Ansible Role: Packer Debian/Ubuntu Configuration for Vagrant VirtualBox

This role configures Debian/Ubuntu (either minimal or full install) in preparation for it to be packaged as part of a .box file for Vagrant/VirtualBox or Vagrant/Vmware_desktop deployment using Packer.

Requirements

Prior to running this role via Packer, you need to make sure Ansible is installed via a shell provisioner, and that preliminary VM configuration (like adding a vagrant user to the appropriate group and the sudoers file) is complete, generally by using a Kickstart installation file (e.g. ks.cfg) or preseeding with Packer. An example array of provisioners for your Packer .json template looks something like:

"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/catosplace.packer_debian",
    ]
  }
],

The files should contain, at a minimum:

scripts/ansible.sh:

An 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

An 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:
    - catosplace.packer_debian

You might also want to add another shell provisioner to run cleanup, erasing free space using dd, but this is not required (it will just save a little disk space in the Packer-produced .box file).

If you'd like to add additional roles, make sure you add them to the role_paths array in the template .json file, and then you can include them in main.yml as you normally would. The Ansible configuration will be run over a local connection from within the Linux environment, so all relevant files need to be copied over to the VM; configuratin for this is in the template .json file. Read more: Ansible Local Provisioner.

Role Variables

Available variables are listed below, along with default values (see defaults/main.yml):

vmware_install_open_vm_tools: no

(VMware only) Using the vmware_install_open_vm_tools variable, you can select what kind of integration components will be installed into the VMware box. The default (no) installs VMware Tools, and not open-vm-tools.

Read more:

• 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. This role has been updated by Catosplace to fix issues when creating a desktop packer based instance.