In order to take advantage of automatic updates, I've installed the bitcoin-core Snap package under Ubuntu Server 20.04 (no GUI) running on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019.

I need to be able to do the following:

• Change the data directory to /media/bitcoin_data (ext4, a separate VHDX already mounted on startup to store all the data)
  
• Run bitcoin-core.daemon at startup using the unprivileged system account 'bitcoin'.

I can't find any good guides on how to do this without installing the GUI to specify the data directory. (I've actually tried to install 'ubuntu-desktop' through Apt, but after a reboot of the VM, it just displays a blank cursor on the console. I'd rather not have a GUI on this VM anyhow.)

Does anyone else have such a setup that's working?