packer-Rocky8

What is packer-Rocky8 ?

packer-Rocky8 is a set of configuration files used to build an automated Rocky Linux 8 virtual machine images using Packer. This Packer configuration file allows you to build images for VMware Workstation and Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Prerequisites

• Packer
  • https://www.packer.io/intro/getting-started/install.html
• A Hypervisor
  • VMware Workstation
  • Oracle VM VirtualBox

How to use Packer

Commands to create an automated VM image:

To create a Rocky Linux 8 VM image using VMware Workstation use the following commands:

cd c:\packer-Rocky8
packer build -only=vmware-iso rocky8.json
packer build -only=vmware-iso rocky8_uefi.json

To create a Rocky Linux 8 VM image using Oracle VM VirtualBox use the following commands:

cd c:\packer-Rocky8
packer build -only=virtualbox-iso rocky8.json
packer build -only=virtualbox-iso rocky8_uefi.json

If you omit the keyword "-only=" both the Workstation and Virtualbox VMs will be created.

By default the .iso of Rocky Linux 8 is pulled from https://download.rockylinux.org/pub/rocky/8/isos/x86_64/Rocky-8.6-x86_64-minimal.iso

You can change the URL to one closer to your build server. To do so change the "iso_url" parameter in the "variables" section of the rocky8.json file.

{
  "variables": {
      "iso_url": "https://download.rockylinux.org/pub/rocky/8/isos/x86_64/Rocky-8.6-x86_64-minimal.iso"
}

Keyboard configuration

By default the keyboard is set to be US qwerty. To switch it to something else edit the following file:

• ./http/ks.cfg

Set the keyboard parameter as desired, for example: keyboard --vckeymap=fr --xlayouts='fr'

Default credentials

The default credentials for this VM image are:

Username	Password
packer	packer
root	packer

Credit

Original work created by @eaksel