Hyper-V packer templates

This project aims to expose a simple, configurable and tailored packer template for building Vagrant base boxes for Hyper-V (and VirtualBox).

Why another template project

There are many templates, and existing Vagrant boxes available so why bother re-inventing the wheel? Well in my experience all the projects I looked at either tried to do too much or had Hyper-V as a second class citizen. Further more if I wanted to configure the build boxes I had to fully understand the project and where it's configuration is hidden.

So the goals for this project are simple:

1. Hyper-V must be the main supported builder.
2. Limit the number of supported OS's to enable a clean project without a large amount of if/else style configuration.
3. Make anything that a user might want to modify configurable within a build process without the need to resort to modifing templates or internal OS installation files etc.

Prerequisites

Windows host (Hyper-V)

1. Packer
2. PowerShell - for our build scripts
3. Hyper-V
   1. Windows 10 build 17063 or greater is required for enhanced mode support. See https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualization/2018/02/28/sneak-peek-taking-a-spin-with-enhanced-linux-vms/
4. Intel CPU with VT-X - needed for nested virtualization. If you do not have a supported CPU pass -disableVirtualization to build-windows.ps1

Linux host (Virtualbox)

1. Packer
2. Virtualbox

Supported packer boxes

The following box OS's are supported:

• Ubuntu LTS x64
• Windows 11 x64
• Arch Linus x64
• VyOS x64

Usage

Ubuntu LTS x64, Arch Linux x64 and VyOS on Windows host

A PowerShell build script has been created to handle build and configuration for the vagrant boxes.

From a PowerShell command prompt in the project root:

get-help .\build.ps1 -detailed

This will show all the configuration options available.

A default build can be run like this:

.\build.ps1

Windows 11 x64 on Windows host

This requires a modification to the hyper-v packer plugin that hasn't been merged yet. To make this work you need to checkout the enable-tpm branch from https://github.com/camjjack/packer-plugin-hyperv and use that instead of the default plugin. Then uncomment the following line in windows.pkr.hcl:

//enable_tpm                       = true

A PowerShell build script has been created to handle build and configuration for the vagrant boxes.

From a PowerShell command prompt in the project root:

get-help .\build-windows.ps1 -detailed

This will show all the configuration options available.

A default build can be run like this:

.\build-windows.ps1

Ubuntu LTS x64 on Linux host

A bash script has been created to handle build and configuration for the vagrant boxes.

./build.sh -h

This will show all the configuration options available.

A default build can be run like this:

./build.sh

Windows 11 x64 on Linux host

A bash script has been created to handle build and configuration for the vagrant boxes.

./build-windows.sh -h

This will show all the configuration options available.

A default build can be run like this:

./build-windows.sh

Troubleshooting

The build script has a -debug option which sets some packer options to aid in debugging faulty templates. Start with the generated log file: packer-log.txt