[Bug 2142391] Re: Attempting to create a user named root fails on 24.04.4

[Olivier Gayot]

Hello and thank you for your bug report.

The command that failed is:

'useradd', 'root', '--comment', 'ubuntu', '--shell', '/bin/bash', '--
groups', 'adm,cdrom,dip,lpadmin,plugdev,sudo,users', '--create-home'

The call to useradd was added to 24.04.4 when we backported the
following:

> Earlier user creation
>
> Previously, the user account was only created the first time the newly installed system was started.
> This made it harder to write automated post-installation scripts, since the user account was not
> available at the point when they executed (typically as part of late-commands). Now, the user account
> is created earlier in the installation, so it is available for automated post-installation scripts.
>
> This also addresses some crashes when installing Ubuntu unattended on specific versions of VirtualBox.

and sadly, that fails in your scenario because the root user already
exists on the system (it is automatically created).

It isn't clear to me if allowing people to use `root` as the username
should be considered a bug or a feature.

For now, I'd recommend using another username (for instance ubuntu) and
using sudo since it's configured to be password-less.

Thanks,
Olivier

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2142391

Title:
  Attempting to create a user named root fails on 24.04.4

Status in subiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  We used ansible to deploy Ubuntu 24.04.4 Desktop&Server automatically.
  During installation, we encountered the dialog, please refer to
  attached deploy_vm.png. And the log files under /var/log/installer are
  attached. Could you please help check it? Before this version, it
  always worked well. BTW, configs for this vm are as below: NVME disk,
  VMXNET3 network and EFI firmware. In fact, auto installation failed
  for all configs.

  Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

  Winnie Yue

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