Packer Templates mainly for the Vagrant libvirt and VirtualBox

⚠️ Outdated repository

This GitHub repository is outdated and no longer actively maintained. Feel free to fork it if needed.

Things which may still be handy:

The packer template build process is using Ansible to configure the Linux/Windows VMs.

Packer build process is using GitHub Action + MacOS runners to build the images which are uploaded to Vagrant Cloud.

Anyway - I recommend to use some other alternatives...

Customized+Clean/Minimal boxes for libvirt and VirtualBox

GitHub repository for bug reports or feature requests

https://github.com/ruzickap/packer-templates/

Vagrant Cloud repository for the images build by these templates

https://app.vagrantup.com/peru

Requirements

QEMU-KVM
Vagrant
Vagrant Libvirt Plugin
VirtualBox (Version 6.1 or later)
Packer (Version 1.8.0 or later)

Login Credentials

root / Administrator password is vagrant or is not set.

Default login credentials:

Username: vagrant
Password: vagrant

VM Specifications

Drivers / Devices added for the VMs for specific providers.

Libvirt

VirtIO dynamic Hard Disk (up to 50 GiB)
VirtIO Network Interface
QXL Video Card (SPICE display)
Channel Device (com.redhat.spice.0)

VirtualBox

SATA Disk

Configuration

Minimal Linux installation

en_US.UTF-8
keymap for standard US keyboard
UTC timezone
NTP enabled (default configuration)
full-upgrade
unattended-upgrades
/dev/vda1 mounted on / using ext4/xfs filesystem (all files in one partition)
no swap

Customized Linux installation

Some of the images/templates begins with "my_" - they are preconfigured with Ansible role:

there are usually many customization depends on distribution - all are described in Ansible playbook.
added packages: see the Common list and Debian list or CentOS list
mouse disabled in Midnight Commander + other MC customizations
preconfigured snmpd, vim, screen
logrotate using xz instead of gzip
logwatch is running once per week instead of once per day
sshd is using only the strong algorithms
sysstat (sar) is running every minute instead of every 5 minutes

Minimal Windows installation

UTC timezone
IEHarden disabled
Home Page set to "about:blank"
First Run Wizard disabled
Firewall allows Remote Desktop connections
AutoActivation skipped
DoNotOpenInitialConfigurationTasksAtLogon set to true
WinRM (SSL) enabled
OpenSSH installed and enabled
New Network Window turned off
Administrator account enabled
EnableLUA
Windows image was finalized using sysprep: unattended.xml

Customized Windows 10 installation

added packages: see the common_windows_packages
Additional configuration done via Ansible playbook Win32NT-common.yml

Additional Drivers installed for libvirt boxes - VirtIO

Installed during installation:

NetKVM: VirtIO Network driver
qxldod: QXL graphics driver
viostor: VirtIO Block driver (VirtIO SCSI controller driver)

Installed components via Ansible playbook win-simple.yml for Windows:

vioscsi: Support for VirtIO SCSI pass-through controller
Balloon: VirtIO Memory Balloon driver
viorng: VirtIO RNG Device driver
vioser: VirtIO Serial Driver
vioinput: VirtIO Input Driver - support for new QEMU input devices virtio-keyboard-pci, virtio-mouse-pci, virtio-tablet-pci, virtio-input-host-pci
pvpanic: QEMU pvpanic device driver
qemu-ga: Qemu Guest Agent

Additional Drivers installed for VirtualBox boxes

VirtualBox Guest Additions

How to build images

If you have necessary software installed+configured on your local machine you can use the following commands to build the images. You can build the images using the build script build.sh or directly with Packer.

Ubuntu requirements:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ansible curl dnsmasq freerdp2-x11 git jq libc6-dev libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-dev python3-winrm qemu-kvm qemu-utils sshpass xorriso unzip virtualbox

PACKER_LATEST_VERSION="$(curl -s https://checkpoint-api.hashicorp.com/v1/check/packer | jq -r -M '.current_version')"
curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/${PACKER_LATEST_VERSION}/packer_${PACKER_LATEST_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip" --output /tmp/packer_linux_amd64.zip
sudo unzip /tmp/packer_linux_amd64.zip -d /usr/local/bin/
rm /tmp/packer_linux_amd64.zip

VAGRANT_LATEST_VERSION=$(curl -s https://checkpoint-api.hashicorp.com/v1/check/vagrant | jq -r -M '.current_version')
curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/${VAGRANT_LATEST_VERSION}/vagrant_${VAGRANT_LATEST_VERSION}_x86_64.deb" --output /tmp/vagrant_x86_64.deb
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends -y /tmp/vagrant_x86_64.deb
rm /tmp/vagrant_x86_64.deb

sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" kvm
sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" libvirt
sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" vboxusers

vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt

Debian 10+ requirements:

VirtualBox is not in Debian 10 or later. If you need it, you will need to figure out a way to install it.

echo 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bullseye.list
sudo sed --regexp-extended 's/^([^#].+\s+main)$/\1 contrib non-free/;' --in-place /etc/apt/sources.list ## Ensure required apt components are enabled.
cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/bullseye.pref
Explanation: Just install packages from bullseye if they are not in buster or buster-backports. Do not upgrade. Delete this file when you want to upgrade to bullseye.
Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,n=bullseye
Pin-Priority: 50
EOF
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ansible curl dnsmasq freerdp2-x11 git jq libc6-dev libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-dev python3-winrm qemu-kvm qemu-utils sshpass xorriso unzip packer/bullseye vagrant vagrant-libvirt

sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" kvm
sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" libvirt
sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" vboxusers ## If you have VirtualBox installed.

Fedora requirements:

sudo dnf install "https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm"
sudo dnf install -y ansible curl freerdp git jq libvirt libvirt-devel qemu-kvm ruby-devel xorriso unzip VirtualBox

PACKER_LATEST_VERSION="$(curl -s https://checkpoint-api.hashicorp.com/v1/check/packer | jq -r -M '.current_version')"
curl "https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/${PACKER_LATEST_VERSION}/packer_${PACKER_LATEST_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip" --output /tmp/packer_linux_amd64.zip
sudo unzip /tmp/packer_linux_amd64.zip -d /usr/local/bin/
rm /tmp/packer_linux_amd64.zip

VAGRANT_LATEST_VERSION=$(curl -s https://checkpoint-api.hashicorp.com/v1/check/vagrant | jq -r -M '.current_version')
sudo dnf install -y "https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/${VAGRANT_LATEST_VERSION}/vagrant-${VAGRANT_LATEST_VERSION}-1.x86_64.rpm"
CONFIGURE_ARGS="with-ldflags=-L/opt/vagrant/embedded/lib with-libvirt-include=/usr/include/libvirt with-libvirt-lib=/usr/lib64/libvirt" vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt

sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" kvm
sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" libvirt
sudo gpasswd -a "${USER}" vboxusers
systemctl start libvirtd

Build process with the build.sh script

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ruzickap/packer-templates.git
cd packer-templates || exit

Ubuntu:

# Ubuntu Server
./build.sh ubuntu-{20.04,18.04,16.04}-server-amd64-{libvirt,virtualbox}

# Ubuntu Desktop
./build.sh ubuntu-{20.04,18.04}-desktop-amd64-{libvirt,virtualbox}

# Ubuntu Server - customized
./build.sh my_ubuntu-{20.04,18.04,16.04}-server-amd64-{libvirt,virtualbox}

Windows:

# Windows Server
./build.sh windows-server-2016-standard-x64-eval-{libvirt,virtualbox}
./build.sh windows-server-2019-standard-x64-eval-{libvirt,virtualbox}
./build.sh windows-server-2022-standard-x64-eval-{libvirt,virtualbox}

# Windows 10
./build.sh windows-10-enterprise-x64-eval-{libvirt,virtualbox}

# Windows 10 - customized
./build.sh my_windows-10-enterprise-x64-eval-{libvirt,virtualbox}

Build process with the Packer