Reinstalling a headless server with Ubuntu Server 26.04 and full disk encryption, over the network, without a monitor or keyboard
How an old Kubuntu desktop became an encrypted Ubuntu Server 26.04.1 with nothing but SSH: GRUB starts the network installer, autoinstall answers every question, and an SSH server inside the boot environment takes the disk passphrase. Warning. This wipes the whole disk of the machine. One wrong file and the server is a brick until someone brings a screen. Test the exact install file in a virtual machine first (step 6), keep a copy of everything you need from the old system, and have a screen and keyboard within reach the first time. The machine ASUS PRIME B550M-A, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, RTX 3060, NVMe SSD Before: Kubuntu 22.04 (a desktop install, used as a server) After: Ubuntu Server 26.04.1 LTS on a LUKS-encrypted disk Headless: no monitor or keyboard, reached only over SSH The BIOS had just been updated from Linux the same way (see the previous post ) The work was done remotely over SSH with the help of an AI assistant (Claude, by Anthropic), which wrote the install file,...
