Can't install any snaps: too early for operation, device not yet seeded or device model not acknowledged

I have exactly the same problem, but I want to add that I got this in 18.04 as well...

Both systems are fresh installation with only 'apt update && apt upgrade' done.

On both systems is same version of snap

snap 2.38+19.04
snapd 2.38+19.04
series 16
ubuntu 19.04
kernel 5.0.0-13-generic

snap 2.38+18.04
snapd 2.38+18.04
series 16
ubuntu 18.04
kernel 4.15.0-47-generic

I found out that this service is freezed:
snapd.seeded.service - Wait until snapd is fully seeded
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/snapd.seeded.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (start) since Sun 2019-05-12 10:07:11 CEST; 56min 10s ago
 Main PID: 48141 (snap)
    Tasks: 9 (limit: 4617)
   CGroup: /system.slice/snapd.seeded.service
           └─48141 /usr/bin/snap wait system seed.loaded

May 12 10:07:11 xxxxxxxxxxx systemd[1]: Starting Wait until snapd is fully seeded...

Error when trying to install tools is same:
"too early for operation, device not yet seeded or device model not acknowledged"

Can't install any snap tools on 2 completely new systems.

Tried installing snapd on one of my servers with 18.04
snap 2.38+18.04
snapd 2.38+18.04
series 16
ubuntu 18.04
kernel 4.4.38-std-1

It seeded in few seconds correctly:
● snapd.seeded.service - Wait until snapd is fully seeded
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/snapd.seeded.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Wed 2019-05-15 19:43:42 UTC; 2min 6s ago
  Process: 31246 ExecStart=/usr/bin/snap wait system seed.loaded (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 31246 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Tasks: 0 (limit: 2393)
   CGroup: /system.slice/snapd.seeded.service

May 15 19:43:40 xxxxxxxxx systemd[1]: Starting Wait until snapd is fully seeded...
May 15 19:43:42 xxxxxxxxx systemd[1]: Started Wait until snapd is fully seeded.

What might help that where it is working is server that runs for some time, it is VPS virtualized with KVM
Where it doesn't work are Hyper-V virtualized boxes...

@Chad Please provide the following information

$ snap version
$ snap changes
$ snap change 1
$ snap list
$ systemctl status snapd.seeded.service

I got same issue on 18.04 system, here are the logs

On first boot, snapd installs the pre-seeded snaps. During this operation installing additional snaps is not supported. There were additional bugs where an incorrectly prepared seed would stall snapd forever.

I'm marking this bug as incomplete. Dear reporter, can you clarify the following points:

1) Does the issue still happen on fresh install. If so, what is the install media that you used.
2) Does the issue happen on an existing installed system. In that case we can look at some of the logs to understand more.

Happens on brand new install for me. 18.04.2 LTS.

This seems to have worked for me.

1. $ sudo service snapd stop
2. $ sudo apt purge snapd
3. $ sudo apt install snapd

There's some useful discussion about this issue at https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/cant-install-or-refresh-snaps-on-arch-linux/8690/36

One suggestion is to run this before attempting any snap install, et al commands:

snap wait system seed.loaded

Simply doing a:

systemctl restart snapd.seeded.service

Was sufficient to get everything working for me.

I see this very same issue if I just populate a focal container and try
install a simple snap, in this test, juju-lint, which is the first run
by fce. The hint from Anton does mitigate the issue, though it takes
easily 30-60s to execute.

José.

Having this problem with a new multipass based 20.04 VM - when I try to restart snapd.seeded.service, it hangs for about 5 mintues then errors out with:
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.systemd1.manage-units ===
Authentication is required to restart 'snapd.seeded.service'.
Authenticating as: Ubuntu (ubuntu)
Password:
polkit-agent-helper-1: pam_authenticate failed: Authentication failure
==== AUTHENTICATION FAILED ===
Failed to restart snapd.seeded.service: Access denied
See system logs and 'systemctl status snapd.seeded.service' for details.

A purge -> install via apt seems to work fine though.