Posts tagged with “Packer” on Mark van Lent’s weblog 2017-09-29T13:50:00+00:00 tag:markvanlent.dev,2010-04-02:/tags/packer/index.xml Mark van Lent https://markvanlent.dev/about/ Copyright (c) Mark van Lent, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://markvanlent.dev/favicon.ico <![CDATA[How to create a Debian VirtualBox machine with Packer with an additional host-only adapter]]> https://markvanlent.dev/2017/09/29/how-to-create-a-debian-virtualbox-machine-with-packer-with-an-additional-host-only-adapter/ map[name:Mark van Lent uri:https://markvanlent.dev/about/] 2021-10-07T18:13:55Z 2017-09-29T13:50:00Z For a project I am working on, there is this virtual machine we can use to do our development work in. This machine has grown organically and I want to replace it with something I can reproduce. I wanted to experiment with Packer but had problems with generating a machine with two network adapters where the second one is connected to a host-only network.

Context

Before getting into the details, first a bit of context. The virtual machine (VM) we are using is really convenient. It was created by a co-worker and was exported some time in the past and is now available as an .ova for other developers in the team. But the machine itself has been built over a longer period of time, using Debian Jessie (which is now the oldstable) and some project requirements have changed.

I could upgrade the VM to Stretch, update the packages and export the VM again. But I’d rather get something reproducible. Something I can build again and again and know exactly how it was created, what was installed, et cetera. (And truth be told, perhaps there’s also a bit of not invented here involved.)

Problem

To get to such a reproducible VM I decided to try out Packer. I also found a great Git repository which you can use to generate a Debian 9 Vagrant Box: https://github.com/geerlingguy/packer-debian-9. This got me started fairly quickly.

(As a side note: if you are interested in Ansible, you should definitely check out Jeff Geerling’s other GitHub repositories.)

The problem was that I needed not one, but two network adapters for my VM, where the second interface had to be connected to a host-only network.

The solution

First of all, I needed to add the second adapter to the configuration. In the debian9.json file, I replaced the original vboxmanage section with the following:

"vboxmanage": [
  [
    "modifyvm",
    "{{.Name}}",
    "--memory",
    "1024"
  ],
  [
    "modifyvm",
    "{{.Name}}",
    "--cpus",
    "1"
  ],
  [
    "modifyvm",
    "{{.Name}}",
    "--nic2",
    "hostonly"
  ],
  [
    "modifyvm",
    "{{.Name}}",
    "--hostonlyadapter2",
    "vboxnet0"
  ]
]

In other words I added the --nic2 and --hostonlyadapter2 options.

But when I tried to build the VM, Packer kept waiting for SSH to become available. After starting the build again with the “headless” option set to “false” I could see the problem: the Debian installer was waiting for me to select which interface to use (since there were two now).

I solved this by inserting the following line to the boot_command section in the debian9.json file:

"interface=enp0s3 <wait>",

Now the first interface was automatically chosen and the build succeeded again. The result: a VM with two network adapters, where the first one is attached to the NAT network, and the second one to the host-only network vboxnet0.

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