Setting up Ubuntu 18.04 server on an Intel NUC

I was finally able to buy a new NUC8i7beh. It was on backorder for a few months. Now I get to set it up and expand my home test cluster to 3 servers. This explains setting up Ubuntu 18.04.3 server. It is easier today than it used to be -- don't need HWE enabled kernel, wifi easy to setup.

The first problem was installing Ubuntu 18.04.3 server. The default download is the live server ISO. It didn't work for me. I am not alone and the workaround is to use the non-live ISO. My vague memory is that the default download in the past was the non-live ISO as I didn't have this problem in the past.

Wifi step 1

Next up is wifi. The Ubuntu desktop UI makes that easy to setup but I am not using desktop. Fortunately this was easy:

1. apt install wireless-tools
2. apt install network-manager
3. reboot (this started network manager)
4. nmcli d (to confirm my wifi device was listed)
5. nmcli d wifi list (to confirm my wifi network is available)
6. nmcli d wifi connect $networkName (to connect)

Wifi step 2

I want wifi to start on reboot. The steps above don't make that happen so I reread my old post which has steps using /etc/network/interfaces. When I cat that file it states that ifupdown has been replaced by netplan. OK, man netplan starts with:

netplan - YAML network configuration abstraction for various backends

Oh no, YAML! But it turned out OK. With some web searches I figured out how to configure wired and wireless, and made both optional to avoid hangs waiting for network configuration on startup. I use this for /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml with an open wifi network.

But the first step is: apt install wireless-tools wpasupplicant

network:

  version: 2

  renderer: networkd

  ethernets:

    eno1:

      dhcp4: yes

      optional: true

  wifis:

    wlp0s20f3:

      dhcp4: yes

      optional: true

      access-points:

        horses: {}

Fun with Python and scons

scons --clean
-> Python 3.5 or greater required, but you have Python 2.7.17

# Edit /usr/bin/scons to use Python3
scons --clean
-> SCons 3.0.4 or greater required, but you have SCons 3.0.1

python3 -m pip install scons
-> /usr/bin/python3: No module named pip

Check out docs on pip
"pip is already installed if you are using Python 2 >=2.7.9 or Python 3 >=3.4"

python3 --version

-> Python 3.6.9

Maybe docs are wrong? The fix was:

• sudo apt install python3-pip
• /usr/bin/env python3 $( which scons )