Ubuntu 26 : root password not defined

Community
1

Hi,

I’m trying configure provisioning for Ubuntu 26.04. It seems to works quite fine, except the root password is not defined.
With the same templates, when I install Ubuntu 24 the hashed password is in the shadow file, but with Ubuntu 26, the root password seems to be empty. So the result is everybody can do “su -” and become root.
I use this template : Preseed Autoinstall cloud-init user data
I think it’s a change in the way Ubuntu manage the root account, during installation.

Regards
JF

2

In the preseed, these lines, in the user-data section, fix the problem :

chpasswd:
  list: |
    root: <%= password_to_create %>
  expire: false

Regards,

JF

3

Could you submit a PR to add this? Sounds like a big oversight. This is the upstream file:

Another option may be to explicitly disable the root password.

4

I prefer the root password being set as it allows to work with emergency shell and other debug scenarios more easily. Also it would be more consistent between the different distributions installed via Foreman.

5

Done !

I hope I done it right because I’m not familiar with PR.

JF