[13:45] <realtime-neil> What's the ubiquity equivalent for `d-i partman-efi/non_efi_system boolean true` ? That is, how do I force the installation of a UEFI-bootable system in all cases?
[14:36] <xnox> bionic ubiquity does not do that, focal one does.
[14:36] <xnox> realtime-neil:  you must boot in UEFI mode, to install in UEFI
[14:37] <xnox> realtime-neil:  why are you booting in bios, instead of UEFI?
[14:37] <xnox> it's trivial to boot in UEFI with either baremetal or VMs, on Ubuntu.
[14:37] <realtime-neil> Because some of my co-workers can't find the "EFI" checkbox in VirtualBox.
[14:38] <xnox> realtime-neil:  and? what's the point in install in UEFI mode, if they failed to find the checkbox and will not boot in uefi mode.....
[14:38] <xnox> realtime-neil:  why are you not sharing prebuild virtualbox machines with them, and making isos?
[14:39] <xnox> realtime-neil:  you do know that Ubuntu publishes virtualboxes directly, that one can download and customize in-place, or on first boot with cloud-init?
[14:39] <xnox> http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/
[14:39] <xnox> https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/
[14:41] <realtime-neil> xnox: regarding the always-UEFI, because business reasons; regarding the virtualbox images, I really don't want to wed myself to any VM manager that isn't qemu/kvm but I have to support lots of VM methods; regarding published virtualboxen, is it really possible to cloud-init-customize a BIOS vbox to a UEFI vbox?
[14:42] <realtime-neil> xnox: if Focal does what I want, how does it do that?
[14:43] <xnox> all our cloud-images are prebuilt as hybrid UEFI with secureboot or BIOS
[14:43] <xnox> on amd64
[14:44] <xnox> realtime-neil:  it has ubiquity & partman fixes to always create ESP parition with secureboot, shim and grub. I do not believe it's available in bionic.
[14:44] <xnox> i'm not sure why you are customizing bionic from scratch. instead of customizing focal desktop iso.
[14:44] <xnox> they both use ubiquity, and are the same, but there are most of the things you are after fixed in focal already.
[14:44] <xnox> i.e. better hybrid ubiquity/partman-efi, etc.
[14:45] <realtime-neil> xnox: because business reasons and support and people paying money; also, supporting BIOS firmware via hybrid things isn't really what I need; foisting a UEFI installation in all possible cases is what I need.
[14:46] <realtime-neil> xnox: if you have a magic xorriso incantation that will produce a UEFI-only bootable *.iso, then I'm definitely interested
[14:47] <xnox> drop any references to mbr boot / isolinux etc. and just keep the things that add ESP
[14:48] <xnox> realtime-neil:  https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-cdimage/debian-cd/ubuntu/view/head:/tools/boot/groovy/boot-arm64#L32
[14:48] <xnox> is how we create arm64 UEFI only .iso
[14:48] <xnox> it should work for amd64 UEFI only .iso too
[14:48] <realtime-neil> excellent
[14:49] <xnox> yeah, cause "simply" doing partman-efi force uefi install, when installer booted in bios mode will usually not help. as most often the system one installed will continue to try to boot in bios mode. you really do want to boot installer in uefi mode, if uefi is all you want to support.
[14:50] <xnox> *s/one/once
[14:57] <realtime-neil> xnox: Oh, I was fine having media that, having booted from BIOS, then deposits an as-yet-unbootable installation. My main goal is to prevent anything thusly deposited from being BIOS-booted. A BIOS complaining for lack of bootable media following a successful installation is a happy result for me.
[14:58] <realtime-neil> What I must _not_ have, is a MBR on my product --- again for business and money concerns.
[15:38] <xnox> realtime-neil:  i see. but i thing given those constraints your installer media should not have bios bits either, and should not be bios bootable either.
[15:38] <xnox> realtime-neil:  i.e. hard fail if [ -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars ] is not there
[15:40] <realtime-neil> xnox: you're entirely correct --- which is why I'm currently stripping the `-isohybrid-mbr "/usr/lib/ISOLINUX/isohdpfx.bin"` out of my little `mkiso` script
[15:40] <realtime-neil> xnox: where would that check for sysfs efivars go? I can't get ubiquity to run my preseed/early_command
[15:43] <xnox> because it is done "differently"
[15:43] <xnox> You can use preseed/early_command with the live CD; it will be run by "casper" (the component which sets up a live environment at boot time) from the initramfs. Please note that, if you want to affect files in the live environment, this means that you must prefix their filenames with /root.
[15:43] <xnox> so it should be executing, but it will be executing in the intird, when nothing is booted mounted yet
[15:44] <xnox> realtime-neil:  dunno, modify something on filesystem.squashfs to fail boot. I.e. add a systemd unit that checks for that and thus fails the boot.
[15:49] <realtime-neil> xnox: executing from the initrd is fine; as long as I can print an ugly message to the terminal
[16:04] <xnox> i dont' think efivars is mounted from initrd.
[16:04] <xnox> but not sure
[16:04] <xnox> so you might need to attempt to mount it, and if it fails, explode
[18:39] <realtime-neil> xnox: it might be moot; I just ripped out everything from `-isohybrid-mbr` to `-eltorito-alt-boot` and it's working great; i.e., qemu seabios doesn't see it, but qemu ovmf does
[18:41] <realtime-neil> once i dd it to a USB stick, the AMI firmware on my testbox recognizes it as a "UEFI USB CD/DVD"; which is exactly what I was going for
[19:31] <xnox> horay!
[22:24] <Norm_42> Hi I'm very new to linux but i'm need to get the oem "out of box setup" to allow the user to setup a static network config (IP, mask, dns, gateway).  I am trying to modify the oem-config/ubiquity setup that is already on the rootfs for the nVidia jetson nano.
[22:27] <Norm_42> The text setup that uses the debconf_ui asks the networking questions, but the GUI based setup doesn't.  Is there an easy way to turn this on?  Does it already exist in the gtk_ui and I just need to enable it somehow?
[22:28] <Norm_42> Anyway I hope some kind soul can help me or point me somewhere where I might ask...
[22:36] <xnox> Norm_42:  if you have gtk ui, users are simply expected to login, and use network-manager ui to configure static network.
[22:37] <xnox> Norm_42:  there is no "guided" graphical ux for netwroking as part of first-boot user configuration
[22:43] <Norm_42> Thanks, this is supposed to be an unattended device that you config once.  I was hoping to ditch the GUI and just go with the text setup but I couldn't figure out how to prevent the messages that were coming to the console from interfering with the debconf_ui
[22:43] <Norm_42> After configuring the device the user is never supposed to have to login
[23:04] <xnox> Norm_42:  why do you have gui? why do you have oem-config? why are you not using cloud-image and configure it non-interactively with cloud-init?
[23:05] <xnox> Norm_42: did you boot quiet and/or change tty, or force debconf_ui oem-config to own the console? (whichever is the right console for you)