Create an Ubuntu One account
To use Ubuntu Core, to build and sign an image, or publish a snap, you need an Ubuntu One account.
Ubuntu One is a single sign-on service (SSO) for Ubuntu and its affiliated projects, including snapcraft.io, the central resource for all snap-related publishing.
See below for details on how to create an account, login, and retrieve your developer account details.
1. Create an Ubuntu One account
To create an account, head over to https://snapcraft.io/account and select the “I don’t have an Ubuntu One account” option to start this process.
Fill out the form that appears and you will then receive an email asking you to verify your account. Click the verification link in the email and complete the reCAPTCHA challenge that follows. Finally, you should accept the Canonical Terms of Service.
Once you’ve logged in again to accept the terms, your Ubuntu One account is ready to use.
You next need to retrieve your developer account identifier. This is part of your Ubuntu One account and is used to link your account to any Ubuntu Core images you create.
The next steps need to be performed in an existing Ubuntu (20.04 or later) environment.
2. Snapcraft credentials
Your developer identifier can be retrieved with the snapcraft command, the tool that’s also used to build and publish snaps. It can be installed by running:
sudo snap install snapcraft --classic
We now need to use snapcraft to export your login authentication credentials, and to place them within an environment variable:
snapcraft export-login credentials.txt
export SNAPCRAFT_STORE_CREDENTIALS=$(cat credentials.txt)
You will be asked for your Ubuntu One email address and password, and encouraged to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) if you haven’t already done so.
3. Retrieve your developer account ID
With your authentication in place, the snapcraft whoami command will now display your developer identifier after the id field:
$ snapcraft whoami
email: <email-address>
username: <username>
id: xSfWKGdLoQBoQx88
permissions: package_access, package_manage, package_metrics, package_push, package_register, package_release, package_update
channels: no restrictions
expires: 2024-04-17T10:25:13.675Z
In the output above, the example id is xSfWKGdLoQBoQx88 – we’ll use this ID for subsequent examples, but you should obviously use your own ID from now on.