DEV Community: ivnilv

Missing network configuration on fresh Ubuntu Server offline installation

ivnilv — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 15:37:33 +0000

Installing Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS in an offline mode (no LAN cable or WiFi connected) leaves you with an unmanaged network interface which requires manual configuration post-install.

The interface enp4s0 is unmanaged by systemd-networkd and also the service itself is disabled.

NOTE: This guide applies to Ubuntu server. On Ubuntu desktop you have the NetworkManager service installed and the steps would be different.

To fix the problem follow the steps below:

Create a Brand New Netplan Configuration File

Look into /etc/netplan. You will probably see the dir is empty. This means the installer completely gave up on configuring the network and didn't create any profiles. Create a new file, e.g. vim /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml.

Paste the following configuration

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  ethernets:
    enp4s0:
      dhcp4: true

This makes the interface managed by networkd instead of the desktop NetworkManager.

Fix permissions
The new file needs to be readable only by root so fix it's permissions chmod 600 /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml.
Enable network service
Enable the network service and make it start on boot:

systemctl enable systemd-networkd
systemctl start systemd-networkd

Run netplan Finally, we need to tell Ubuntu to use our new configuration and activate the network

netplan generate
netplan apply

Network should be up!

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Reclaim free space from VirtualBox VM on Windows host

ivnilv — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:42:02 +0000

When you delete files in your virtualbox VM in order to free up space on the host filesystem, this space is not automatically reclaimed.
In order for the host system to see the changes you need to rewrite the free space with zeroes.
Follow the below steps to perform this operation:

Install zerofree package. It is needed to rewrite the free space with zeroes.
Mount the filesystem as "readonly". This is needed for the tool to be able to perform it's task. If you're working with the "/", easiest way to mount it as readonly is to edit the kernel parameters.
- Edit /etc/default/grub.
- Find the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line.
- Add init=/bin/bash to it
- reboot
Run zerofree -v /dev/sdX. This could run for some time, depending on the size of your disk.
After it's done, run exec init to finish booting up.
Shutdown the VM in order to be able to run the next command which requires a lock on the VDI volume.
On the Windows host run VBoxManage.exe modifymedium "path\to\disk.vdi" --compact

How to Switch Between Different Backends in Haproxy Using Hatop

ivnilv — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 12:55:51 +0000

... with zero downtime for clients !

Learn more at:

https://blog.ivnilv.com/posts/how-to-switch-between-different-backends-in-haproxy-with-hatop/

Using Certbot Letsencrypt with nginx

ivnilv — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 16:10:37 +0000

Check out my latest post!

https://blog.ivnilv.com/posts/using-certbot-letsencrypt-with-nginx/

Rotating Kubernetes etcd certificates in Kops managed cluster

ivnilv — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 12:56:26 +0000

https://blog.ivnilv.com/posts/rotating-kops-etcd-certificates/