Packer set ssh key in Bionic Ubuntu Cloud Image(OVA)

[Simar Arora]

Hi,

I am trying to provision Ubuntu cloud image in my virtual box(OVA format), the cloud image does not come with default login credentials and needs ssh key pair to be inserted in VM. After some research, I found that it can be done with cloud-init, wondering if this can be done with Packer as well? 

 

{

"builders":[{

  "type": "virtualbox-ovf",

  "source_path": "ubuntu-bionic-18.04-cloudimg.ovf",

  "ssh_private_key_file": "~/development/packer_scripts/ssh/id_rsa",

  "shutdown_command": "echo 'packer' | sudo -S shutdown -P now",

   "vboxmanage": [

    ["modifyvm", "{{.Name}}", "--memory", "1024"],

    ["modifyvm", "{{.Name}}", "--cpus", "2"],

    [ "modifyvm", "{{.Name}}", "--uart1", "0x3F8", "4" ]

  ],

   "boot_command":[

"<esc><wait>",

"<esc><wait>",

"<esc><wait>"

   ]

}

]
}

[Virt Man]

You can use file directive to copy the ssh key while building the image.
https://packer.io/docs/builders/file.html

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[Rickard von Essen]

Actually you can't copy the pub key if you can't log in. You can use boot_command to login on the console and add the pubkey if you have any login enabled.

There have been a recent discussion to automate some of this in https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/7225 

VirtualBox is not a "cloud" so cloud-init will not just work (there is no API to handle the pubkey with), but you could prepare a config-drive before running Packer, for more info see the issue above.

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