Ubuntu 20 on RaspberryPi with wireless for Science!

For a few years now I have been running BOINC on four raspberry pi - kind of like a poor man's compute cluster.

Most of that time was spent chugging away for Seti@Home (in fact I have been chugging away for Seti@Home for a really long time)

With the shuttering of Seti@Home I needed to discover a new project and stumbled on Science United ( http://scienceunited.org ).
This was great.  I could still support science and it was based on the BOINC compute platform.

This plan all went sideways when I added science united to my raspi pi that was running raspian.
Lots of searching, a hack to use a different repo - because come to find out, science unite requires a minimum version of the BOINC client.  One older than the raspian repo supports by default.

So, the hack I found was fine, but I was not happy.  So I went to setting up Ubuntu Server on my raspberry pis.
Heading over to https://ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi I checked the version of my raspi pis and downloaded the correct image.  Uncompressed using 7-zip, and then burned the image using win32diskimager.  Just like I had done 50 billion times before.

I then attached my monitor, small keyboard and booted.
And quickly discovered, no way to set-up the wifi.
Some searching led me to tons of articles describing using the ubuntu image generator and editing network-config.
(Guess how many posts were copies of the original ubuntu tutorial? - I hate that)

Well, that is fine an dandy.  But does not totally work, as some other folks tried to point out.  Plus you have this very specific image generator installed that you will use how often?  Once per year.  ( waste )
Because: guess what?  You just installed a server operating system.  They don't have wireless, on purpose.  You have to add / wireless support.  Just like any server OS (windows too).

Here is how I finally sorted it all out:

1. Attach your pi to your network using a cable
2. boot
3. logon using the logon 'ubuntu' and password 'ubuntu' ( if you have not done this prior and this is the first boot, be patient.  After to logon screen, you have to wait a bit for key generation comments to show up after cloud-init finishes.  After this you can logon and be fored to change your password)
4. change your password
5. update the pi:
1. sudo apt update
2. sudo apt upgrade
6. install the wireless tools:
1. sudo apt install wireless-tools
7. run iwconfig - notice you have a wlan network interface now, most likely named 'wlan0'
8. copy a netplan sample wireless config to the netplan folder:
1. sudo cp /usr/share/doc/netplan/examples/wireless.yaml /etc/netplan/wireless.yaml
9. edit that sample config file:
1. sudo nano /etc/netplan/wireless.yaml
10. set the interface name to 'wlan0'  (the example interface of  'wlp2s0b1' won't get you anywhere)
11. I am using dhcp on my network, so:
1. set dhcp4 to yes
2. remove the addresses, gateway4, nameservers, and addresses lines (ctrl + k does this in nano)
3. set the name of your access point by replacing network_ssid_name with the name of your wireless network
4. Set the password for the access point
12. save the file ( ctrl + x in nano )
13. test your configuration changes with the command 'sudo netplan try'
14. then I do 'sudo netplan generate' for safety

Now, I also want to rename my raspi pi ( aka change the hostname )
using 'sudo hostnamectl set-hostname ` it is done.

Now, restart, detach the network cable and test the wireless settings.

Now, if you want to attach to Science United, here is the rest:

1. install the BOINC client:
1. sudo apt-get install boinc-client
2. install the BOINC management utility for command line (I found that I needed this to properly attach to Science United)
1. sudo apt-get install boinctui
3. run the boinctui
1. boinctui
2. attach to the localhost ( just hit enter )
3. F9
4. Projects
5. Connect to account manager
6. Science United
7. Enter your credential for Science United

Watch the status to make sure you attached and begin receiving work.
If all is good, exit the boinctui with F9 -> File -> quit

There you go.  Your old raspi pis being useful, supporting science without any wire except the power.