(24-04-1)=
There are use-cases where it does not make sense for system installation and user creation to happen at the same time. These require a workflow that skips the user creation step during installation so that it can be handled later, perhaps by a different user.
Ubuntu accommodates this workflow by shipping with Gnome Initial Setup, a program that can safely handle user account creation and configuration. Gnome Initial Setup is started by default when a system is booted and GNOME Display Manager (GDM) is unable to detect any user accounts. Instead of taking you to the login screen, a special Gnome Initial Setup user session is started.
NOTE: This is a special integration built into GDM. If you are using a different display manager, you may need to integrate the Gnome Initial Setup session being invoked by the display manager yourself.
The version of Gnome Initial Setup in Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS has been patched to allow for hostnames to be set during account creation and EULA pages to render if present on the system. This is in addition to its existing feature set that enables user account creation and setup on provisioned systems.
% ## Table of contents % - How to provision Ubuntu with Gnome Initial Setup % - Method 1: Triggering Gnome Initial Setup via the new Flutter installer and a whitelabel.yaml % - Method 2: Triggering Gnome Initial Setup via an autoinstall.yaml % - EULA Page configuration % - EULA Language code format
This guide highlights different methods for provisioning a system so that Ubuntu is installed while no user account is created, thereby allowing user account creation to be passed off to Gnome-Initial-Setup.
The new Ubuntu Desktop Bootstrap Flutter installer can be
given a whitelabel.yaml file to customise its appearance and behaviour. For example, the installer can be configured
to run in a specific mode.
When oem mode is active, user creation and time zone setup are skipped during installation, leaving them to be handled by Gnome Initial
Setup post-installation.
Enabling oem mode only requires the following line to be added to the whitelabel.yaml:
mode: oem
Placing this whitelabel.yaml at /usr/share/desktop-provision/whitelabel.yaml on your LiveCD is sufficient
to skip user creation during installation, provided that you are using the new Ubuntu Desktop Bootstrap installer.
A comprehensive guide to customising a LiveCD can be found here.
It's possible to test the Gnome Initial Setup user creation flow via the Ubuntu Desktop Bootstrap installer without first editing your LiveCD, as long as Gnome Initial Setup is already present on your ISO.
The Ubuntu Desktop Bootstrap Flutter installer first needs to be installed:
sudo snap install ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap --classic
A whitelabel.yaml with oem mode enabled must then be created in a location Ubuntu Desktop Bootstrap will find it:
sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/desktop-provision
sudo bash -c 'echo "mode: oem" > /usr/share/desktop-provision/whitelabel.yaml'
Finally, the installer can be launched. You should not be prompted for user account creation, as this will be handled after the installer finishes.
/snap/bin/ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap --try-or-install
These sections are adapted from the Subiquity documentation, updated for triggering Gnome Initial Setup with the Ubuntu Desktop ISO.
You can find a desktop ISO to download on the official Ubuntu website.
Once downloaded, you can mount the ISO to make it accessible via a local directory. Change <version-number> in
the following command to match the release ISO that you downloaded:
sudo mount -r ~/Downloads/ubuntu-<version-number>-amd64.iso /mnt
Create your cloud-init configuration, making sure to omit the identity section so that no user is created during installation:
mkdir -p ~/www
cd ~/www
cat > user-data << 'EOF'
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
version: 1
EOF
touch meta-data
The default Ubuntu ISO seeds multiple languages, but only carries one to the target system. To have
additional languages available in Gnome Initial Setup, you will need to install additional language
packs via the autoinstall.yaml onto the target system
To install additional language packs, you can make use of late commands in the `autoinstall.yaml:
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
version: 1
late-commands:
- |
curtin in-target --target=/target -- bash -c '
# Update the package list
apt-get update
# Installing extra languages
for lang in "fr" "de"; do
for pkg in $(check-language-support --show-installed -l "$lang"); do
# gimp: not installed by default
# fcitx5: not used by ubuntu as gnome is in use
# mozc-utils-gui: is in universe
if [ "${pkg%%-*}" = gimp ] || [ "${pkg%%-*}" = fcitx5 ] || [ "$pkg" = "mozc-utils-gui" ]; then
continue
fi
apt-get install -y "$pkg"
done
done'Change into the directory where the cloud-init configuration was created and start a server:
cd ~/www
python3 -m http.server 3003
Create the target VM disk for the installation. 25GB is the minimum recommended storage allocation for Ubuntu Desktop:
truncate -s 25G image.img
Change <version-number> to match the release ISO that you downloaded before running the following command:
kvm -no-reboot -m 4096 \
-drive file=image.img,format=raw,cache=none,if=virtio \
-cdrom ~/Downloads/ubuntu-<version-number>-amd64.iso \
-kernel /mnt/casper/vmlinuz \
-initrd /mnt/casper/initrd \
-append 'autoinstall ds=nocloud-net;s=http://_gateway:3003/'
This command boots the VM, downloads the configuration from the server (prepared in the previous step) and runs the
installation. The installer reboots at the end. The -no-reboot flag instructs kvm to exit on reboot.
Run the following command to boot the system in the VM:
kvm -no-reboot -m 4096 \
-drive file=image.img,format=raw,cache=none,if=virtio
You will then be loaded into the Gnome-Initial-Setup session for first time user creation.
Use this method to create an installation medium that can be plugged into a computer to trigger installation.
You can find a desktop ISO to download on the official Ubuntu website.
Create your cloud-init configuration, making sure to omit the identity section so that no user is created during installation:
mkdir -p ~/www
cd ~/www
cat > user-data << 'EOF'
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
version: 1
EOF
touch meta-data
The default Ubuntu ISO seeds multiple languages, but only carries one to the target system. To have
additional languages available in Gnome Initial Setup, you will need to install additional language
packs via the autoinstall.yaml onto the target system
To install additional language packs, you can make use of late commands in the `autoinstall.yaml:
#cloud-config
autoinstall:
version: 1
late-commands:
- |
curtin in-target --target=/target -- bash -c '
# Update the package list
apt-get update
# Installing extra languages
for lang in "fr" "de"; do
for pkg in $(check-language-support --show-installed -l "$lang"); do
# gimp: not installed by default
# fcitx5: not used by ubuntu as gnome is in use
# mozc-utils-gui: is in universe
if [ "${pkg%%-*}" = gimp ] || [ "${pkg%%-*}" = fcitx5 ] || [ "$pkg" = "mozc-utils-gui" ]; then
continue
fi
apt-get install -y "$pkg"
done
done'Install utilities for working with cloud images:
sudo apt install cloud-image-utils
Create the ISO image for cloud-init:
cloud-localds ~/seed.iso user-data meta-data
Create the target VM disk for the installation:
truncate -s 25G image.img
Run the following command to boot the system and run the installation, making sure to
change <version-number> to match the release ISO that you downloaded:
kvm -no-reboot -m 4096 \
-drive file=image.img,format=raw,cache=none,if=virtio \
-drive file=~/seed.iso,format=raw,cache=none,if=virtio \
-cdrom ~/Downloads/ubuntu-<version-number>-amd64.iso
The installer prompts for a confirmation before modifying the disk based on the provided autoinstall.
To skip the need for a confirmation you can interrupt the booting process then add the autoinstall
parameter to the kernel command line.
The installer reboots at the end. The -no-reboot flag instructs kvm to exit on reboot.
This command will boot the system in the VM:
kvm -no-reboot -m 4096 \
-drive file=image.img,format=raw,cache=none,if=virtio
You will then be loaded into the Gnome-Initial-Setup session for first time user creation.
EULA assets are expected to reside in /usr/share/desktop-provision/eula/, with the file name including the language
code: EULA_<langcode>.pdf. If the <langcode> is not available, the default file EULA.pdf will be used.
The language code format is the same as that used for slides, for example: EULA_en_US.pdf. See the EULA Language code format
section for further details. If no EULA file is present, the page will be conditionally skipped.
The language code format that is used is the two-letter language code followed by a two-letter country code (see the ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 standards). The language code represents the primary language, while the country code specifies the regional or national variant of that language. For example en_US represents American English and pt_BR represents Brazilian Portuguese.