Warning

This README is still under development!

Packer Templates for Proxmox

Important

This repo is built for my own environment so please review all configurations to verify compatibility!

This repo is used to build Packer template files used in Proxmox and ready for cloudinit/Terraform deployments.

Features used in these templates are:

• Bare minimal installations.
• UEFI images with TTYS enabled.
• Single 10GB root volume.
• Includes cloudinit for terraform deployments.
• Includes QEMU guest agent.
• Includes Docker, Hashicorp, and community repos (when availible).

TODO features to add:

• CIS/STIG hardening
• Secureboot/TPM

Tip

This repo is part of my IaC automation series. If you are building this in mind please follow my repo's in the order below.

1.  terraform-iso-get
2.  you are here packer
3.  terraform-core
4.  ansible
5.  terraform-talos
6.  k8s-apps

ISO Setup

The Packer builder is configured to boot from an ISO. There are two aproaches to using a ISO, download the file from a URL or mount from a file. This repo is configured to use the file method but if you want to use a URL you can read the Proxmox ISO Builder for configuration details.

Build Your Secrets File

Keeping in best practice, this repo does not contain any sensitive information. You will need to create a directory outside of this git repo on a properly encrypted disk/usb to save the secrets file. Below is the template needed for the file which needs to be named pkr-secrets.pkrvars.hcl. The builds will run using the root (password packer) account temporarily and then disable the account. This means you will need to supply the primary user when you deploy a vm with something such as cloudinit/Terraform.

# This is a sensitive file. Do not share!
# All variables for all Packer files.

proxmox_hostname = "pve1.example.com:8006"
proxmox_api_id = "username@pam!build"
proxmox_api_secret = "API-KEY-HERE"

Building Packer Templates

Packer usage ref:


├─ http
│ ├─ base        # base files for all images
│ └─ <image>     # additional files for the image
├─ packer-config # base config applied to all images
├─ packer-vars   # base variables applied to all images
└─ <image>       # variables custom to the image

Each image has it's own variables file so all you need to do is define the correct OS file and your secrets file.

Init/upgrade Packer modules:

packer init -upgrade .

Validate the packer build with:

packer validate \
-var-file=<image>.pkrvars.hcl \
-var-file=/path/to/secrets/pkr-secrets.pkrvars.hcl .

Run the Packer build with:

packer build \
-var-file=<image>.pkrvars.hcl \
-var-file=/path/to/secrets/pkr-secrets.pkrvars.hcl .

Current Images Supported

Important

Distro flavor choice is based off the latest, stable, slim version availible.

OS	Version	VMID	Status
 Alma	9.5	1000	Completed
 Alpine	3.21	1001	Completed
 Antix	22	1002
󰣇 Arch	rolling	1003
 Artix	rolling	1004
 Centos	Streams 10	1005	Completed
 ClearOS	rolling	1006
 Core	15	1007
󰣚 Debian	12.9	1008	Commpleted
 Elementary	7.1	1009
 Endeavour	Gemini	1010
󰣛 Fedora	41	1011	Completed
󰣠 FreeBSD	13.3	1012
󰣨 Gentoo	rolling	1013
 Kali	rolling	1014	initrd err
 Kali Purple	rolling	1015
󱘊 Manjaro	23.1	1016
󰣭 Mint	22.2	1017
󱄅 Nix	23.11	1018
 OpenBSD	7.5	1019
 OpenSUSE	Tumbleweed	1020
 Parrot	6.2	1021
 Peppermint	rolling	1022
 Pop!	22.04	1023
 QubesOS	4.2	1024
 Rocky	9.5	1025	Completed
󰕈 Ubuntu	24.10	1027	Completed
 Vanilla	22.10	1028
 Void	glibc	1029
 Windows	11	1030
 Zorin	17.1	1031

[!WARNING]

Acknowledgements

Huge shout out to Pumba98 for his excellent repo which much of this was inspired. You can find his repo here: github.com/Pumba98/proxmox-packer-templates)