Packer templates for Linux

Overview

This repository contains Packer templates for creating Linux virtual machines.

Building the Vagrant boxes with Packer

To build all the boxes, you will need VirtualBox.

We make use of JSON files containing user variables to build specific versions of Linux.

You tell packer to use a specific user variable file via the -var-file= command line option.

This will override the default options on the core centos.json packer template, which builds CentOS 7 by default.

For example, to build CentOS 7, use the following:

packer build -var-file=centos7.json centos.json

The boxcutter templates currently support the following desktop virtualization strings:

• virtualbox-iso - VirtualBox

Exporting Virtual Machine to Azure

Generate your virtual machines to be compatible with Azure.

packer build -var-file=centos7.json -var 'azure=true' centos.json

You may also build the Desktop version which will install gnome + related tooling (vscode, xrdp, ...)

packer build -var-file=centos7-desktop.json -var 'azure=true' centos-desktop.json

Run the Azure to vhd conversion script.

./scripts/azure-vhd.sh _output/output-centos7-virtualbox-iso/centos7-disk001.vmdk

You will now need to follow the steps in the docs/azure-vm.md directory.

OS Hardening

Right now the base O.S. has just a few security related configurations applied to it:

• Installs fail2ban to monitor bad SSH access
• Minor tweaks to SSH
• Set up automatic updates via yum cron

Acknowledgements

Derived heavily from Boxcutter community driven cloud templates.

Additionally also consulted the Packer guide to VM creation provided by Microsoft