Looking to install ubuntu-desktop on Proxmox LXC Template 21.04

[HiFiJ]

Hi everyone,

thanks for all your great work on ProxMox!
I had good experiences creating a LXC container with the Ubuntu 20.10 template and adding xRDP to get remote access with even sound redirection working.
Now I wanted to redo this with the standard Ubuntu 21.04 container template.
I believe that in the newer (21.04) template no desktop is installed (also the template size is much smaller compared to the 20.10 template). Therefore I wanted to apt install ubuntu-desktop (also tried xubuntu-desktop) the missing parts for a desktop session.
After downloading all packages and extracting them, apt starts to set up the packages and comes to stop midway through with

...
Setting up python3-cairo:amd64 (1.16.2-4build2) ...
Setting up libwps-0.4-4:amd64 (0.4.12-1) ...
Setting up acpi-support (0.143) ...
Failed to restart acpid.service: Transport endpoint is not connected
See system logs and 'systemctl status acpid.service' for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript acpid, action "restart" failed.
Failed to get properties: Transport endpoint is not connected
dpkg: error processing package acpi-support (--configure):
installed acpi-support package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Setting up python3-renderpm:amd64 (3.5.66-1) ...
Setting up libfile-listing-perl (6.14-1) ...
...

This error (transport endpoint not connected) repeats many times more, always delaying for a couple of minutes. Ultimately the installation fails and the container does not run/work anymore.

Anyone around here who could give me a hand in getting this working?
Thanks & best regards,

Joost

ProxMox 6.3, fully updated

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

My guess - the ubuntu-desktop metapackage pulls in quite many additional packages, some of which are not working too well on an lxc container.

Try comparing the list of packages on the 20.10 container, which is working to a fresh 21.04 container, and only installing the differences

(you can get a list of installed packages with `dpkg -l`)

I hope this helps!

 

[HiFiJ]

Thanks a lot, this sounds like a great plan to me. I will follow this route tomorrow.
Btw. I mixed things up a bit in my original post; the comparison will be "ProxMox Template Ubuntu 20.04" versus Linuxcontainers.org Ubuntu 21.04 Template.
Bye!

 

[mortee]

What was the outcome of this? I'm getting the Transport endpoint is not connected errors while trying to install ubuntu-desktop on 21.10 in an LXC.

 

[shoff]

@mortee Current status is same-ish. Installing the package 'ubuntu-desktop' still fails invariably with the same error on Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS, but it has been reported that there were at least a couple of instances where older Ubuntu LXC containers were able to have ubuntu-desktop installed while using older Proxmox versions (which would include older LXC versions). The error remains the same to this day on the latest versions of Proxmox 7.2-1, "transport endpoint is not connected." I happened to try it for giggles the other day, and my progress consistently stops around the 73% mark during package installation (post-extraction) on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

It is as reported, though, with regard to cause. Metapackages (packages which contain/refer to many sub-packages) do not play nicely with LXC containerization. Most of the time, it is just a case of massive metapackages containing so many packages that there's bound to be one or two broken packages that cause the whole process to fail.

Fortunately, there are plenty of lightweight desktop environments working well in LXC. Lightdm (which was deliberately made as a lighter GNOME), Xfce, LXQt, among others, all compile fine in LXC. Just get something either modular (e.g., Xfce) or something that doesn't have a ton of dependencies. Plenty of options to choose from for basic graphical support.

 

[dcato]

I encountered the same problem and this works for me.

> apt-get install -y acpid
> systemctl disable --now acpid.service acpid.socket acpid.path
> apt install ubuntu-desktop

cf. https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/odd-behavior-with-ubuntu-22-04-and-lxd-22-04-containers/14275

 

[staj]

so I installed ubuntu-desktop on 20.04........how do I go about seeing the desktop? I'm in the proxmox console and just see the usual command line interface.

 

[LnxBil]

so I installed ubuntu-desktop on 20.04........how do I go about seeing the desktop? I'm in the proxmox console and just see the usual command line interface.

You need to use VNC or x2go in order to "see" something. A LX(C) container does not have any graphics card, so there is no default output device.

 

[staj]

You need to use VNC or x2go in order to "see" something. A LX(C) container does not have any graphics card, so there is no default output device.

thanks for letting me know.

ubuntu-desktop has a built-in vnc server that I'd prefer to use but how can I configure it from the command line? I have only ever configured it from the desktop before.

 

[LnxBil]

ubuntu-desktop has a built-in vnc server that I'd prefer to use but how can I configure it from the command line? I have only ever configured it from the desktop before.

I don't use Ubuntu, yet on other system I just run vncserver.