Example templates for Vagrant and Packer

Intro

There are already some existing GitHub projects providing templates to create machines with Packer. However I created this project for learning purposes . In addition to the packer documentation I also took some inspiration from these great projects:

• kaorimatz: packer-templates
• mwrock: packer-templates
• MattHodge: PackerTemplates
• jacqinthebox: packer-templates
• chef-bento: packer-templates

Structure

• images - images for better illustration in the README.txt
• packerfiles - hcl (variables) for packera
  • iso - os specific variables like iso name and checksum
  • scripts - scripts for provisioning machines with packer
• scripts - script to be used for provisioning
• unattended - preseed files for Linux and Autounattend files for Windows
  • windows - autounattended files for Windows
    • 10-ent-n-2016-LTSB - Windows 10 Enterprise Edition N2016 LTSB
    • ...
  • linux - answer files for Linux
    • Ubuntu - Ubuntu specific files
    • ...
• vagrantfiles
  • @os version@ -

Additional information can be found in the related subfolders

Build

In order to build VMs with packer you can use the gradle script build.gradle as follows

1. Add a gradle.properties file and define the following values. The values represent tokens which will be replaced in respective answer and packer files

   • username=@username for user account to be created@
   • password=@password for user account 'username'@
   • rootpassword=@password for root/Administrator account@

2. Define additional parameters

   • builders=@packer builders to execute e.g. virtualbox-iso@

3. Build machines by calling either gradle buildLinux -PconfigFile=xxx or gradle buildWindows -PconfigFile=xxx. You have to submit a config file (name form packerfiles/iso folder) which defines which distro / windows version to build

   gradle clean buildWindows -PconfigFile=windows_server_2016_standard_x64.hcl

Remark: Some characters may break the scripts e.g. using $ will break windows-base.ps1