Installation fails on netcup Ubuntu 26.04 image: /etc/default/grub missing

[Bushido]

Hi,

I tried to install Cloudron on a fresh netcup root server (AMD EPYC 9645, 8 dedicated cores, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB NVMe) using netcup's own image "Ubuntu 26.04.1 UEFI amd64 (Minimal)".

The setup script (Cloudron 10.1.6) fails during "Installing base dependencies" with:

Init script failed. See /var/log/cloudron-setup.log for details

The end of /var/log/cloudron-setup.log shows:

==> Enable memory accounting
sed -e 's/^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="\(.*\)"$/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="\1 cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1 panic_on_oops=1 panic=5"/' -i /etc/default/grub
sed: can't read /etc/default/grub: No such file or directory

What I found on the server:

• GRUB is installed and used (/boot/grub and /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu exist, systemd-boot is not installed)
• /etc/default/grub does not exist
• /etc/default/grub.d/ and /etc/default/grub.ucf-dist do exist

So it seems netcup's image ships its GRUB settings only in grub.d and leaves out the main config file.

Running the script a second time is not possible, because nginx/docker/nodejs are now already installed ("Please start with a fresh Ubuntu install").

My plan is to reinstall the image and run this before cloudron-setup:

cp /etc/default/grub.ucf-dist /etc/default/grub

Questions:

1. Is this a safe workaround, or is there a better way?
2. Could the setup script handle a missing /etc/default/grub (e.g. create it or fall back to /etc/default/grub.d/)?

Thanks!

[jdaviescoates]

@Bushido I've his this in the past. It's part of why I moved away from Netcup and back to Hetzner. In short, I think your safest bet is to install one of the full Ubuntu images before installing Cloudron. A bit of a pain as they don't make that a simple as you'd expect (and really we'd expect their own image to not he so stripped down in the first place)

[girish]

I have removed that portion of code altogether. It was added very early during Cloudron 5-6 timeframe. As a hack, you can just touch /etc/default/grub and then install Cloudron.

[Bushido]

@jdaviescoates Thank you so much, your advice was spot on!

I reinstalled the server with the full Ubuntu 26.04 Server from netcup's DVD drive (ISO install via the SCP console, "Ubuntu Server" instead of "minimized"), ran a full apt upgrade, and after that cloudron-setup went through without any issues.

For anyone else hitting this on netcup: the "Minimal" images in the SCP are missing /etc/default/grub (and possibly more), so going the ISO route is the safest bet.

Really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience. It saved me a lot of frustration!