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Installing a minimal version of Ubuntu

This guide will walk you through the process of installing a minimal version of Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat) on various types of systems that support UEFI (including creating AMIs for EC2 instances) or Raspberry Pis.

Required packages

Before we begin, it's important to make sure you have the necessary packages installed. This guide requires the use of:

  • parted to partition volumes
  • dedebootstrap to bootstrap the operationg system
  • zerofree to optionally clean up volumes after installation.

You can install these packages by running the following command:

apt-get update && apt-get install --yes parted debootstrap zerofree

Preparing the volume

Regardless of what kind of system you're trying to install, you will need an empty volume to install Ubuntu. You will need to set the root volume's device as the BASE_DEV environment variable.

Normal volume

If targeting a normal device you can simply export the BASE_DEV environment variable directly:

# Simply export the root device upon which we want to install the OS
export BASE_DEV=/dev/sdb

Disk image

If you want to create an image to be later written to an SD card or USB stick, (think Raspberry Pi) you need to first create the image file:

# Create a simple image file, 4Gb will suffice for this install
dd if="/dev/zero" of="/raspberry-os.img" bs=4M count=1024 conv=fsync status=progress

Then you can use the loopback interface to use the image as a normal disk:

# Find our first available "loopback" device and use it as our BASE_DEV
BASE_DEV="$(losetup -f)"

# Associate our image file with the loopback device
losetup -P "${BASE_DEV}" "/raspberry-os.img"

EC2 Volume

From the EC2 console, create a new volume (4GiB should suffice) and attach it to a running EC2 instance where we can run the installation process.

Your mileage might vary, but simply export the device name (in most cases /dev/nvme1n1) as the BASE_DEV environment variable.

# Simply export the root device upon which we want to install the OS
export BASE_DEV=/dev/nvme1n1

Partitioning the volume

We will create two partitions on the disk: a small (256 MiB) FAT32 partition for boot and the rest of the space as our EXT4 root volume.

You can use parted to simply create a basic partition layout.

GPT and UEFI

# Create the GPT partition table
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" mklabel gpt

# Create our two BOOT and ROOT partitions
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" mkpart UEFI 1MiB 256MiB
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" mkpart ROOT 256MiB 100%

# Setup flags on our UEFI partition
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" set 1 boot on
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" set 1 esp on

MSDOS (for Raspberry Pi)

# Create the MSDOS partition table
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" mklabel msdos

# Create our two BOOT and ROOT partitions
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" mkpart primary fat32 1MiB 256MiB
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" mkpart primary ext4 256MiB 100%

# Set the boot partition as bootable
parted -s "${BASE_DEV}" set 1 boot on

Formatting and mounting

Before moving on to the next step, it's important to give the system a moment to populate the device tree. This may take a second or two.

Once the kernel has finished re-populating the device tree, we can proceed to identify the UUIDs and devices of our partitions. To do this, we will use the following commands:

# Find the UUID and device of the boot partition
export BOOT_UUID="$(partx -go UUID -n 1 "${BASE_DEV}")"
export BOOT_DEV="$(realpath /dev/disk/by-partuuid/"${BOOT_UUID}")"

# Find the UUID and device of the root partition
export ROOT_UUID="$(partx -go UUID -n 2 "${BASE_DEV}")"
export ROOT_DEV="$(realpath /dev/disk/by-partuuid/"${ROOT_UUID}")"

With our partition UUIDs and devices identified, we can now format and mount our file systems.

We'll need to format the boot partition as FAT32 and the root partition as EXT4. To do so, use the following command:

mkfs.fat -n "UBUNTU_BOOT" -F 32 "${BOOT_DEV}"
mkfs.ext4 -F "${ROOT_DEV}"

Mounting partitions for UEFI systems

For UEFI systems we'll mount the root partition under /mnt and the boot partition will be mounted under /mnt/boot/efi:

mount "${ROOT_DEV}" /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
mount  "${BOOT_DEV}" /mnt/boot/efi

Mounting partitions for Raspberry Pi

On the other hand, for the Raspberry Pi, we'll mount similarly the root partition under /mnt and, but the mountpoint of our boot partition is /mnt/boot/firmware:

mount "${ROOT_DEV}" /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/firmware
mount  "${BOOT_DEV}" /mnt/boot/firmware

Minimal OS packages

TODO: we need to set up our APT repo to download the packages

curl -L -o '/mnt/minimal-os.deb' \
  'https://github.com/usrz/minimal-ubuntu/releases/download/v2.0.0/minimal-os_2.0.0_all.deb'
curl -L -o '/mnt/minimal-ec2-os.deb' \
 'https://github.com/usrz/minimal-ubuntu/releases/download/v2.0.0/minimal-ec2-os_2.0.0_all.deb'
curl -L -o '/mnt/minimal-rpi-os.deb' \
 'https://github.com/usrz/minimal-ubuntu/releases/download/v2.0.0/minimal-rpi-os_2.0.0_arm64.deb'

Architecture and repository URL

To bootstrap the system, you will need to find the correct URL of the Ubuntu repository to fetch packages from, and the architecture of the system you are going to install.

We export this into the REPO_URL and TARGET_ARCH environment variables.

Remember, Raspberry Pis, AWS Graviton instances, M1/M2 Macs are ARM64!

Ubuntu repositories

Normally you will want to use a local mirror of the Ubuntu repositories. In my case (Germany), I'll use the de mirror.

For ARM64, the repository base URL will be:

export REPO_URL="http://de.ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports"
export TARGET_ARCH="arm64"

For X86_64 the repository base URL will be:

export REPO_URL="http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu"
export TARGET_ARCH="amd64"

AWS repositories

Canonical provides mirrors of the various Ubuntu repositories in each AWS region, so you can use those for speed. You can get the region calling:

export AWS_REGION="$(curl --silent http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/placement/region)"

Then for ARM64 the repository base URL will be:

export REPO_URL="http://${AWS_REGION}.clouds.ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports"
export TARGET_ARCH="arm64"

While for X86_64 the repository base URL will be:

export REPO_URL="http://${AWS_REGION}.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu"
export TARGET_ARCH="amd64"

Bootstrapping the system

Now we can simply use debootstrap to install the basics of the OS:

debootstrap --arch="${TARGET_ARCH}" --variant=minbase --include=systemd noble /mnt "${REPO_URL}"

Once debootstrap is finished, we can mount the various filesystems required by the installation:

mount -t proc proc "/mnt/proc"
mount -t sysfs sysfs "/mnt/sys"
mount -o bind /run "/mnt/run"
mount -o bind /dev "/mnt/dev"
mount -o bind /dev/pts "/mnt/dev/pts"

And then chroot into our new environment using the C locale (as no other locale has yet been generated):

eval $(LANG=C LC_ALL=C LANGUAGE=C locale) chroot "/mnt" /bin/bash --login
bind 'set enable-bracketed-paste off'

Operating system installation

We continue the installation by configuring some basic files.

First of all, we need to prepare the /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts files:

# Set the generic "ubuntu" host name
echo "ubuntu" > "/etc/hostname"

# Basic "hosts" file for "ubuntu"
cat > "/etc/hosts" << EOF
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 ubuntu ubuntu.local
EOF

Then we'll set up the /etc/mtab link and /etc/fstab file:

ln -sf "/proc/self/mounts" "/etc/mtab"

cat > "/etc/fstab" << EOF
$(printf "# %-41s %-15s %-5s %-17s %-5s %s" "PARTITION" "MOUNTPOINT" "TYPE" "OPTIONS" "DUMP" "FSCK")
$(printf "UUID=%-38s %-15s %-5s %-17s %-5s %s" $(findmnt -no UUID,TARGET,FSTYPE "${ROOT_DEV}") "defaults,discard" "0" "1")
$(printf "UUID=%-38s %-15s %-5s %-17s %-5s %s" $(findmnt -no UUID,TARGET,FSTYPE "${BOOT_DEV}") "umask=0077" "0" "1")
EOF

We then need to prepare our sources list for APT in /etc/apt/sources.list:

cat > "/etc/apt/sources.list" << EOF
deb ${REPO_URL} noble main restricted universe multiverse
deb ${REPO_URL} noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb ${REPO_URL} noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
EOF

We then want to update the system, and install all packages required for a minimal system.

The minimal-os package provided here is a meta-package that requires only a minimal set of dependencies, and provides some basic system configuration.

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

export APT_OPTIONS="\
  -oAPT::Install-Recommends=false \
  -oAPT::Install-Suggests=false \
  -oAcquire::Languages=none"

apt-get $APT_OPTIONS update && \
  apt-get $APT_OPTIONS --yes dist-upgrade && \
  apt-get $APT_OPTIONS --yes install /minimal-os.deb

Then for sanity's sake, let's keep only the minimal-os package marked as manually installed (this will help with apt-get autoremove):

apt-mark showmanual | xargs apt-mark auto
apt-mark manual minimal-os

Kernel and helper packages

Next step is to install a kernel and our helper package for AWS EC2 or Raspberry Pi systems.

AWS EC2 kernel

For AWS EC2 instances, the minimal-ec2-os package will install grub and its configurations on the root device. The kernel comes from linux-aws:

apt-get --yes install linux-aws /minimal-ec2-os.deb

After installing, as AWS EC2 boot via UEFI and grub simply review the contents of /etc/default/grub and run:

# Install GRUB on the boot device, and update the kernel
grub-install "${BASE_DEV}"
update-grub

Raspberry Pi kernel

For the Raspberry Pi, we don't need a boot loader, and the minimal-rpi-os will take care of preparing the /boot/firmware filesystem for booting:

apt-get --yes install linux-raspi /minimal-rpi-os.deb

Other systems

For all other systems the linux-generic kernel is a good starting point:

apt-get --yes install linux-generic grub-efi

We then need to configure the grub boot loader, as a starting point use:

# Basic minimal GRUB configuration
cat > "/etc/default/grub" << EOF
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE="hidden"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset console=tty1"
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Minimal Ubuntu OS"
EOF

# Install GRUB on the boot device, and update the kernel
grub-install "${BASE_DEV}"
update-grub

User login

The minimal-os package installs the ubuntu user. If you need to log in interactively (e.g. from the console) set the password now:

passwd ubuntu

If you need SSH access, we only allow SSH keys. Place the authorized SSH public key in /home/ubuntu/.ssh/authorized_keys.

NOTE: If you are in EC2-land

Finally, we allow password-less sudo for the ubuntu user. If this is not to your liking, take a peek at the /etc/sudoers.d/00-minimal-os file.

Cleaning up

Let's clean up our APT state and exit the chrooted environment:

apt-get clean && exit

We then want to clean up a bunch of files left over by the installation, some of them will be re-created once minimal-ec2-os-setup runs the first time:

rm -f /mnt/minimal-*os*.deb \
      /mnt/etc/ssh/ssh_host_*_key* \
      /mnt/root/.bash_history \
      /mnt/var/log/alternatives.log \
      /mnt/var/log/apt/* \
      /mnt/var/log/bootstrap.log \
      /mnt/var/log/dpkg.log

At this point we can simply unmount our volume:

umount -Rlf /mnt

If needed (for example in case of an EC2 volume to create an AMI, or a disk image for a Raspberry Pi) we can clean out any unused block in our root filesystem:

zerofree -v "${ROOT_DEV}"

Creating an AMI

First of all clean out any unused block in our root filesystem:

Going back to the EC2 console we can now detach the volume we created from the EC2 instance we used for setup, and create a snapshot from it.

Once the snapshot is created, we can then create an image from it (remember, select the snapshot then Actions -> Create image from snapshot, it is not in the AMI section of the console).

Remember to select the following:

  • Architecture: either arm64 or x86_64
  • Root device name: always /dev/sda1
  • Virtualization type: always Hardware-assisted virtualization
  • Boot mode: always UEFI

Raspberry Pi image

Remeber to detach the loopback device of our image, first:

losetup -d ${BASE_DEV}

Then you can use dd to write the image on an SD card or USB drive.

Remember, if you're doing this process on a Mac, using /dev/rdiskX is a lot faster than using /dev/diskX, so, depending on what device your SD card or USB drive maps to, use something like this:

sudo dd if="raspberry-os.img" of="/dev/rdisk10" bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress