packer

Packer Autoinstall French Language & Keyboard Layout


I’m trying to make a Proxmox template using Packer and I've been struggling to make it choose the French Language.

Here's a portion of my user-data file :

autoinstall:
  version: 1
  locale: fr_FR
  keyboard:
    layout: fr

It's stuck in here: enter image description here

I went through packer docs and couldn't find any piece of documentation about that user-data file :/ Anyone knows where I can get this information please ?


Solution

  • Packer its self doesnt know or care what a user-data file is. That is something thats OS specific for example like in ubuntu https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall-reference#user-data. Where as other OS like windows or RHEL might have a different method to setup a system. Using the ubuntu example the way I have done this previously is with a setup like below.

    In my case I am using vsphere but the idea should work on other sources like AWS EBS etc. I also have a setup.sh script I run as part of the build to configure a few other things after the system is bootstrapped

    /ubuntu20.04
      /config-files
        user-data
        meta-data
      /setup
        setup.sh
      template.pkr.hcl
      var.pkr.hcl
    

    user-data

    #cloud-config
    autoinstall:
        version: 1
        early-commands:
            # Stop ssh for packer
            - sudo systemctl stop ssh
        locale: en_GB
        keyboard:
            layout: en
            variant: gb
    # plus other stuff in my setup
    

    setup.sh

    #!/bin/bash
    
    echo '> Cleaning all audit logs ...'
    if [ -f /var/log/audit/audit.log ]; then
    cat /dev/null > /var/log/audit/audit.log
    fi
    if [ -f /var/log/wtmp ]; then
    cat /dev/null > /var/log/wtmp
    fi
    if [ -f /var/log/lastlog ]; then
    cat /dev/null > /var/log/lastlog
    fi
    
    echo '> Cleaning apt-get ...'
    apt-get clean
    # Cleans the machine-id.
    echo '> Cleaning the machine-id ...'
    truncate -s 0 /etc/machine-id
    rm /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
    ln -s /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
    

    template.pkr.hcl

    source "vsphere-iso" "ubuntu" {
    
      cd_files = [
        "./config-files/user-data",
        "./config-files/meta-data"
      ]
      cd_label = "cidata"
      boot_order   = "disk,cdrom,floppy"
      boot_wait    = "3s"
      boot_command = [
        "<esc><esc><esc>",
        "<enter><wait>",
        "/casper/vmlinuz ",
        "root=/dev/sr0 ",
        "initrd=/casper/initrd ",
        "autoinstall ",
        "ds=nocloud-net;",
        "<enter>"
      ]
      shutdown_command = "echo '${var.ssh_password}' | sudo -S -E shutdown -P now"
      shutdown_timeout = "15m"
    
      #
      #some other stuff 
      #
    }
    
    build {
      sources = ["source.vsphere-iso.ubuntu"]
    
      provisioner "shell" {
        execute_command  = "echo '${var.ssh_password}' | {{.Vars}} sudo -S -E bash '{{.Path}}'"
        environment_vars = [
          "BUILD_USERNAME=${var.ssh_username}",
        ]
        scripts           = ["./setup/setup.sh"]
        expect_disconnect = true
      }
    }