FAI 5.6 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS bionic

[Derek Poon]

In my experience, I have found two potential issues when installing Ubuntu 18.04 using FAI.

The first is that if using FAI <= 5.5, then FAI_DEBOOTSTRAP_OPTS needs '--include gnupg'.  Otherwise, the `apt-key add` in /usr/lib/fai/subroutines would fail.  (At our site, we always run deboostrap instead of relying on basefiles, and we often need backwards compatibility for dirinstalls.)

The second is that netplan (see https://netplan.io/examples) is the new preferred configuration format for networking; /etc/network/interfaces works only if you install the ifupdown package.  I've included excerpts from our local scripts/DEBIAN/30-interface file below.  It generates either /etc/netplan/*.yaml or /etc/network/interfaces.d/* or /etc/network/interfaces configuration files as appropriate.


###############################################################################

netplan_yaml() {
    local IFNAME="$1"
    local METHOD="$2"
    echo     "Generating netplan configuration for $IFNAME ($METHOD)" >&2
    echo     "# generated by FAI"
    echo     "network:"
    echo     "    version: 2"
    ifclass SERVER ||
    echo     "    renderer: NetworkManager"
    echo     "    ethernets:"
    echo     "        $IFNAME:"
    case "$METHOD" in
      dhcp)
        echo "            dhcp4: true"
        ;;
      static)
        echo "            addresses: [$CIDR]"
        echo "            gateway4: $GATEWAYS_1"
        echo "            nameservers:"
        echo "                search: [$DOMAIN]"
        echo "                addresses: [${DNSSRVS// /, }]"
        ;;
    esac
}

iface_stanza() {
    local IFNAME="$1"
    local METHOD="$2"
    echo "Generating interface configuration for $IFNAME ($METHOD)" >&2
    echo "# generated by FAI"
    echo "auto $IFNAME"
    echo "iface $IFNAME inet $METHOD"
    case "$METHOD" in
      static)
        echo "    address $IPADDR"
        echo "    netmask $NETMASK"
        echo "    broadcast $BROADCAST"
        echo "    gateway $GATEWAYS"
        ;;
    esac
}

…

case "$FAI_ACTION" in
  install|dirinstall)
    ifclass DHCPC && METHOD=dhcp || METHOD=static

    if [ -d $target/etc/netplan ]; then
        # Ubuntu >= 17.10 with netplan.io
        if [ -n "$NIC1" ]; then
            netplan_yaml $NIC1 $METHOD > $target/etc/netplan/01-${NIC1}.yaml
        fi
    elif [ -d $target/etc/network/interfaces.d ]; then
        # ifupdown >= 0.7.41 (Debian >= 8, Ubuntu >= 14.04)
        iface_stanza lo loopback > $target/etc/network/interfaces.d/lo
        if [ -n "$NIC1" ]; then
            iface_stanza $NIC1 $METHOD > \
                $target/etc/network/interfaces.d/$NIC1
        fi
    else
        (
            iface_stanza lo loopback
            iface_stanza $NIC1 $METHOD
        ) > $target/etc/network/interfaces
    fi

    if ! ifclass DHCPC ; then
        [ -n "$NETWORK" ] && echo "localnet $NETWORK" > $target/etc/networks
        if [ ! -L $target/etc/resolv.conf -a -e /etc/resolv.conf ]; then
            cp -p /etc/resolv.conf $target/etc
        fi
    fi
    ;;
esac


###############################################################################



> On May 18, 2018, at 11:04, Thomas Lange <lange at informatik.uni-koeln.de> wrote:
> 
> After building the basefile for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS aka Bionic, my first
> tests look fine. Setting the release name in class/UBUNTU.var to
> ubuntudist=bionic
> and copying the basefile from
> https://fai-project.org/download/basefiles/BIONIC64.tar.xz
> works. Oh, I didn't test yet if the network is running after the
> installation. I will do this later.