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I need to get Ubuntu running on RPi not to do any sort of snap development or use, but running some regular server.

Is there a way to get past the SSO setup and get back to plain old apt? Maybe by editing the image before flashing it onto the SD?

Regular Ubuntu Server only has official (bug-free) images fir RPi 2. For various reasons, I'm very frustrated with Raspbian.

2 Answers 2

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I successfully modified Ubuntu Server 16.04's RPi 2 image to boot on 3 using instructions on the official Raspberry Pi page on Ubuntu Wiki. Instructions were general directions without specific commands, following is the compilation of commands I used:

$ sudo losetup -P /dev/loop0 ubuntu-16.04.4-preinstalled-server-armhf+raspi2.img
$ sudo mount /dev/loop0p2 /mnt/
$ sudo mount /dev/loop0p1 /mnt/boot/

## .img is mounted on /mnt/

$ sudoedit /mnt/boot/config.txt
## find and edit the following lines
...
kernel=uboot.bin
device_tree_address=0x02000000
...
## change to the following; note the changed kernel and commented device_tree_address
...
kernel=vmlinuz
initramfs initrd.img followkernel
#device_tree_address=0x02000000
...
$ sudo cp -r /mnt/lib/firmware/4.4.0-1085-raspi2/device-tree/{bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb,overlays/} /mnt/boot/

## all changes are done, now to unbind the .img

$ sudo umount /mnt/boot && sudo umount /mnt
$ sudo losetup -D

## flash the SD card

dd if=/path/to/.img of=/dev/path/to/sd-card conv=fsync status=progress
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No. You cannot use Ubuntu Core images without SSO, nor can you use apt to manage them. You would need to install an Ubuntu Server image ARM build for the Raspberry Pi 3.

There is an arm64 ISO available, but not a preinstalled image for Raspberry Pi 3, it seems.

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  • Yes, I know, hence the question if there's any possible way.
    – Oxwivi
    Mar 21, 2018 at 17:10
  • If the rpi2 images boot you could use them, but it'd be 32-bit instead of 64-bit of course. But no, you can't use snappy ubuntu core without SSO. It's not a traditional Linux install at that point and doesn't really use local users. It requires SSO to grab your SSH public key, and sync down so you can ssh into the device and use it.
    – dobey
    Mar 21, 2018 at 19:26
  • I sucessfully used that image, do you know how to get the WiFi started?
    – Oxwivi
    Mar 24, 2018 at 13:16
  • Also, please @ my name, I didn't receive notification of your last comment.
    – Oxwivi
    Mar 24, 2018 at 13:19
  • This is incorrect. Using SSO is required when using the pre-built images which come with console-conf, a configuration wizard for the most basic setup. It is fairly easy to create an Ubuntu Core image with your own user: ubuntu.com/core/docs/system-user
    – Farshid.T
    Mar 15 at 15:21

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