autoinstall with nocloud does not seed password when identity is interactive

[ubuntu-server-builder]

This bug was originally filed in Launchpad as LP: #1883180

Launchpad details

affected_projects = ['subiquity']
assignee = None
assignee_name = None
date_closed = 2020-06-15T11:06:57.191161+00:00
date_created = 2020-06-11T21:45:30.096727+00:00
date_fix_committed = None
date_fix_released = None
id = 1883180
importance = undecided
is_complete = True
lp_url = https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-init/+bug/1883180
milestone = None
owner = tylerecouture
owner_name = tylerecouture
private = False
status = invalid
submitter = tylerecouture
submitter_name = tylerecouture
tags = ['medium', 'nocloud']
duplicates = [1959833]

Launchpad user tylerecouture(tylerecouture) wrote on 2020-06-11T21:45:30.096727+00:00

I am using the autoinstall process with nocloud provider. I want to manually enter the hostname, so have set the identity section to interactive. However, when I do this, the password section is blank instead of pre-seeded with the value provided. The other identity sections (hostname, username, realname) are preseeded as expected, when the interactive section comes up. Only the pw is missing.

1. Tell us your cloud provider: ds=nocloud-net
2. Any appropriate cloud-init configuration you can provide us:

user-data

#cloud-config
autoinstall:
  version: 1
  interactive-sections:
    - identity
  identity:
    hostname: change-me
    password: $6$xnH...
    username: admin
    realname: Admin

[ubuntu-server-builder]

Launchpad user tylerecouture(tylerecouture) wrote on 2020-06-11T21:45:30.096727+00:00

Launchpad attachments: cloud-init.tar.gz

[ubuntu-server-builder]

Launchpad user Paride Legovini(paride) wrote on 2020-06-15T11:06:23.493788+00:00

Hi and thanks for filing this bug report.

I believe this is a bug in subiquity (the Ubuntu Server installer) rather than a bug in cloud-init. I am reassigning it.

[ubuntu-server-builder]

Launchpad user Michael Hudson-Doyle(mwhudson) wrote on 2020-06-17T09:09:36.908344+00:00

Hm I wonder what to do here. I can see the problem, otoh, we can't put the password in the form already because we don't know what it is. I guess we can put a few *s in the box to indicate that there is a value. Or add a checkbox "use password from autoinstall". Or maybe something else...

[ubuntu-server-builder]

Launchpad user tylerecouture(tylerecouture) wrote on 2020-06-17T17:52:59.252807+00:00

I think a few *'s would be intuitive for users.

[ubuntu-server-builder]

Launchpad user Joe Cooper(joe-virtualmin) wrote on 2022-01-10T18:08:34.191170+00:00

It's such a common use case to want to only ask for hostname, it's really frustrating that there's no way to do that. I mean, it's generally frustrating that all of the options are bundled into categories and you always have to make the whole section interactive, but this one option in particular is painful since you can't even pre-fill the password.

Filling with asterisks is an obvious solution, very widely used by other projects.