Packer templates for Linux

Overview

This repository contains Packer templates for creating Linux virtual machines.

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:

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.

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

Derived heavily from Boxcutter community driven cloud templates.

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