Lab Updates: Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS Template

Earlier this year I posted a thread on creating an Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS Template for use in a lab. You can check that out here: https://enterpriseadmins.org/blog/virtualization/lab-updates-ubuntu-18-04-template/

In late April of this year (2020) Canonical released a new Ubuntu 20.04 LTS edition. I recently followed the same steps from my previous 18.04 template to build a new template — but with 2 additional changes.

Guest OS Customization Fails

The first issue I noticed was that customization specs were not properly applying, resulting in a deployed VM that had the following symptoms:

• No IP Address customization
• No Hostname customization
• Network Adapter disconnected

I found the following bug report that had a workaround related to a similar previous issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/1793715. I also found a VMware KB article with more details related to 18.04 here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/54986. While I didn’t encounter this issue with 18.04, the workaround resolved my issue with 20.04. Specifically, I performed one action — removing cloud-init. I did this by running a single command:

sudo apt purge cloud-init

Install package for ifconfig

While we are modifying packages for this template, there is one command that I was missing — ifconfig. While I know I can find the IP other ways (like with the command ip address), I still like having ifconfig. We can include the package containing this command with another command:

sudo apt install net-tools

Conclusion

Removing one package and adding another are the only differences between my Ubuntu Server 20.04 template and the Ubuntu Server 18.04 template (previous post here).