This repository contains Packer.io templates for building CentOS that we provision at Packet. This is currently a work in progress! Not all options are available publicly at this time.
- CentOS 7
The templates make use of the docker "builder" in Packer to create a base image for the operating system the template defines. The image is archived as a .tar.gz and can be deployed (with packet-cli) on to the hardware type you specify using Packet's custom image functionality automatically.
There is only a small list of deps required to run image builds, but we recommend a dedicated machine or VM for this purpose simply to keep things isolated. This repo makes use of git-lfs for installation asset storage.
- Packer - version 1.3.3 and up
- packet-cli - optional
- git-lfs - optional
- Linux host on top of CentOS7 / Ubuntu 16
Packer image build of CentOS 7 on a t1.small.x86 instance in Packet's AMS1 facility:
[image-ubuntu/]$ packer build -var 'plan=t1.small.x86' -var 'fac=ams1' -var 'os=centos_7' -var 'mode=install' 7/templates/centos-7.json
Packer image build of CentOS 7 on a t1.small.x86 instance in Packet's AMS1 facility with hardware customization:
[image-ubuntu/]$ packer build -var 'plan=t1.small.x86' -var 'fac=ams1' -var 'os=alpine_3' -var 'mode=customize' 7/templates/centos-7.json
Images can be customized to a particular piece of hardware by specifying the mode=customize option. Generic images containing default initial ramdisks may not boot on all hardware types. The initrd/initramfs will need to be customized to add kernel driver support for some types of hardware across some operating systems. This customization is tested under a target OS image chroot running on top of Alpine Linux 3 and may in some cases require some manual intervention. See example above.