Comment 4 for bug 1998376

Reopening for Subiquity since despite what I mentioned above, we see the drivers (for server) being installed:

2022-11-30 17:33:11,157 DEBUG root:37 start: subiquity/Install/install/postinstall/ubuntu-drivers-install: installing third-party drivers
2022-11-30 17:33:11,158 DEBUG subiquitycore.utils:114 astart_command called: ['systemd-run', '--wait', '--same-dir', '--property', 'SyslogIdentifier=subiquity_log.2936', '--property', 'PrivateMounts=yes', '--setenv', 'PATH=/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/bin/subiquity/bin:/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/bin/subiquity/usr/bin:/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/bin:/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin', '--setenv', 'PYTHONPATH=/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/lib/python3.8/site-packages:/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages:/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/usr/lib/python3/site-packages:', '--setenv', 'PYTHON=/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/usr/bin/python3.8', '--setenv', 'SNAP=/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696', '--', '/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/696/usr/bin/python3.8', '-m', 'curtin', '--showtrace', '-vvv', '--set', 'json:reporting={"subiquity": {"type": "journald", "identifier": "curtin_event.2936.8"}}', 'in-target', '-t', '/target', '--', 'ubuntu-drivers', 'install', '--gpgpu']

The presence of --gpgpu in this command is what makes Subiquity install the wrong drivers (i.e., server vs desktop).

The logic is based on the value of the client_variant variable. This variable is initialized to "server" and then can be overwritten by a POST request to /meta/client_variant ; which we can see in the logs.

2022-11-30 17:23:02,729 INFO aiohttp.access:233 [30/Nov/2022:17:23:02 +0000] "POST /meta/client_variant?variant=%22desktop%22 HTTP/1.1" 200 189 "-" "Dart/2.18 (dart:io)"

My assumption is that we read the client_variant variable too soon and don't re-read it after the desktop installer supplies a value for us.