Index Keywords

↶ Return
New
Edit
History
Source

Create a Vagrant Box from an AMI with Packer Post-Processors

Post-processors run only AFTER packer saves the instance as an image. Post-processors are varied in their function; they can comrpess the artifact(s), upload the artifact(s) into the cloud, or create a file that describes the artifact and build.

In this tutorial, you will add the vagrant post-processor to create a Vagrant box from your AMI.[1]

The following section contains a complete Packer template that can be used to build an AWS Ubuntu AMI in the us-west-2 region.

Create a file named aws-ubuntu.pkr.hcl and add the following code:[1:1]

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
packer {
  required_plugins {
    amazon = {
      version = ">= 0.0.1"
      source  = "github.com/hashicorp/amazon"
    }
  }
}

variable "ami_prefix" {
  type    = string
  default = "learn-packer-linux-aws-redis"
}

locals {
  timestamp = regex_replace(timestamp(), "[- TZ:]", "")
}

source "amazon-ebs" "ubuntu" {
  ami_name      = "${var.ami_prefix}-${local.timestamp}"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  region        = "us-west-2"
  source_ami_filter {
    filters = {
      name                = "ubuntu/images/*ubuntu-xenial-16.04-amd64-server-*"
      root-device-type    = "ebs"
      virtualization-type = "hvm"
    }
    most_recent = true
    owners      = ["099720109477"]
  }
  ssh_username = "ubuntu"
}

source "amazon-ebs" "ubuntu-focal" {
  ami_name      = "${var.ami_prefix}-focal-${local.timestamp}"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  region        = "us-west-2"
  source_ami_filter {
    filters = {
      name                = "ubuntu/images/*ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-server-*"
      root-device-type    = "ebs"
      virtualization-type = "hvm"
    }
    most_recent = true
    owners      = ["099720109477"]
  }
  ssh_username = "ubuntu"
}

build {
  name    = "learn-packer"
  sources = [
    "source.amazon-ebs.ubuntu",
    "source.amazon-ebs.ubuntu-focal",
  ]

  provisioner "shell" {
    environment_vars = [
      "FOO=hello world",
    ]
    inline = [
      "echo Installing Redis",
      "sleep 30",
      "sudo apt-get update",
      "sudo apt-get install -y redis-server",
      "echo \"FOO is $FOO\" > example.txt",
    ]
  }

  provisioner "shell" {
    inline = ["echo This provisioner runs last"]
  }
post-processor "vagrant" {}
}

Build

Run through the following Pack commands to build the image(s):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Initialize your Packer configuration.

$ packer init .

Format your template.

$ packer fmt .

Validate your template.

$ packer validate .

Build the image.

$ packer .

Verify

Use Vagrant to launch the image:

1
2
3
vagrant box add my-box name-of-the-box.box
vagrant init my-box
vagrant up

To check status:

1
vagrant status

Cleanup

To remove any AMIs created during this exercise:

  1. AWS AMI management page > Actions Menu > Select ‘Deregister AMI’
  2. AWS Snapshot management page > Actions menu > Select ‘Delete snapshot’

  1. https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/packer/aws-get-started-provision?in=packer/aws-get-started ↩︎ ↩︎