04 and was removed in 22.04. Ubuntu is now using autoinstall (also called cloud-init): https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall

    If you need an elaborate working example, take a look at this GitHub repo: https://github.com/lavabit/robox

    It uses Packer to generate Vagrant boxes for multiple providers. It has been using autoinstall since Ubuntu 20.10.

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  2. Ubuntu already switched to cloud-init in 20.04, they only kept the preseed method for compatibility. Now it's gone for good.

    You need to create a .yml file with the filename user-data, as specified here.

    Then you can provide the path to the directory containing the file in grub.cfg.

    I provide the file directly on the .iso (in the directory /nocloud/), but you can just as easily provide a http location.

    menuentry "Install Ubuntu Server (autoinstall)" {
    set gfxpayload=keep
    linux   /casper/vmlinuz   quiet autoinstall ds=nocloud\;s=/cdrom/nocloud/ ---
    initrd  /casper/initrd
}
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