Packer - Cannot Build AMIs from within AWS

[Daniel Campailla]

I wonder if anyone could offer some support as this issue has been driving me crazy for days.

I can create AMIs fine from a local machine but when I try to run Packer from an AWS instance it hangs when it starts to execute Ansible as below and stays in that state indefinitely:

TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************

amazon-ebs: Using module file /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible/modules/system/setup.py

amazon-ebs: <127.0.0.1> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: jenkins

amazon-ebs: <127.0.0.1> SSH: EXEC ssh -o ForwardAgent=yes -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o Port=33468 -o 'IdentityFile="/tmp/ansible-key652774606"' -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o User=jenkins -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o ControlPath=/var/lib/jenkins/.ansible/cp/bc1ce89347 127.0.0.1 '/bin/sh -c '"'"'echo ~ && sleep 0'"'"''

I’ve tried opening another session on the same server and running the SSH command above and it seems to log me in okay but I cannot do anything else on the target system after the home directory appears as below:

/home/ec2-user

For information, I’m new to Packer and am using temporary keys generated automatically generated by the package. In addition, I've tried running Packer from other servers in AWS but all of them exhibit the same issue. The OS we’re using is CentOS/RHEL and the template is as below (note I've created a specific IAM role which as per Packer's recommendation on their site):

"builders": [
    {
      "type":                 "amazon-ebs",
      "region":               "{{user `aws_region`}}",
      "source_ami":           "{{user `aws_source_ami`}}",
      "subnet_id":            "{{user `aws_subnet_id` }}",
      "security_group_id":    "{{user `aws_sg_id` }}",
      "instance_type":        "{{user `aws_instance_type`}}",
      "ssh_username":         "{{user `aws_ssh_username`}}",
      "ami_name":             "{{user `project_name`}}-{{user `server_type`}}-{{user `server_version`}}_{{timestamp}}",
      "iam_instance_profile": "packer-iam-role",
      "launch_block_device_mappings": [
        {
          "device_name":           "{{user `boot_device_name`}}",
          "volume_size":           "{{user `boot_device_size`}}",
          "volume_type":           "{{user `boot_volume_type`}}",
          "delete_on_termination": "{{user `boot_volume_delete_on_termination`}}"
        }
      ],
      "tags": {
        "Name":           "{{user `project_name`}}-{{user `server_type`}}-{{user `server_version`}}_{{user `ami_datestamp`}}",
        "Service":        "{{user `service_id`}}",
        "PackerVersion":  "{{user `packer_version`}}",
        "AnsibleVersion": "{{user `ansible_version`}}"
      }
    }
  ],
  "provisioners": [
    {
      "type":             "ansible",
      "playbook_file":    "{{user `playbook_location`}}/{{user `project_name`}}_{{user `server_type`}}_{{user `server_version`}}.yml",
        "extra_arguments": [
        "-vvv"
      ],
      "ansible_env_vars": [
        "ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False", "ANSIBLE_SSH_ARGS='-o ForwardAgent=yes -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s'"
      ]
    }

 

Any help or guidance you could provide would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[Rickard von Essen]

Which version of Packer? 

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[Rickard von Essen]

If you are on 1.0.3 you need to downgrade to 1.0.2 or build from master to use ansible. See https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/5142

[Daniel Campailla]

Yep that worked straight away as I was on 1.0.3. Thanks for you quick response. :)

Which version of Packer? 

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[Per Abich]

I had the same issue. First it stopped working on my mac (brew upgrade must have upgraded it) and I couldn't reproduce it working on my PC as well. Nearly drove me crazy. 

Thanks so much for the great problem description and also the solution!

/Per