Add support for building from an existing Vagrant box

[aseigneurin]

It's quite complex to build a Vagrant box from an ISO file. You need to know the boot sequence and the preseed. Both of these are hardly readable.

Sometimes, we just need to build a box out of an existing Vagrant box. It would be great if Packer had a pre-processor that would take, in input, a Vagrant box, and would then feed the "virtualbox-ovf" builder. Alternatively, this could be another builder.

That would add the ability to provision a pre-built Vagrant box, then repackage it as a Vagrant box.

Ideally, the Vagrant box in input could be taken from the local context or from a URL (e.g. a box from http://www.vagrantbox.es/).

Does it make sense?

[apetresc]

+1

[jorisvddonk]

For Virtualbox, you can currently achieve this manually by downloading a .box, extracting its contents (they're just tarballs, optionally gzipped) and then pointing the source_path of the virtualbox-ovf builder to the box.ovf file that was extracted from the tarball.

I agree though that having actual support for Vagrant boxes inside Packer without requiring above workaround would be really useful.

[ryanbreen]

+1. This would remove a lot of friction from the following workflow: take an existing Vagrant box, update contents, and update deployed box so other users can benefit.

[vampirical]

+1. Would definitely be convenient to have.

[andreisavu]

+1

[riedi]

+1 - i was also looking for that feature - just want to make small changes to an existing base box.

[tchemineau]

+1
Agree with @aseigneurin

[ckulla]

+1

[CpuID]

+1

Nathan Sullivan
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+1

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[michaelmior]

+1 Seems like it would be fairly straightforward to do this for VirtualBox boxes as @jorisvddonk suggests. My guess would be most people who want this are aiming to do it for the VirtualBox Vagrant provider anyway.

[peterfox]

+1 this would make it easier as a lot of the time I just want to take a box and then add simple things like chef etc. rather than do a full install of the OS from an ISO

[Jim-Duke]

+1

There are issues in that a Vagrant Box is not necessarily intended for the VirtualBox provider and may not contain an OVF/OVA file. But for all those who want this workflow that wouldn't be a problem.

[mattiasholmqvist]

+1

[kuboj]

+1

[haad]

+1

Ability to skip installation process would be great.

[d3netxer]

+1

[vladistan]

+1

[lantrix]

+1

Consideration to the pre-processor would be what type of vagrant box provider is in use as well; I'm guessing the two most common are VirtualBox and VMWare

[dev-head]

+1 this should happen

[jonyeezs]

+1

I'm sitting here waiting for a windows update....this takes ages.

I know i should do this during off-peak but sometimes you just need to build a new box. And would be lovely if i don't have to do a windows update from an installation.

[ajmath]

+1

[mwpeterson]

I started converting an existing Vagrant workflow to Packer so we can also build AMIs. I was very surprised to discover that Packer doesn't support building directly from virtualboxes on Atlas. :(

👍

[amontalban]

+1

I have a FreeBSD vagrant box that I build from ISO that would be great if I can use it as base box for other Packer generated boxes that uses FreeBSD as base so I can have better build times.

[libertyy]

+1

[chirangaalwis]

+1 for introducing this feature. Will simplify a lot of work.

[jamesla]

+1

[mat-mcloughlin]

+1

[alaa]

+1

[lqueryvg]

I've +1'd this request.
But until this feature is available, what's wrong with @davidkarlsen suggestion ?
I.e. use existing vagrant functionality:

1. vagrant up (from base .box)
2. vagrant provision (add your customisations here)
3. vagrant halt
4. vagrant package -> create a new .box

Are there any gotchas with this approach ?

[chirangaalwis]

@lqueryvg you may want to look into WSO2's product Vagrant box repository [1], which was recently initiated. In this repository, the approach which you have pointed out has been used.

When working on building Vagrant boxes for WSO2 products, we encountered the same issue discussed here and we came up with the same solution. Yet hopefully, this feature would be introduced sooner rather than later.

[1]: WSO2 product Vagrant boxes

[filipelenfers]

+1

[rockraft7]

+1

[hdlim15]

+1 @KFoxder

[grv87]

@cornfeedhobo, what did you mean saying that @themalkolm's solution doesn't support variables?
He uses variables in tests, and everything looks OK.

[jarrettj]

+1

[koaps]

+1

[Swader]

5 years after the issue was first opened, let me throw in a +1 as well.

[SwampDragons]

I've implemented an integration for the virtualbox-ovf builder already and for the vmware-ovf one, but I'm not wild about the complexity it adds to the code, and I think this would work better as a standalone builder -- so I'll be working on that next, with the Vagrant team.

I'd love volunteers to test builds once I've got something working.

[koaps]

I'd love volunteers to test builds once I've got something working.

I'm game

[Swader]

Also willing to test while in progress, feel free to ping me whenever

[SwampDragons]

I have a rough builder created here

So far thanks to some hardcoding it only works on OSX (I've attached a binary to that PR) but I intend to fix the pathing for linux and windows tomorrow.

I'd love some testing and feedback. Docs changes are included in the PR, and there's a usage example in the PR comments.

[SwampDragons]

Windows and linux builds are now available for the vagrant builder.

[sudomateo]

+1 for this. Also voicing the need/want for this to work via libvirt and not only VirtualBox and VMware.

[SwampDragons]

@sudomateo the new vagrant builder will call out directly to vagrant rather than requiring users to set up the underlying builder; you will have the opportunity to set whichever vagrant provider suits your needs.

[nhojpatrick]

packer build \ -var "box_folder=${BOX_FOLDER}" \ -var "box_checksum=${BOX_CHECKSUM}" \ -var "box_password=${BOX_PASSWORD}" \ -var "box_base_mac=${BOX_BASE_MAC}" \ "templates.json"

As this is still open as I just want to take official vagrant boxes, execute some ansible playbooks, then create a new vagrant box or personal usage...

@Adezandee Do you have an updated version as I've just tried with packer v1.3.4 and get this;

Failed to parse template: 14 error(s) occurred:

* Unknown root level key in template: 'checksum'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'checksum_type'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'guest_additions_mode'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'headless'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'output_directory'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'shutdown_command'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'skip_export'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'source_path'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'ssh_password'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'ssh_pty'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'ssh_username'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'target_path'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'type'
* Unknown root level key in template: 'vboxmanage'

[arnaud-dezandee]

@nhojpatrick my original comment was a partial packer file. I just updated it with a complete working example.

[SwampDragons]

@nhojpatrick that functionality will be added when #7221 is merged :)

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