Creating a working Ubuntu 20.04 VMware Image

A while back I was a bit frustrated at Ubuntu for their defaulting to Cloud-Init in the server edition of Ubuntu 18.04. Well I’m right there again, but now with Ubuntu 20.04.

First of all, Cloud-Init is back, and it’s not more useful to me now than it was the last time. My process is based on the tips in VMware’s KB54986:

sudo apt purge cloud-init && sudo apt autoremove
sudo rm -rf /etc/cloud
sudo sed -i -e 's&D /tmp&#D /tmp&g' /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf

[Unit]
(...)
After=dbus.service

Ubuntu 20.04 also retains the idiotic habit of not presenting the computer’s MAC address as the identifier for DHCP requests, which necessitates a change to /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml:

network:
  ethernets:
    ens192:
      dhcp4: true
      dhcp-identifier: mac
  version: 2

The final piece of the puzzle is to upgrade vCenter to at least version 6.7U3g, since that’s the first one that supports guest customization of Ubuntu 20.04 machines.

Tags: Ubuntu 20.04vCenterVMware