packer_demo: A Shell repository from dmccuk

Packer demo (Introduction to packer)

Follow along to create your own AMI image in EC2.

If you use this code, it will cost you some AWS Dollars:

Requirements:

Install awscli and use this to hold you AWS ACCESS & SECRET keys
You'll need to install Packer (https://www.packer.io/downloads.html)
This demo was performed on a Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Linux packages required (install these): git wget unzip
Clone the REPO: git clone https://github.com/dmccuk/packer_demo.git

Follow these Commands:

Commands:
$ mkdir packer
$ cd packer
$ wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.5.1/packer_1.5.1_linux_amd64.zip
$ unzip packer_1.5.1_linux_amd64.zip
$ sudo mv packer /usr/local/bin/
$ packer
Usage: packer [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]

Available commands are:
    build       build image(s) from template
    console     creates a console for testing variable interpolation
    fix         fixes templates from old versions of packer
    inspect     see components of a template
    validate    check that a template is valid
    version     Prints the Packer version

$ git clone https://github.com/dmccuk/packer_demo.git
Cloning into 'packer_demo'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 17, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (17/17), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (15/15), done.
remote: Total 17 (delta 4), reused 7 (delta 1), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (17/17), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

$ cd packer_demo/
$ ls -al
total 28
drwxrwxr-x 3 vagrant vagrant 4096 Feb  5 15:42 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 vagrant vagrant 4096 Feb  5 15:42 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  211 Feb  5 15:42 example.sh
drwxrwxr-x 8 vagrant vagrant 4096 Feb  5 15:42 .git
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 1153 Feb  5 15:42 image1.json
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 4353 Feb  5 15:42 README.md

example .json file

In this file, make the following changes:

Change the region to eu-west-1
The Base image is for Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic. Feel free to change this if you want to. See the option for using Ubunutu 16.04 under the image1.json output below:

Edit the file called image1.json and check the contents:

{
    "variables": {
        "aws_access_key": "{{env `AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID`}}",
        "aws_secret_key": "{{env `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY`}}",
        "region":         "eu-west-1"
    },
    "builders": [
        {
            "access_key": "{{user `aws_access_key`}}",
            "ami_name": "LondonIAC-packer-aws-demo-{{timestamp}}",
            "instance_type": "t2.micro",
            "region": "{{user `region`}}",
            "secret_key": "{{user `aws_secret_key`}}",
            "source_ami_filter": {
              "filters": {
              "virtualization-type": "hvm",
              "name": "ubuntu/images/*ubuntu-bionic-18.04-amd64-server-*",
              "root-device-type": "ebs"
              },
              "owners": ["099720109477"],
              "most_recent": true
            },
            "ssh_username": "ubuntu",
            "type": "amazon-ebs"
        }
    ],
    "provisioners": [
        {
            "type": "shell",
            "inline":[
                "ls -al /home/ubuntu",
                "df"
            ]
        },
        {
            "type": "shell",
            "script": "./example.sh"
        }
    ]
}

If you want to build a ubuntu 16.04 server, replace the name with this:

     "name": "ubuntu/images/*ubuntu-xenial-16.04-amd64-server-*",

Build script

Check this file called example.sh. Here is the contents:

#!/bin/bash
set -x # see all output

# upgrade step
sudo apt update -yq # update the repos
sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt upgrade -yq # upgrade the OS
sudo apt install wget curl git python3-minimal -yq

Validate the file

$ packer validate image1.json
Template validated successfully.

Build your New AMI

Now all we need to do is run the following command:

$ packer build image1.json

Check the output. At the end you should see something like this:

==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
--> amazon-ebs: AMIs were created:
eu-west-1: ami-078042f4aa5654a94

Lets build with our new AMI image and see if it worked!

So just a straight build in the AWS console (search for you AMI-ID). This could just as easily be built using Terraform.

That’s it.

Have fun and enjoy.

After running the above example, your AWS account now has an AMI associated with it. AMIs are stored in S3 by Amazon, so unless you want to be charged about $0.01 per month, you'll probably want to remove it. Remove the AMI by first deregistering it on the AWS AMI management page. Next, delete the associated snapshot on the AWS snapshot management page.

Terminate the image and the snapshot here (Just change the availability zone to the one you built in1)

More info here: https://www.packer.io/intro/getting-started/build-image.html#managing-the-image