packer-CentOS8

What is packer-CentOS8 ?

packer-CentOS8 is a set of configuration files used to build an automated CentOS 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 CentOS 8 VM image using VMware Workstation use the following commands:

cd c:\packer-CentOS8
packer build -only=vmware-iso centos8.json

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

cd c:\packer-CentOS8
packer build -only=virtualbox-iso centos8.json

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

By default the .iso of CentOS 8 is pulled from http://miroir.univ-paris13.fr/centos/8/isos/x86_64/CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-boot.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 centos8.json file.

{
  "variables": {
      "iso_url": "http://miroir.univ-paris13.fr/centos/8/isos/x86_64/CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-boot.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: