Packer templates for Ubuntu

Overview

This repository contains Packer templates for creating Ubuntu Vagrant boxes.

Current Boxes

Pre-built boxes can be found here: vagrantup

Building the Vagrant boxes with Packer

To build all the boxes, you will need VirtualBox and VMware Fusion / VMware Workstation and Parallels Desktop installed.

We make use of JSON files containing packer templates to build specific versions of Ubuntu. For example, to build Ubuntu 22.04, use the following:

packer build ubuntu2204-desktop.json

If you want to make boxes for a specific desktop virtualization platform, use the -only parameter. For example, to build Ubuntu 22.04 for VirtualBox:

packer build -only=virtualbox-iso ubuntu2204-desktop.json

The templates currently support the following desktop virtualization strings:

• virtualbox-iso - VirtualBox desktop virtualization
• vmware-iso - VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation desktop virtualization
• parallels-iso- Parallels Desktop Pro desktop virtualization

Building the Vagrant boxes with the box script

We've also provided a wrapper script bin/box for ease of use, so alternatively, you can use the following to build Ubuntu 22.04 for all providers:

bin/box build ubuntu2204-desktop

Or if you just want to build Ubuntu 22.04 for VirtualBox:

bin/box build ubuntu2204-desktop virtualbox

Building the Vagrant boxes with the Makefile

A GNU Make Makefile drives a complete basebox creation pipeline with the following stages:

• build - Create basebox *.box files
• test - Verify that the basebox *.box files produced function correctly
• deliver - Upload *.box files to Vagrant Cloud

The pipeline is driven via the following targets, making it easy for you to include them in your favorite CI tool:

make build       # Build all available box types
make test        # Run tests against all the boxes
make deliver     # Upload box artifacts to a repository
make test-cloud  # Test deployed boxes (after downloading them)
make clean       # Clean up build detritus

Proxy Settings

The templates respect the following network proxy environment variables and forward them on to the virtual machine environment during the box creation process, should you be using a proxy:

• http_proxy
• https_proxy
• ftp_proxy
• rsync_proxy
• no_proxy

Tests

Automated tests are written in Serverspec and require the vagrant-serverspec plugin to be installed with:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-serverspec

The bin/box script has sub-commands for running both the automated tests and for performing exploratory testing.

Use the bin/box test sub-command to run the automated Serverspec tests. For example to execute the tests for the Ubuntu 22.04 box on VirtualBox, use the following:

bin/box test ubuntu2204-desktop virtualbox

Variable overrides

There are several variables that can be used to override some of the default settings in the box build process. The variables can that can be currently used are:

• cpus
• disk_size
• memory
• update

The variable HEADLESS can be set to run Packer in headless mode. Set HEADLESS := true, the default is false.

The variable UPDATE can be used to perform OS patch management. The default is to not apply OS updates by default. When UPDATE := true, the latest OS updates will be applied.

The variable PACKER can be used to set the path to the packer binary. The default is packer.

The variable ISO_PATH can be used to set the path to a directory with OS install images. This override is commonly used to speed up Packer builds by pointing at pre-downloaded ISOs instead of using the default download Internet URLs.

The variables SSH_USERNAME and SSH_PASSWORD can be used to change the default name & password from the default vagrant/vagrant respectively.

The variable INSTALL_VAGRANT_KEY can be set to turn off installation of the default insecure vagrant key when the image is being used outside of vagrant. Set INSTALL_VAGRANT_KEY := false, the default is true.

The variable CUSTOM_SCRIPT can be used to specify a custom script to be executed. You can add it to the script/custom directory (content is ignored by Git). The default is custom-script.sh which does nothing.

Contributing

1. Fork and clone the repository.
2. Create a new branch, please don't work in your master branch directly.
3. Add new Serverspec tests in the test/ subtree for the change you want to make.
4. Run make test to test all templates or bin/box test on individual boxes to see if the tests pass.
5. Fix stuff if necessary. Repeat steps 3-5 until done.
6. Update README.md and AUTHORS to reflect any changes.
7. If you have a large change in mind, it is still preferred that you split them into small commits. Good commit messages are important. The git project has some nice guidelines on writing descriptive commit messages.
8. Push to your fork and submit a pull request.