Ansible Role: Packer RHEL/CentOS Configuration for Vagrant VirtualBox

This role configures RHEL/CentOS (minimal install) in preparation for it to be packaged as part of a .box file for Vagrant/VirtualBox 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. kickstart.cfg) with Packer.

An example array of provisioners for your Packer .json template would be 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",
		"galaxy_file": "requirements.yml"
	},
	{
		"type": "shell",
		"execute_command": "echo 'vagrant' | {{.Vars}} sudo -S -E bash '{{.Path}}'",
		"script": "scripts/cleanup.sh"
	}
],

The files should contain, at a minimum:

scripts/ansible.sh:

#!/bin/bash -eux
# Add the EPEL repository, and install Ansible.
rpm -ivh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
yum -y install ansible python-setuptools

ansible/main.yml:

---
- hosts: all
  become: yes
  gather_facts: yes
  roles:
    - net2grid.vm-tools

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

None.

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

Including an example of how to use your role (for instance, with variables passed in as parameters) is always nice for users too:

- hosts: all
  roles:
     - { role: net2grid.vm-tools }

License

BSD

Author Information

This role is based on code by Jeff Geerling, author of Ansible for DevOps.