General

Hashicorp Packer GUNet Templates

Include Templates for:

• VirtualBox

Hashicorp packer provides plugins for various integrations (VirtualBox, VMWare, vSphere, ProxMox) but these plugins actually require a relevant installation (VBManage for VirtualBox, vmrun or vmware for VMWare, a ProxMox endpoint) etc. It is very difficult to setup VirtualBox or VMWare in a Docker environment.

As a result we have implemented a minimal approach:

• The user must install the provider (VMWare, VirtualBox etc) in any way they see fit.
• gunet/jeos-builder will provide the Debian ISO file. Make sure to add an authorized_keys since Packer needs to ssh into the VM to finalize installation.
• The ISO file, Packer template and ssh private key should be placed in the same folder.
• This repo only provides the instructions and Packer templates

Packer

• Install Packer from the Packer site
• Validate the template with packer validate <template file>
• If plugins have not been installed then run packer init <template file>
• Make sure that the necessary files are available such as:
  • JeOS ISO (gunet-jeos-debian-11.8.0.iso)
  • ssh private key file (id_ecdsa.txt)
• Build the VM with packer build <template file>

Variables

• Templates allow input variables for settings such as # of CPUs, memory or disk space. Input variables always have a default value and can be set by the user:
  • Individually, with the -var foo=bar command line option.
  • In variable definitions files, either specified on the command line with the -var-files values.pkrvars.hcl or automatically loaded (*.auto.pkrvars.hcl).
  • As environment variables, for example: PKR_VAR_foo=bar

VirtualBox template variables

• cpus: The # of CPUs. Default 1
• memory: The memory size in MBs. Default 1024
• disk: The disk size in MBs. Default 8192
• format: The output image format. Can be one of ova or ovf. Default ova
• root_password: The root password. Default secret