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Deploying Ubuntu from Packer Machine Image

This guide will walk you through how you create a minimalistic raw Ubuntu image using Packer, an awesome tool to build automated machine images.

Currently, Packer does not officially provide a way to make bare metal machine images. So, in this example, we will use virtualbox-iso builder to create a Virtual Machine Disk (VDMK) and then convert it to a raw image.

The raw image can then be deployed on a bare metal server using Tinkerbell.

Preseed and Config files for Ubuntu 20.04

Below are the preseed file and the config file for creating a minimalistic Ubuntu 20.04 image.

When building an image using virtualbox-iso, the preseed file will help with automating the deployment. It is placed inside the http directory, and the config file references the location of the preseed file in the boot_command list of the builders object.

pressed.cfg

choose-mirror-bin mirror/http/proxy string
d-i base-installer/kernel/override-image string linux-server
d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true
d-i clock-setup/utc-auto boolean true
d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note
d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true
d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true
d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max
d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select atomic
d-i partman-auto/method string lvm
d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server cryptsetup build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev zlib1g-dev linux-source dkms nfs-common docker-compose
d-i pkgsel/install-language-support boolean false
d-i pkgsel/update-policy select none
d-i pkgsel/upgrade select full-upgrade
d-i time/zone string UTC
tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, ubuntu-server

d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string us
d-i keyboard-configuration/modelcode string pc105
d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US.UTF-8

# Create vagrant user account.
d-i passwd/user-fullname string vagrant
d-i passwd/username string vagrant
d-i passwd/user-password password vagrant
d-i passwd/user-password-again password vagrant
d-i user-setup/allow-password-weak boolean true
d-i user-setup/encrypt-home boolean false
d-i passwd/user-default-groups vagrant sudo
d-i passwd/user-uid string 900

In config file, the builder type is set to virtualbox-iso to generate the VMDK and the post-processor type is set to compress to generate a tar file.

config.json

{
  "builders": [
    {
      "boot_command": [
        "<esc><wait>",
        "<esc><wait>",
        "<enter><wait>",
        "/install/vmlinuz<wait>",
        " initrd=/install/initrd.gz",
        " auto-install/enable=true",
        " debconf/priority=critical",
        " netcfg/get_domain=vm<wait>",
        " netcfg/get_hostname=vagrant<wait>",
        " grub-installer/bootdev=/dev/sda<wait>",
        " preseed/url=http://{{ .HTTPIP }}:{{ .HTTPPort }}/preseed.cfg<wait>",
        " -- <wait>",
        "<enter><wait>"
      ],
      "boot_wait": "10s",
      "guest_os_type": "ubuntu-64",
      "guest_additions_mode": "disable",
      "disk_size": 8192,
      "http_directory": "http",
      "iso_urls": [
        "ubuntu-18.04.5-server-amd64.iso",
        "http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/bionic/release/ubuntu-18.04.5-server-amd64.iso"
      ],
      "iso_checksum": "sha256:8c5fc24894394035402f66f3824beb7234b757dd2b5531379cb310cedfdf0996",
      "shutdown_command": "echo 'vagrant' | sudo -S shutdown -P now",
      "ssh_password": "vagrant",
      "ssh_username": "vagrant",
      "ssh_wait_timeout": "10000s",
      "type": "virtualbox-iso",
      "vm_name": "packer-ubuntu-64-20-04"
    }
  ],
  "post-processors": [
    {
      "type": "compress",
      "compression_level": 9,
      "output": "test.tar",
      "keep_input_artifact": true
    }
  ]
}

Both files are reference files, if you wish to modify something, you can make the changes accordingly. The steps to generate the image will remain the same.

The files will need to be placed in the directory structure of the Packer image builder.

ubuntu_packer_image
├── http
│   └── preseed.cfg
└── config.json

Generating the VMDK

Run packer build to generate the VMDK and tar file.

PACKER_LOG=1 packer build config.json

Setting PACKER_LOG will allow you to see the logs of the Packer build step.

When you run packer build with the example config file, the VMDK will be inside the output directory, while tar will be at the root directory.

Converting the Image

Currently, the raw image can not be built directly from virtualbox-iso builder, so we will convert and then compress it. Note, if you are using qemu builder type instead of the virtualbox-iso builder, then you can skip the conversion step as Packer lets you directly create a raw image.

First, get the qemu-img CLI tool.

apt-get install -y qemu-utils

Then use the tool to convert the VMDK into a raw filesystem.

qemu-img convert -f vmdk -o raw output-virtualbox-iso/packer-ubuntu-64-20.04-disk001.vmdk test_packer.raw

Once you have a raw filesystem image, you can compress the raw image.

gzip test_packer.raw

The result is a test_packer.raw.gz file which can now be deployed on Tinkerbell. You can also use the raw file test_packer.raw directly, the benefit of having the compressed file is that it will be streamed over the network in less time.

Creating a Template

Below is a reference file for creating a Template using above Ubuntu Packer image. This section is similar to the other examples we have in the Deploying Operating systems section. You can follow them for more references.

The template uses actions from the Artifact Hub.

  • image2disk - to write the OS image to a block device.
  • kexec - to kexec into our newly provisioned operating system.
version: "0.1"
name: Ubuntu_20_04
global_timeout: 1800
tasks:
  - name: "os-installation"
    worker: "{{.device_1}}"
    volumes:
      - /dev:/dev
      - /dev/console:/dev/console
      - /lib/firmware:/lib/firmware:ro
    actions:
      - name: "stream_ubuntu_packer_image"
        image: quay.io/tinkerbell-actions/image2disk:v1.0.0
        timeout: 600
        environment:
          DEST_DISK: /dev/sda
          IMG_URL: "http://192.168.1.1:8080/test_packer.raw.gz"
          COMPRESSED: true
      - name: "kexec_ubuntu"
        image: quay.io/tinkerbell-actions/kexec:v1.0.0
        timeout: 90
        pid: host
        environment:
          BLOCK_DEVICE: /dev/sda1
            FS_TYPE: ext4