Packer vmware-iso builder failing with “unexpected EOF”

[itjar...@gmail.com]

I am new to Packer and have been attempting to use the Packer vmware-iso builder. I have attempted to build both an Ubuntu 18.04 and a CentOS 7 template. Both are failing at the same point. I am unsure what I'm missing. I'm not even sure where to begin troubleshooting. When I run packer build it proceeds through the following steps:

• Retrieving ISO
• Leaving retrieve loop for ISO
• Creating floppy disk... (I am using a floppy disk for the .cfg file because I'm building directly on the esx host)
• Uploading Floppy to remote machine...
• Uploading ISO to remote machine...
• Creating required virtual machine disks
• Building and writing VMX file
• Build 'ubuntu-1604' errored: unexpected EOF
• Some builds didn't complete successfully and had errors:
• ubuntu-1604: unexpected EOF
• Builds finished but no artifacts were created

This doesn't seem accurate as artifacts are present on the ESX host: packer_cache folder with ISO virtual machine folder with a vmdk file, but no vmx files are present.

Here is some of the log output:

• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: 2019/04/19 12:03:30 Writing VMX to: /tmp/vmw-iso942565597/ubuntu-1804-base.vmx
• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: 2019/04/19 12:03:30 Cleaning up remote path: /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/packer_cache/packer670624036
• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: 2019/04/19 12:03:30 Removing remote cache path /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/packer_cache/packer670624036 (local /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/packer_cache/packer670624036)
• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: 2019/04/19 12:03:30 [DEBUG] Opening new ssh session
• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: 2019/04/19 12:03:30 [DEBUG] starting remote command: rm -f "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/packer_cache/packer670624036"
• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: 2019/04/19 12:03:30 Deleting floppy disk: /tmp/packer670624036
• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
• 2019/04/19 12:03:30 packer: [signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x10 pc=0x1df735c]

[Alvaro Miranda Aguilera]

hi there

please include a link to a github repo where your files are to have a look at them

--
This mailing list is governed under the HashiCorp Community Guidelines - https://www.hashicorp.com/community-guidelines.html. Behavior in violation of those guidelines may result in your removal from this mailing list.
 
GitHub Issues: https://github.com/mitchellh/packer/issues
IRC: #packer-tool on Freenode
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Packer" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to packer-tool...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/packer-tool/865f953a-55b6-4679-aace-0de17ed99455%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Alvaro

[itjar...@gmail.com]

The issue appears to be with Packer version 1.4. I switched to packer 1.3.5, made no other changes, and the issue is now resolved.