script to prep a Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04 fresh install to create a VMware template

ubuntu-vmware-template-prep.sh

# Update your OS packages:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

# Prevent cloudconfig from preserving the original hostname and reset the hostname:
sudo sed -i 's/preserve_hostname: false/preserve_hostname: true/g' /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg
sudo truncate -s0 /etc/hostname
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname localhost

# Remove the current network configuration:
sudo rm /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml

# Clean shell history:
cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c

echo "Done. All that's left is to shutdown the host via: sudo shutdown now"