[Bug 1877618] Re: 20.04 fails to boot via PXE (amd64) - "hidden .disk not found, and hard to discover"

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

[Expired for casper (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60
days.]

** Changed in: casper (Ubuntu)
       Status: Incomplete => Expired

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1877618

Title:
  20.04 fails to boot via PXE (amd64) - "hidden .disk not found, and
  hard to discover"

Status in subiquity:
  Invalid
Status in casper package in Ubuntu:
  Expired
Status in livecd-rootfs package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  The problem:
  The following PXE cmdline fails to boot the 20.04 Desktop iso served via NFS but works flawlessly for 19.10 and earlier:
  "imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd root=/dev/nfs boot=casper netboot=nfs nfsroot=<server_ip>:<iso_share_path> ip=dhcp splash quiet --"

  During early boot, the only error message printed is:
  "Unable to find a live file system on the network" with no further help on why the failure occoured or how to resolve it.

  During debugging it was also found that the above message is printed
  for multiple failures during boot, which does not help to
  differientiate what's actually failing for what reason.

  How to reproduce:
  1. Download the official ubuntu desktop iso
  2. Mount iso as loop on /mnt/iso
  3. Copy (cp -r /mnt/iso/*) iso files to nfsroot location

  No, do not use '*' use '.' as in cp -r /mnt/iso/. => as per
  documentation at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveCDNetboot

  4. Copy vmlinuz and initrd from iso to tftp location
  5. Boot client PC
  6. Watch boot fail

  The solution (case specific):
  In my case the underlying problem was caused by the .disk folder not being copied by cp to the nfsroot location. Once that was resolved, the above cmd line started working again.

  Suggested fixes:
  1. instead of .disk, use a folder which is not hidden by default and will hence be captured by normal copy operations
  2. (significantly) improve error messages when currently the "no live file systems found" message would be triggered to better guide users to possible error causes and solutions
  3. update documentation to point out importance of the .disk directory for PXE (and other) ways of booting

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