Another package went missing from Ubuntu 26.04 LTS’s minimal cloud images, this time xxd , a CLI tool for viewing files as hexadecimals.

It’s the second time this has happened, following the accidental removal of curl I reported on in August.

Both packages vanished for the same reason.

When Canonical dropped the pollinate tool, which was used to generate ‘randomness’ during boot, it rejigged the dependency chain in the image ‘seed’. Packages that got pulled in by it, no longer were.

While xxd wasn’t present on the initial set of image, it was still available to install¹ from the Ubuntu’s archive.

Canonical has since restored xxd (and curl) to the minimal cloud images for 26.04. While the xxd package is far from critical to running the OS, Canonical said it didn’t “want to regress people that got used to rely on it being present.”

For xxd, it is merely a reprieve. Canonical has since intentionally removed xxd from the 26.10 minimal images (not the archive; it’s still available to install using apt).

Unlike on a desktop, where a missing package is spotted easily, headless server setups make it a harder to tell when a tool isn’t present – doubly so here, when it’s not something critical to the OS or a common use case.

But while it might not be reassuring that this slipped through, I find it cathartic to know even Ubuntu developers get stung by tangled dependency chains removing things unexpectedly.

1. These images are often used in places where security and package installs are strictly controlled for security purposes. It’s not a given everyone could just ssh in to run apt install xxd , even if most people who would use it, could. A broader point, really. ↩︎