Proxmox Vagrant Image

Collection of Packer/Ansible configs to build minimal Proxmox Virtual Environment image for Vagrant.

Prerequisites

1. Always check on the builder host if it supports nested virtualization: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Nested_Virtualization.
2. Install Packer:
   1. Generic installation: https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/install#linux
   2. openSUSE installation: opi packer
3. Install Ansible to the work directory:

   python3 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

4. openSUSE sometimes needs the qemu-ui-gtk package to be installed separately. Otherwise, the Packer can fail with error Qemu stderr: qemu-system-x86_64: Display 'gtk' is not available. And sshpass to login into box without a public key.

zypper in qemu-ui-gtk sshpass

Executing

Simple

packer init .
packer validate -var-file=proxmox/variants/version84.pkrvars.hcl proxmox/
packer build -var-file=proxmox/variants/version84.pkrvars.hcl proxmox/

Explained

Config file config.pkr.hcl contains a list of Packer plugins needed to build Vagrant image for Proxmox VE (ansible, qemu, vagrant).

Command packer init . reads this config and installs plugins.

Directory proxmox/ contains all other configs and scripts to make actual build of image:

• Ansible role pve_vagrant (short documentation) that makes provisioning of the installed system in the VM;
• Ansible playbook that triggers role pve_vagrant;
• Vagrant template vagrant_template.rb which will be embedded into Vagrant box and will be used as default config for box;
• directory variants holds a collection of Packer variable files to configure the building process;
• files proxmox_image.pkr.hcl and variables.pkr.hcl are the actual Packer config that is executed when command packer build proxmox/ triggered.

Testing

Assume that the building process finished successfully with a similar output:

==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
--> qemu.proxmox-qemu-image: 'libvirt' provider box: /home/castor/temp/output_proxmox_v84_box/proxmox-qemu-image_v8.4.0_libvirt_amd64.box

Add box image from the local source and create VM with vagrant:

vagrant box add /home/castor/temp/output_proxmox_v84_box/proxmox-qemu-image_v8.4.0_libvirt_amd64.box --name proxmox-qemu
mkdir -p ~/temp/proxmox-test-image && cd ~/temp/proxmox-test-image
vagrant init proxmox-qemu
vagrant up
vagrant ssh

Advanced usage notes

The default image hostname is pve and you will have to add a few steps to use a custom hostname as the Proxmox API relies on the hostname and uses it heavily under the hood. No VM/CT will start until Proxmox daemons will know about the custom hostname (Vagrant changes hostname after PVE daemons are already running). You can use similar script to provision Proxmox node with custom hostname:

$hostname_script = <<-'SCRIPT'
PRESENT=$(cat /etc/hosts | grep -c "10.0.2.15.*$@");
if [[ $PRESENT -lt 1 ]]; then
    echo "10.0.2.15 $@" >> /etc/hosts;
    echo "Hostname configured. Rebooting node now!";
    systemctl reboot;
fi
SCRIPT

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "castor/proxmox"
  config.vm.hostname = "my-pve-host"
  config.vm.provision "shell" do |sh|
    sh.inline = $hostname_script
    sh.args = "my-pve-host.example.com my-pve-host"
  end
end

License

BSD