How to obtain guest ip

[James Elmes]

Howdy.

Wondering if there is a way to return the guest IP. I want to initiate a file copy from Shell-Local provisioner, this way the copy is initiated from the local machine running packer.

example: xcopy -source C:\packer\vmtools -destination \\guestip\c$\packer

i have looked everywhere and can't seem to find a way to return the actual guest IP

any help appreciated

James

[Rickard von Essen]

You can do something like this:

"provisioners": [

  {

    "type": "shell",

    "inline": [ "hostname > /tmp/hostname" ]

  },

  {

    "type": "file",

    "direction": "download",

    "source": "/tmp/hostname",

    "destination": "hostname"

  }

]

And you will get the hostname in the file "hostname".

You just need to switch to ifconfig etc. If you are building in a cloud it might also be possible to use the cli/api if you have an unique name/id/tag etc to lookup. 

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[James Elmes]

Should have mentioned i am using windows.. 

I know how to copy files to the guest vm, i am trying to initiate the copy from the local windows server i am running packer on. I am doing this manually using the shell-local command

"type": "Shell-Local"

"command": "xcopy -source C:\packer\vmtools -destination \\guestip\c$\packer

The guest IP i am entering manually by checking which dhcp address is allocated to the guest IP from my AD server

Packer knows this address already as it connected over SSH/Winrm without me providing it.. i want to know how i can get it.. using something like {{guest_IP}}

James

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[Gabo Kete]

I think the guest_ip address is not exported as an environmental variable and only used within the packer code.. what you can do instead is to create a small powershell script to get the guest IP address and use that variable instead

[Gabo Kete]

If what you are after ( looking at the piece of JSON file you shared ) is to upload a file from your packer machine to the guest machine , I would recommend you use File provisioner instead ( link below ), which will help you to upload a file without knowing the guest IP address

https://www.packer.io/docs/provisioners/file.html

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 2:03:10 PM UTC+12, James Elmes wrote:

[Rickard von Essen]

And if you use the file privisioner with WinRM with larger files you will find that it's slow. The workaround is to use http_directory and environment variable PACKER_HTTP_ADDR, see https://www.packer.io/docs/provisioners/powershell.html#packer_http_addr

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[James Elmes]

that seems like a useful feature add.

To obtain the IP via powershell within the packer script and save it as a variable, any idea the easiest way to do that? i haven't actually done that before.. but is sounds like it should work

regards

James

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[James Elmes]

the file provisioner uses WINRM and is impossibly slow for big files. I can't use SSH either

Thats why i want to initiate the file copy from the local shell, but require the IP when using the local shell

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[James Elmes]

Yes i dont't really want to stand up a HTTP server just for this, theres already enough moving parts with automating image creation.. initiating he copy from the local-shell would be perfectly fine if i could reference the guest IP (which packer knows) easily

regards

James

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[Rickard von Essen]

This is by design not exposed. See https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/3331 and linked issues.

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[James Elmes]

I had a read through that issue, thanks for finding that.

Do you know something i can run from shell-local to obtain the IP for guest being built? i am building windows guests from a windows machine..

if i can use obtain the guest ip and use in guest local i can kick off the file transfers i need to much much easier

regards

James

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[Rickard von Essen]

Depends on the builder? Which one are you using?

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[James Elmes]

vmware-iso latest version of packer also

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[James Elmes]

ESXi 6.0

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[James Elmes]

I guess its not that easy to get the guest IP

[Gabo Kete]

sorry not a really expert in Powershell but found this that could help you 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27277701/powershell-get-ipv4-address-into-a-variable

I guess the level of complexity of the powershell script will be up to what you are after.. Bear in mind that packer can execute local and remote scripts.. with different provisioners, probably the most accurate for you is the Powershell provisioner

https://www.packer.io/docs/provisioners/powershell.html