Why don't Packer provisioner changes show up in Vagrant box even though they are reported successful?

Question

I feel like I'm going crazy here. I am trying to create a Vagrant VirtualBox image from a CentOS 7 ISO using Packer. More specifically, I am running the virtualbox-iso builder and using the Vagrant post-processor. According to the output from the packer build operation, my provisioners are all working, but none of my provisioning changes are showing up when I bring the box up with Vagrant. As an example, I am using the file provisioner to upload a file to the /home/vagrant directory. In my mind, this is as simple as it gets.

"provisioners": [
  {
    "type": "file",
    "source": "files/file",
    "destination": "/home/vagrant/file"
  }
...

Packer doesn't throw any errors, and by all indications, the file upload is successful. Here is the message from the Packer trace indicating the file was uploaded.

==> virtualbox-iso: Uploading files/file => /home/vagrant/file

And yet, when I bring up the box in Vagrant and I SSH in, the file is not there. Same thing with my scripts - Packer indicates that they are being run, and I even added print debug statements in the shell scripts using && to verify that commands were executed successfully, such as:

mkdir -p /home/vagrant/folder1 && echo "Made the directory, dammit"

I see my echo statement in the packer build trace, but still nothing in /home/vagrant when I login. I feel like I'm missing something obvious... Does anybody know what the problem might be?

EDIT: Here is the template for the VBox image. I am also building a VMware image, but I did not include that one here.

"builders": [
    {
      "type": "virtualbox-iso",
      "boot_command": [
        "<tab> text ks=http://{{ .HTTPIP }}:{{ .HTTPPort }}/ks.cfg<enter><wait>"
      ],
      "boot_wait": "10s",
      "disk_size": 81920,
      "guest_os_type": "RedHat_64",
      "headless": true,
      "http_directory": "http",
      "iso_urls": [
        "CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1708.iso",
        "http://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/centos/7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1708.iso"
      ],
      "iso_checksum_type": "sha256",
      "iso_checksum": "bba314624956961a2ea31dd460cd860a77911c1e0a56e4820a12b9c5dad363f5",
      "ssh_username": "vagrant",
      "ssh_password": "vagrant",
      "ssh_port": 22,
      "ssh_wait_timeout": "10000s",
      "shutdown_command": "echo 'vagrant'|sudo -S /sbin/halt -h -p",
      "guest_additions_path": "VBoxGuestAdditions_{{.Version}}.iso",
      "virtualbox_version_file": ".vbox_version",
      "vm_name": "packer-centos-7-x86_64",
      "vboxmanage": [
        [
          "modifyvm",
          "{{.Name}}",
          "--memory",
          "1024"
        ],
        [
          "modifyvm",
          "{{.Name}}",
          "--cpus",
          "2"
        ]
      ]
    },
...

After running packer build I am running vagrant up virtualbox which is the name of the VM as defined in my Vagrantfile:

  # VirtualBox.
  # `vagrant up virtualbox --provider=virtualbox`
  config.vm.define "virtualbox" do |virtualbox|
    virtualbox.vm.hostname = "virtualbox-centos7"
    virtualbox.vm.box = "file://builds/virtualbox-centos7.box"
    virtualbox.vm.network :private_network, ip: "172.16.3.2"

    config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |v|
      v.gui = false
      v.memory = 1024
      v.cpus = 1
      v.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--natdnshostresolver1", "on"]
      v.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--ioapic", "on"]
    end

    config.vm.provision "shell", inline: "echo Hello, World"
  end

I am working off of the following repository on GitHub (which I realize may be a bit dated): https://github.com/geerlingguy/packer-centos-7

However, I am trying to tweak the examples to suit my own needs.

EDIT 2: For troubleshooting purposes, I tried removing the vagrant post-processor and just keeping the VMware and VBox images without converting to Vagrant boxes. I booted each of these and the provisioning I did with Packer shows up there. This means that the problem happens somewhere during or after the conversion to Vagrant boxes, since both the VMware and VBox non-Vagrant images have the desired changes. Hopefully this helps narrow it down.

2) This is usually a workflow problem. Can you provide the exact sequence of commands you run, starting with Packer build. — Rickard von Essen
Yes, there is a shutdown_command. I will edit the description with more information. — ndusek
Make sure you have -force in your packer build command, else existing files won't be overwritten and you end up with the old box... — su_li

Wicked Viking Wicked Viking · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-29T15:37:02

https://github.com/geerlingguy/packer-centos-7

This is still relevant, another good repo for "inspiration" is https://github.com/chef/bento

However, it almost sounds like you maybe didn't update the box in vagrant locally. Try adding your vagrant post processor back in and running your packer build.

Check you output path for the new box. Then run something like this:

vagrant box add --force --name {your vagrant box name} {path to your new .box file}

then when you vagrant init vagrant up you should using the new box.

Alternatively, if your packer build is using the vagrant cloud post processor, make sure you are incrementing your version so the vagrant client can detect an updated version of the box.

Why don't Packer provisioner changes show up in Vagrant box even though they are reported successful?

2 Answers