Packer VM image build instructions

Contents

• Overview
• Preparation
• Building images
• Images location and naming
• Publishing images
• Syncing images
• Using images with Vagrant
• Troubleshooting

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Overview

This repository contains Packer definitions to build images to boot ALT Linux in virtual environments as KVM, VirtualBox, etc.

Preparation

Update the kernel like:

sudo update-kernel

and reboot to take advantage of new kernel packages.

Install the following dependencies:

• make
• jq
• curl
• wget
• qemu-kvm
• qemu-ui-sdl
• qemu-ui-gtk
• virtualbox
• packer
• vagrant (only if you plan to distribute boxes via Vagrant Cloud)
• kernel-modules-kvm-std-def
• kernel-modules-virtualbox-std-def
• nbd-client, nbd-server (if you plan to transfer images using NBD)

and add the necessary kernel module to the list of modules to load:

For Intel:

echo kvm_intel >> /etc/modules-load.d/kvm.conf

For AMD:

echo kvm_amd >> /etc/modules/kvm.conf

You will also need to add user to vmusers group for QEMU:

usermod -aG vmusers username

You will also need VirtualBox service working and the user added into VirtualBox group:

usermod -aG vboxadd,vboxusers username
systemctl enable virtualbox
systemctl start virtualbox

Then reboot the machine.

• Create the packer_cache directory (or symlink it) and download the necessary ISOs into it.

Building images

Building default images

You may start building image for QEMU like:

make image target=alt-workstation headless=false BASE_VERSION=9 TARGET_VERSION=9 VM_TYPE=qemu

or if you want to build image for VirtualBox:

make image target=alt-server headless=false BASE_VERSION=9 TARGET_VERSION=9 VM_TYPE=vbox

Building images for Vagrant

Use this command to build Vagrant VirtualBox box

make image target=alt-server headless=false BASE_VERSION=10 TARGET_VERSION=10 VM_TYPE=vagrant-vbox

or this command to build Vagrant QEMU box

make image target=alt-server headless=false BASE_VERSION=10 TARGET_VERSION=10 VM_TYPE=vagrant-qemu

Building images for clouds

Yandex Cloud

make image target=alt-server headless=false BASE_VERSION=10 TARGET_VERSION=10 VM_TYPE=yandex

OpenNebula

make image target=alt-server headless=false BASE_VERSION=10 TARGET_VERSION=10 VM_TYPE=onebula

Images location and naming

All images are located in the ./images directory. By default, the current date and git tag are appended to the image name. If there is no tag, hash of the current commit is added.

If necessary, the tag, hash, and date can be overridden using environment variables GIT_TAG, GIT_HASH, GIT_DATE. Like this:

make image target=alt-server headless=false BASE_VERSION=10 TARGET_VERSION=10 VM_TYPE=yandex GIT_TAG=1.0.1 GIT_DATE=20210623

Publishing images

You may publish previously built boxes using Vagrant software like:

export VAGRANTCLOUD_TOKEN="my_cloud_auth_token"
make publish_vagrant orgname=myorg target=alt-server VM_TYPE=vagrant-vbox BASE_VERSION=9 TARGET_VERSION=9 GIT_TAG=1.0.0 GIT_DATE=20210623
make publish_vagrant orgname=myorg target=alt-workstation VM_TYPE=vagrant-qemu BASE_VERSION=9 TARGET_VERSION=9 GIT_TAG=1.0.0 GIT_DATE=20210623

Variables GIT_DATE, GIT_TAG or GIT_HASH must match the variables that were specified when building the desired image.

Syncing images

In order to keep images up-to-date there is sync_images script provided in the repository. It parses the corresponding ditro configuration files and checks if the necessary images are provided in the ./packer_cache directory. It's advised to set up to start this script using crond in order to keep images synchronized.

It is also possible to invoke the script using make sync command.

Using images with Vagrant

You may find Vagrantfile templates in vagrant directory. Just go into subdirectory corresponding to the box you want to start and type

vagrant up

Deploying images to Proxmox

First export QCOW2 image from build machine using NBD (on port 12345):

nbd-server 12345 /mnt/disk/alt-packer/qemu-alt-server-9-amd64/qemu-alt-server-9-amd64

On the client you need to issue command to connect to NBD server (assuming server IP is 192.168.1.101):

nbd-client -D 192.168.1.101 12345

On client, you may check that QCOW2 image is mounted using these commands:

file -s /dev/nbd0

or better:

qemu-img info /dev/nbd0

Then (on client) use qemu-img utility to transfer image to block device of your choice:

qemu-img dd bs=1M if=/dev/nbd0 of=/dev/pve/zvol/vm-100-disk-1

This may take quite a time because of large file transfer.

Then disconnect the client:

nbd-client -d /dev/nbd0

and stop the server with SIGINT (pressing Ctrl+C).

Troubleshooting

• In case of problems with autoinstaller add instdebug option to kernel boot parameters.
• In case of errors like No space left on device when using /tmp directory - set TMPDIR variable to another location.