Packer Demo

4/8/2016 Round Table

NOTE: Yes, I do realize I've committed a private key. Check fabfile.py regen_keys before giving me static about it!!!!

Prerequisites

Please make sure you install the following before the demo, so that you can follow along.

• Vagrant https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html

• VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

• Packer https://www.packer.io/downloads.html

• Ansible http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro_installation.html

  • Easiest is just to sudo pip install ansible --upgrade

• You MUST be on DT-Team. This will not work if you're not connected to the work network, as it makes use of ubuntumirror.cmgeneral.local. Thought about changing this, but didn't want all of us hitting an external repo.

Demo

• Clone this repo somewhere to your local box.

  • git clone [email protected]:ekozlowski/packer_demo.git

• I will be walking around with a flash drive with more content on it. The flash drive will contain the Ubuntu ISO file we'll use. (It's too large to download at the demo.)

What We'll Cover

• Creating a Ubuntu packer box from an ISO
• ssh passwords.... (facepalm)
• What the preseed.cfg file is, and why you need it
  • https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/armhf/apbs02.html
  • We pass the command: preseed/url=http://{{.HTTPIP}}:{{.HTTPPort}}/preseed.cfg
  • How Packer serves the preseed.cfg file: https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/virtualbox-iso.html#http_directory
• What the (boxname).json file is, and why you should care
• Debugging - Control-Alt-F4 is your friend!
• How to get Packer to build a Vagrant compatible .box file
• What an AMI is
• How to extend Packer so that it builds an AMI for Amazon EC2
  • How to "base" your box on an existing AMI
• Where to go from here