Ansible Role: Packer Debian/Ubuntu Setup for Vagrant VirtualBox

This role sets up Debian/Ubuntu (either minimal or full version) to be packaged into a .box file for Vagrant/VirtualBox or Vagrant/Vmware_desktop using Packer.

Requirements

Before using this role with Packer, you need to have Ansible installed through a shell provisioner and ensure that preliminary VM setup (like adding a vagrant user to the right group and sudoers) is done, usually with a Kickstart installation file (e.g., ks.cfg) or by preseeding with Packer. A sample array of provisioners for your Packer .json file looks like this:

"provisioners": [
  {
    "type": "shell",
    "execute_command": "echo 'vagrant' | {{.Vars}} sudo -S -E bash '{{.Path}}'",
    "script": "scripts/ansible.sh"
  },
  {
    "type": "ansible-local",
    "playbook_file": "ansible/main.yml",
    "role_paths": [
      "/Users/jgeerling/Dropbox/VMs/roles/geerlingguy.packer-debian",
    ]
  }
],

The files must include, at minimum:

scripts/ansible.sh:

Example for Ubuntu 16.04

#!/bin/bash -eux
# Install Ansible repository and Ansible.
apt -y install software-properties-common
apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
apt-get update
apt-get install ansible

Example for Debian 8.8

#!/bin/bash -eux
# Install Ansible repository and Ansible.
apt -y install software-properties-common
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ansible/ansible/ubuntu trusty main" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 93C4A3FD7BB9C367
apt -y update
apt -y install ansible

ansible/main.yml:

---
- hosts: all
  sudo: yes
  gather_facts: yes
  roles:
    - geerlingguy.packer-debian

You might want to add another shell provisioner to clean up and erase free space using dd, but it's not necessary (it just helps save some disk space in the Packer-generated .box file).

If you want to add more roles, make sure you include them in the role_paths array in the .json template file, and then you can add them in main.yml as usual. The Ansible setup will run locally from within the Linux environment, so all necessary files must be copied over to the VM; the setup for this is in the .json template. For more information, see Ansible Local Provisioner.

Role Variables

Here are the available variables with default values (found in defaults/main.yml):

vmware_install_open_vm_tools: false

(For VMware only) Using the vmware_install_open_vm_tools variable lets you choose the type of integration components to install in the VMware box. The default value (false) will install VMware Tools instead of open-vm-tools.

For more information, see:

• open-vm-tools
• open-vm-tools on GitHub
• VMware support for Open VM Tools (2073803)
• VMware Tools

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

---
- hosts: all
  roles:
    - geerlingguy.packer-debian

License

MIT / BSD

Author Information

This role was created in 2014 by Jeff Geerling, author of Ansible for DevOps.