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I just tried to install Ubuntu Server 20.04 in a virtual machine for some tests and in order to see whether I can get preseeding to work again as in previous versions.

I noticed that even the choice of keyboard/locale was now happening after I could see some lines fly by on the console that clearly suggested that an SSH server was running.

So I used arp -a to get the appropriate IP address and tried to connect as root. But then a password of ubuntu was refused.

What credentials can be used here - if any! - prior to making any choices as console user?

0xC0000022L
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  • Desktop version does not come with an ssh server installed. What edition are you installing? Also, try user ubuntu password ubuntu (or maybe blank, don't quite remember). The root account won't be enabled. – Seth Apr 26 '20 at 21:41
  • @Seth are you certain? I was asking about the installer environment (installation environment ... as per title) anyway. I'll give it a try with the desktop image. – 0xC0000022L Apr 27 '20 at 07:07
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    Yeah my bad, turns out I can't read. Let me do some digging. – Seth Apr 30 '20 at 01:18
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    Looks like configuring cloud-init with a virtual machine image requires using another virtual disk to hold the settings and mounting it with the server ISO. I've seen this mentioned in a few places now but [su] has a good thread about it: https://superuser.com/questions/827977/use-cloud-init-with-virtualbox – Seth Apr 30 '20 at 17:59
  • @Seth feel free to write it up in an answer, I'll make sure to upvote and if it's really good will even accept it. – 0xC0000022L Apr 30 '20 at 20:44
  • As you might have guessed because of the long delay, I'm super busy right now and don't have time to look into it/test further. Feel free to develop your own solution from that idea. – Seth May 09 '20 at 00:27

1 Answers1

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I found it it, but unfortunately it means that the credentials are hardly usable (unless one manages to somehow "inject" authorized public keys).

Anyway, here is what I did. I went back and tried to take screenshots of those situations that were humanly impossible to read otherwise. First one got several standard boot messages (basically what you'd see in dmesg) and then it blanked the screen and this could be found:

Showing SSH host keys

I included those two lines above the messages about the SSH host keys for a reason. They show the missing credentials that I had been looking for.

The user is installer and the password is what's given behind the colon (:).

Either way, once I connected with username installer and the randomly generated password, I got to see basically the same menu as could be seen on the console:

Installer menu via SSH

Since the whole thing works via cloud-init, according to the boot messages, I suppose I would be able to provide the authorized public keys via that somehow ...

So I've got something more to research, but hopefully these clues will help someone else already.

0xC0000022L
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