Pass manually configured ipxe static ip to ubuntu installer

[Keno]

I do not have dhcp set up, so I entered the ipxe menu to manually set an ip. This allowed it to successfully chain boot.netboot.xyz. However, the ip I had manually set in ipxe is not being passed down to the ubuntu installer. The installer does then offer to perform an interactive netmount, but unfortunately, that is currently broken on Ubuntu 20.04.3 (see #995). I was hoping it might be possible to pass down the static ip configured in ipxe to the ubuntu installer. Since netboot.xyz does not the correct image location for the ubuntu installer iso, this would also work around the broken upstream.

[antonym]

I've been meaning to make the Ubuntu/Debian more static friendly, there's just a few variations of setting up the ip addressing. You can probably modify the kernel options via the Utility menu if you need to try one of these ip= options:

Ubuntu:

ip=IFACE,ADDRESS,NETMASK,GATEWAY[:IFACE,ADDRESS,NETMASK,GATEWAY]*

(http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man7/casper.7.html)

Debian:

ip=[DEVICE]:[CLIENT_IP]:[NETMASK]:[GATEWAY_IP]:[NAMESERVER] [,[DEVICE]:[CLIENT_IP]:[NETMASK]:[GATEWAY_IP]:[NAMESERVER]]

Let you specify the name(s) and the options of the interface(s) that should be configured at boot time. Do not specify this if you want to use dhcp (default). It will be changed in a future release to mimic official kernel boot param specification (e.g. ip=10.0.0.1::10.0.0.254:255.255.255.0::eth0,:::::eth1:dhcp). (https://manpages.debian.org/testing/live-boot-doc/live-boot.7.en.html#ip)

Kernel Standard that live-boot is referring to:

ip=<client-ip>:<server-ip>:<gw-ip>:<netmask>:<hostname>:<device>:<autoconf>

(https://kernel.googlesource.com/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ak/linux-mce-2.6/+/v2.6.12/Documentation/nfsroot.txt#80)

[divinity76]

fwiw im seeing the same issue for booting gparted ( #1055)

[divinity76]

same problem for Debian 11 Live system

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[divinity76]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

no don't close it, it's still a real, annoying, unfixed issue

(but it only affects a small number of users, because most already have dhcp)

[antonym]

Still valid, just need to find some time to work it and figure out a good incantation for ip=

[antonym]

I think part of the issue too is that on Red Hat based distros, you can pass BOOTIF which will set the networking on the MAC specified. This can be set in iPXE to reflect the PXE interface that was booted and therefore has the network connection.

This lets you avoid having to predictively set the device interface which can vary wildly for users. I think that the existing live-boot/casper code does not have this functionality. I'm wondering if the device is left off, if then live-boot will attempt to scan all present networking devices to find one that works.

Again, just need to find some time to test in the lab or parse the live-boot code, if anyone has tested or knows, please feel free to update here.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[panicmarvin]

After 22.04, wait for Ubuntu Casper to prompt interactive static IP configuration, and I have successfully installed ISO. Just need to wait for a while.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[divinity76]

yeah, this is still a problem on Ubuntu 20.04+18.04, but it's no longer a problem on Ubuntu 22.04 installer (:

.... unfortunately the 22.04 installer doesn't actually work for me, it crashes on "IO errors on /dev/loop2" - only me?

[divinity76]

Update: turns out, the 22.04 installer will CRASH with 1GB ram, HANG on 2GB ram, and install fine on 3GB ram

[nicexe]

Update: turns out, the 22.04 installer will CRASH with 1GB ram, HANG on 2GB ram, and install fine on 3GB ram

The iso for ubuntu server itself is 2GB so your actual usable ram would be 2GB less than what the system has.

[antonym]

Previously the installer kernels didn't take up much memory, and could just stream down the installer files and packages but because Ubuntu decided to change how that functionality works, it takes more memory as the install ISO has to be pulled into memory after the network boot kernels have loaded.