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https://github.com/elasticdog/packer-arch

packer.io template for building an Arch Linux base box
https://github.com/elasticdog/packer-arch

arch-linux packer

Last synced: 6 months ago
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packer.io template for building an Arch Linux base box

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README 

          
Packer Arch

===========



Packer Arch is a bare bones [Packer](https://www.packer.io/) template and

installation script that can be used to generate a [Vagrant](https://www.vagrantup.com/)

base box for [Arch Linux](https://www.archlinux.org/). The template works

with the default VirtualBox provider as well as with

[VMware](https://www.vagrantup.com/vmware), [Parallels](https://github.com/Parallels/vagrant-parallels)

and [libvirt](https://github.com/vagrant-libvirt/vagrant-libvirt) providers.



Overview

--------



My goal was to roughly duplicate the attributes from a

[DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/) Arch Linux droplet:



* 64-bit

* 20 GB disk

* 512 MB memory

* Only a single /root partition (ext4)

* No swap

* Includes the `base` meta package and `base-devel` group

* OpenSSH is also installed and enabled on boot



The installation script follows the

[official installation guide](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_Guide)

pretty closely, with a few tweaks to ensure functionality within a VM. Beyond

that, the only customizations to the machine are related to the vagrant user

and the steps recommended for any base box.



Usage

-----



### VirtualBox Provider



Assuming that you already have Packer,

[VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/), and Vagrant installed, you

should be good to clone this repo and go:



    $ git clone https://github.com/elasticdog/packer-arch.git

    $ cd packer-arch/

    $ packer build -only=virtualbox-iso arch-template.json



Then you can import the generated box into Vagrant:



    $ vagrant box add arch output/packer_arch_virtualbox.box



### VMware Provider



Assuming that you already have Packer,

[VMware Fusion](https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/) (or

[VMware Workstation](https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/)), and

Vagrant with the VMware provider installed, you should be good to clone

this repo and go:



    $ git clone https://github.com/elasticdog/packer-arch.git

    $ cd packer-arch/

    $ packer build -only=vmware-iso arch-template.json



Then you can import the generated box into Vagrant:



    $ vagrant box add arch output/packer_arch_vmware.box



### Parallels Provider



Assuming that you already have Packer,

[Parallels](http://www.parallels.com/), [Parallels SDK](http://www.parallels.com/eu/products/desktop/download/) and

Vagrant with the Parallels provider installed, you should be good to clone

this repo and go:



    $ git clone https://github.com/elasticdog/packer-arch.git

    $ cd packer-arch/

    $ packer build -only=parallels-iso arch-template.json



Then you can import the generated box into Vagrant:



    $ vagrant box add arch output/packer_arch_parallels.box



### libvirt Provider



Assuming that you already have Packer, Vagrant with the

[vagrant-libvirt](https://github.com/vagrant-libvirt/vagrant-libvirt)

plugin installed, you should be good to clone

this repo and go:



    $ git clone https://github.com/elasticdog/packer-arch.git

    $ cd packer-arch/

    $ packer build -only=qemu arch-template.json



Then you can import the generated box into Vagrant:



    $ vagrant box add arch output/packer_arch_libvirt.box



NOTE: libvirt support is limited to QEMU/KVM only.



### wrapacker



For convenience, there is a wrapper script named `wrapacker` that will run the

appropriate `packer build` command for you that will also automatically ensure

the latest ISO download URL and optionally use a mirror from a provided country

code in order to build the final box.



    $ wrapacker --country US --dry-run



For debugging purposes, execute:



    $ PACKER_LOG=1 ./wrapacker --country=US --provider=virtualbox --on-error=ask --force



See the `--help` flag for additional details.



Known Issues

------------



### VMware Tools



The official VMware Tools do not currently support Arch Linux, and the

[Open Virtual Machine Tools](https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools)

(open-vm-tools) require extensive patching in order to compile correctly

with a Linux 3.11 series kernel. So for the time being, I have not

included support for the tools.



No tools means that the shared folder feature will not work, and when you

run `vagrant up` to launch a VM based on the VMware box, you will see the

following error message:



> The HGFS kernel module was not found on the running virtual machine.

> This must be installed for shared folders to work properly. Please

> install the VMware tools within the guest and try again. Note that

> the VMware tools installation will succeed even if HGFS fails

> to properly install. Carefully read the output of the VMware tools

> installation to verify the HGFS kernel modules were installed properly.



Note that _this issue does not apply to VirtualBox_, as their official

guest additions work just fine.



### Vagrant Provisioners



The box purposefully does not include Puppet, Chef or Ansible for automatic Vagrant

provisioning. My intention was to duplicate a DigitalOcean VPS and

furthermore use the VM for testing [Ansible](http://www.ansible.com/)

playbooks for configuration management.



License

-------



Packer Arch is provided under the terms of the

[ISC License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license).



Copyright © 2013–2017, [Aaron Bull Schaefer](mailto:aaron@elasticdog.com).