What is the Pro daemon?#

Ubuntu Pro Client sets up a daemon for two types of machines:

  • Azure and GCP generic cloud images

  • Cloud Pro images

For the first type of images, the daemon is responsible for detecting if an Ubuntu Pro license has been purchased for the machine. If a Pro license is detected, then the machine is automatically attached.

For the Pro cloud images, the daemon is responsible for retrying the auto-attach operation if it fails on first boot. When that happens, users will be notified in MOTD or when they run pro status with a message like:

Failed to automatically attach to an Ubuntu Pro subscription 1 time
The failure was due to: ERROR_MSG
The next attempt is scheduled for RETRY_DATE
You can try manually with `sudo pro auto-attach`.

The “retry auto-attach” operation will keep retrying for a month. If we still cannot attach to the machine by then, we display the following message:

Failed to automatically attach to an Ubuntu Pro subscription NUM times.
The most recent failure was due to: ERROR_MSG
Try re-launching the instance or report this issue by running `ubuntu-bug ubutu-advantage-tools`
You can try manually with `sudo pro auto-attach`.

Disabling the daemon#

If you are not interested in Ubuntu Pro services and don’t want your machine to be automatically attached to your subscription, you can safely stop and disable the daemon using systemctl as follows:

sudo systemctl stop ubuntu-advantage.service
sudo systemctl disable ubuntu-advantage.service