Proxmox and KVM related Virtual Machines using Hashicorp's Packer

• Proxmox and KVM related Virtual Machines using Hashicorp's Packer
  • Proxmox
  • Proxmox requirements
  • Usage
  • Provisioning
  • Updates
  • KVM
  • KVM Requirements
  • Cloud-init support
    • RHEL
    • Ubuntu
  • KVM scripts usage
    • Parameters
    • KVM building scripts, by OS with cloud parameters
  • Default credentials
  • Known Issues
  • Windows UEFI boot and 'Press any key to boot from CD or DVD' issue
  • OpenSuse Leap stage 2 sshd fix
  • To DO
  • Q & A

Consider buying me a coffee if you like my work. All donations are appreciated. All donations will be used to pay for pipeline running costs

Proxmox

Proxmox requirements

• Packer in version >= 1.10.0
• Proxmox in version >= 8.0 with any storage (tested with CEPH and ZFS)
• [Ansible] in version >= 2.10.0
• tested with AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-7100T
• at least 2GB of free RAM for virtual machines (4GB recommended)
• at least 100GB of free disk space for virtual machines (200GB recommended) on fast storage (SSD/NVME with LVM thinpool, Ceph or ZFS)

Usage

• Init packer by running packer init config.pkr.hcl or packer init -upgrade config.pkr.hcl

• Init your ansible by running ansible-galaxy collection install --upgrade -r ./extra/playbooks/requirements.yml

• Generate new user or token for existing user in Proxmox - Datacenter/Pemissions/API Tokens

  Do not mark Privilege separation checkbox, unless you have dedicated role prepared.

  Example token:

  

• create and use env variables for secrets /secrets/proxmox.sh with content similar to:

  export PROXMOX_URL="https://someproxmoxserver:8006/api2/json"
  export PROXMOX_USERNAME="root@pam!packer"
  export PROXMOX_TOKEN="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

• adjust required variables in proxmox/variables*.pkvars.hcl files especially datastore names (storage_pool, iso_file, iso_storage_pool) in:

    disks = {
        cache_mode              = "writeback"
        disk_size               = "50G"
        format                  = "raw"
        type                    = "sata"
        storage_pool            = "zfs"
    }

  Replace storage_pool variable with your storage pool name.

  iso_file                    = "images:iso/20348.169.210806-2348.fe_release_svc_refresh_SERVER_EVAL_x64FRE_en-us.iso"
  iso_storage_pool            = "local"
  proxmox_node                = "proxmox5"
  virtio_iso_file             = "images:iso/virtio-win.iso"

  Replace iso_file and virtio_iso_file with your ISO files and iso_storage_pool with your storage pool name. If you are using CEPH storage, you can use ceph as storage pool name. If you are using ZFS storage, you can use zfs as storage pool name. If you are using LVM storage, you can use local as storage pool name.

  network_adapters = {
  bridge                  = "vmbr0"
  model                   = "virtio"
  firewall                = false
  mac_address             = ""
  }

  Replace bridge with your bridge name.

• run proxmox_generic script with proper parameters for dedicated OS

Provisioning

• For RHEl-based machines, provisioning is done by Ansible Playbooks extra/playbooks using variables from variables/ folder

example:

  install_epel:                  true
  install_webmin:                false
  install_hyperv:                false
  install_cockpit:               true
  install_neofetch:              true
  install_updates:               true
  install_extra_groups:          true
  docker_prepare:                false
  extra_device:                  ""
  install_motd:                  true

• For Ubuntu-based machines provisioning is done by scripts from extra/files/ubuntu* folders

• For Windows-based machines provisioning is done by Powershell scripts located in extra/scripts/windows/*

Updates

In case of RHEL clones, only current release is allowed to do updates, as updating for example Alma Linux 8.8 will always end in current release (8.10). This is due to the way how RHEL clones are built. To avoid that, all updates in NON current releases are disabled by setting extra variable for ansible playbook install_updates: false

ansible_extra_args        = ["-e", "@extra/playbooks/provision_rocky8_variables.yml", "-e", "@variables/rockylinux8.yml", "-e", "{\"install_updates\": false}","--scp-extra-args", "'-O'"]

if you really want to start from historical release and update it to current release, remove "-e","{\"install_updates\": false}" from ansible_extra_args variable

KVM

KVM Requirements

• Packer in version >= 1.10
• [Ansible] in version >= 2.10.0
• tested with AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-7100T
• at least 2GB of free RAM for virtual machines (4GB recommended)
• KVM hypervisor

Cloud-init support

KVM builds are separated by cloud-init groups. Currently supported groups are:

RHEL

• generic - generic cloud-init configuration
• oci - Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud-init configuration
• alicloud - Alibaba Cloud cloud-init configuration

Ubuntu

KVM scripts usage

• Init packer by running packer init config.pkr.hcl
• Scripts have kvm_ prefix

Parameters

KVM building scripts will take 2 runtime parameters:

• $1 - PACKER_LOG settings, can be 0 or 1 (can be skipped)
• $2 - cloud-init group, can be: generic, oci or alicloud (can be skipped)

Example:

./kvm_rockylinux92.sh 1 generic #This will build Rocky Linux 9.2 with generic cloud-init configuration and PACKER_LOG set to verbose output

Example 2

./kvm_rockylinux92.sh oci #This will build Rocky Linux 9.2 with oci cloud-init configuration and PACKER_LOG set to 0 (default)

KVM building scripts, by OS with cloud parameters

Default credentials

Known Issues

Windows UEFI boot and 'Press any key to boot from CD or DVD' issue

When using the proxmox builder with efi firmware, the Windows installer will not boot automatically. Instead, it will display the message Press any key to boot from CD or DVD and wait for user input. User needs to properly adjust boot_wait and boot_command wait times to find the right balance between waiting for the installer to boot and waiting for the user to press a key.

OpenSuse Leap stage 2 sshd fix

When building OpenSuse Leap 15.x sshd service starts in stage 2 which breaks packer scripts. There is an artificial delay added to builder (6 minutes) to wait for sshd to start. This is not ideal solution, but it works.

To DO

• ansible playbooks for Windows and Ubuntu machines
• OpenSuse Leap 15.x
  • OpenSuse Leap stage 2 sshd fix
• Debian 12

Q & A

Q: Will you add support for other OSes? A: Yes, I will add support for other OSes as I need them. If you need support for a specific OS, please open an issue and I will try to add it.

Q: Will you add support for other hypervisors? A: No, this repository is dedicated to Proxmox and KVM. If you need support for other hypervisors, please look at my other repositories

Q: Will you add support for other cloud providers? A: Since some of cloud providers are using KVM based hypervisors, building custom image with KVM and importing them will solve the case

Q: Will you add support RHEL and RedHat based OSes? A: No, I will not add support for RHEL and RedHat directly, due to their licensing. However, I will add support for RHEL based OSes like AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux and Rocky Linux.

Q: Can I help? A: Yes, please open an issue or a pull request and I will try to help you. Please split PRs into separate commits for block of changes.

Q: Can I use this repository for my own projects? A: Yes, this repository is licensed under the Apache 2 license, so you can use it for your own projects. Please note that some of the files are licensed under different licenses, so please check the licenses of the individual files before using them