[18:32] <MTecknology> I'm trying to figure out how to automate the installation of a 22.04 laptop, and apparently full automation requires the server image?? ... which I guess is fine since the iso is about half the size.   I'm trying to get something basic working and just dropped a directory into the iso at /extra/, and then ...
[18:33] <MTecknology>  changed the boot parameters to "linux    /casper/vmlinuz --- cloud-config-url=/dev/null 'ds=nocloud;s=file:///cdrom/vwg/default/' autoinstall"
[18:34] <MTecknology> (copy/paste typo on the path ... it's actually correct on disk)
[18:35] <MTecknology> The log looks like it's reading that configuration and I don't see any errors, but when it boots up, it just hangs at the initial installer prompt
[18:52] <MTecknology>   /cdrom/extra/default/ has two files, one empty file named meta-data, and another user-data copy/pasted from https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall-quickstart
[19:12] <MTecknology> oh ... is that "#cloud-config" at the top of "user-data" not a comment? I changed only that and now it's working. :/
[19:15] <Odd_Bloke> Yeah, that is used to identify the file as that particular format: in some places it's used, you can pass a shell script instead of cloud-config (and historically that shell script was not required to have a shebang so, for backwards compatibility, some distinguishing string is needed).
[19:15] <MTecknology> ... man, this ubuntu boot stuff is one horrible mess.
[21:32] <rbasak> MTecknology: I think it's quite neat - the shebang is already interpreted, so that's just a special shebang if you want cloud-config instead of a script. AIUI, #!/usr/bin/perl will work just fine if you supply that in userdata, too. So if you don't like #cloud-config, just use whatever other interpreter you want.
[21:33] <rbasak> It's also not "ubuntu boot stuff" BTW. It's the de facto standard across distros.
[21:33] <MTecknology> look at the origins
[21:35] <MTecknology> I'm not complaining about that one single silly thing, the whole subiquity/ubiquity+cloud-init+autoinstall making it entirely unclear what is going on at each step to just get to the point where the installer is installing the OS that it was designed to install.
[21:36] <MTecknology> The documentation doesn't make it clear what component is responsible for what and I'm not entirely sure the people writing the software even know.
[21:37] <MTecknology> Plenty of tools exist that claim they can convert a preseed file to this "format," but they have as much clue as the rest of us.
[21:40] <MTecknology> Imagine running "bash ./foo" but still having to stick "#!/bin/bash" at the top of ./foo