I recently pulled initramfs logic out of the base build hook, and
dropped that into the `replace_kernel` function. Any cloud image that
does not leverage the generic virtual kernel was expected to call
`replace_kernel` to pull in a custom kernel. That function will
disable initramfs boot for images that use a custom kernel.
Minimal cloud images on amd64 use the linux-kvm kernel, but the build
hook does not utilize the `replace_kernel` function. Instead, the
kernel flavor is set in `auto/config`. I pulled that logic out of
`auto/config` and am now calling `replace_kernel` in the build hook.
I also moved a call to generate the package list so that it will pick
up the change to the linux-kvm kernel.
It was reported and confirmed in LP bug #1875400
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-images/+bug/1875400) that on the public
KVM cloud image there exists a large list of packages marked for auto-removal.
This should never be the case on a released cloud image.
These packages are marked for auto-removal because in the KVM image binary hook
we removed both initramfs-tools and busybox-initramfs packages. Due to package
dependencies this also removed:
busybox-initramfs* cloud-initramfs-copymods* cloud-initramfs-dyn-netconf*
cryptsetup-initramfs* initramfs-tools* initramfs-tools-core* multipath-tools*
overlayroot* sg3-utils-udev* ubuntu-server*
But it did not remove all the packages that the above list depended on.
This resulted in all those packages being marked for auto-removal because they
were not manually installed nor did they have any manually installed packages
that depended on them.
The removal of initramfs-tools and busybox-initramfs was to avoid the
generation of initramfs in images that should boot initramfsless.
This requirement is obsolete now because the initramfsless boot handling
is now handled via setting GRUB_FORCE_PARTUUID in /etc/default/grub.d/40-force-partuuid.cfg.
In test images I have verified that GRUB_FORCE_PARTUUID is set and that
boot speeds have not regressed.
LP: #1875400
Vagrant images were previously put at 10G, but this was a regression
from Trusty, in which they were 40G. This made it a tough sell for
users to upgrade if they were using a Ubuntu desktop experience.
This change does not impact disk usage as Vagrant with the virtualbox
provider dynamically allocates space with the VMDK. On a test system,
the VMDK took up 1.1G of disk space according to df, and after
creating a 2G file in Vagrant, the VMDK grew to 3.1G.
Therefore, users who are running on a system with little free space will
not see adverse effects if they upgrade to a new vagrant image