Ubuntu 16.04 Installer Boot Prompt Line Breaks

Question

I'm building a VirtualBox Ubuntu 16.04 image. I want to use a preseed file to answer the install questions.

I start the VirtualBox VM with the 16.04 .iso attached to the VM, and drop into the installer's "boot:" prompt by pressing the ESC key. When I type in the many kernel parameters, something enters a line break at 80 characters.

I don't think it's the VirtualBox console, because I can attach the 14.04 .iso and type exactly the same line at the "boot:" prompt, and no line breaks are inserted.

The 16.04 install does not work as expected, presumably because of the line breaks. The 14.04 install does work as expected, i.e. it takes the answers to the installer's questions from the preseed.cfg file.

Any ideas how to prevent the line breaks? Any ideas where to look? I don't know whether that "boot:" prompt is Grub, or the Debian Installer, or what. Please help, and thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It appears that the 16.04 installer has a new command-line way to enter installer boot parameters. It's a single line near the bottom of the screen. You can edit this line by pressing F6 when you're on the screen with the installer options, starting with "Install Ubuntu Server." Using this line allows you to enter a long list of boot parameters. It scrolls horizontally.

So if you're using Packer, the example template.json files you'll find on the Internet for Server 14.04 won't work. Here's the "builders" section that I used, which works:

"builders": [{ "type": "virtualbox-iso", "boot_command": [ "<enter><f6><esc>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs><bs><bs>", "<bs><bs><bs>", "auto preseed/url=http://{{ .HTTPIP }}:{{ .HTTPPort }}/preseed.cfg ", "debian-installer=en_CA locale=en_CA kbd-chooser/method=us ", "hostname=rails-5-jade ", "fb=false debconf/frontend=noninteractive ", "keyboard-configuration/modelcode=SKIP keyboard-configuration/layout=USA ", "keyboard-configuration/variant=USA console-setup/ask_detect=false ", "vga=788 initrd=/install/initrd.gz quiet --- ", "<enter>" ], "boot_wait": "4s", "guest_os_type": "Ubuntu_64", "http_directory": "http", "iso_checksum": "23e97cd5d4145d4105fbf29878534049", "iso_checksum_type": "md5", "iso_url": "http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/ubuntu-16.04-server-amd64.iso", "ssh_username": "vagrant", "ssh_password": "vagrant", "ssh_wait_timeout": "10000s", "disk_size": "8000", "shutdown_command": "echo 'vagrant' | sudo -S shutdown -P now", "vboxmanage": [ [ "modifyvm", "{{.Name}}", "--memory", "512" ], [ "modifyvm", "{{.Name}}", "--cpus", "1" ] ] }],

You can also look at one of my projects in Github: https://github.com/lcreid/rails-5-jade.