Packer template for Mint Cinnamon 17.3

Not finding an existing ''working' Packer template for Mint Cinnamon, this is a an attempt to create one based upon the excellent boxcutter ubuntu templates, mixed with some pieces from the StefanScherer mint template.

Avaiable Online

This box has been pre-built and uploaded to the Hashicorp Atlas repository. Specifically, it is available there as rapa/mint-17.3-dev. This code relates to the 1.3.4 release of that box.

In order to keep this template simple (and because I didn't have the capacity to test/verify other versions) the only builder remaining in the scripts is for VirtualBox.

Packer

You can download Packer here. It is used to script the creation of base box files for use by Vagrant.

Mint Cinnamon

Based upon the boxcutter templates, this template retains use of the JSON files containing user variables that enable variations in building specific versions of your box - although only a single variation remains at this time. You tellpackerto use a specific JSON file via the -var-file= command line option. This will add to, and override, the default options in the coremint.jsonpacker template - if no 'var' file is specified, the build will fail.

Developers

The resultant base image is created with developers in mind. As a consequence, this build has a developer.sh script that installs various programming languages and tools.

• Git 2.11.0
• Python 2.7.6
• Oracle Java 1.8.0_121
• Scala 2.12.1
• PHP 5.5.9
• Ruby 2.4.0p0
• Node.js 7.5.0
• Go 1.7.5
• Swift 3.0.2
• Rust 1.15.1
• Haskell GHC 7.6.3
• Maven 3.3.9
• Gradle 3.3
• sbt 0.13.11
• Docker 1.13.1
• docker-compose 1.11.0
• Vagrant 1.9.1
• VirtualBox 5.0.2r102096

Build Environment

If you are working/experimenting a lot with packer, it can be worth setting a global packer cache location to reduce the duplication of downloads. Add the following to your .bashrc file:

export PACKER_CACHE_DIR="$HOME/packer_cache"

Building

To build a Mint Cinnamon 17.3 developers Vagrant base box, execute the following from the base directory:

$ packer validate -var-file=mint-cinnamon-17.3.json mint.json
$ packer build -var-file=mint-cinnamon-17.3.json mint.json

Once the build has completed, you can create the actual VM image in Vagrant with something like the following:

$ vagrant box add mintBox box/virtualbox/mint-cinnamon-17.3-box--dev-1.3.4.box
$ vagrant init mintBox
$ vagrant up

boxcutter README

The following has been left in verbatim, from the existing boxcutter README

Variable overrides

There are several variables that can be used to override some of the default settings in the box build process. The variables can that can be currently used are:

• cm
• cm_version
• cpus
• disk_size
• memory
• update

Changing the value of the CM variable changes the target suffixes for the output of make list accordingly.

Possible values for the CM variable are:

• nocm - No configuration management tool
• ansible - Install Ansible
• chef - Install Chef
• chefdk - Install Chef Development Kit
• puppet - Install Puppet
• salt - Install Salt

You can also specify a variable CM_VERSION, if supported by the configuration management tool, to override the default of latest. The value of CM_VERSION should have the form x.y or x.y.z, such as CM_VERSION := 11.12.4

The variable HEADLESS can be set to run Packer in headless mode. Set HEADLESS := true, the default is false.

The variable UPDATE can be used to perform OS patch management. The default is to not apply OS updates by default. When UPDATE := true, the latest OS updates will be applied.

The variable PACKER can be used to set the path to the packer binary. The default is packer.

The variable ISO_PATH can be used to set the path to a directory with OS install images. This override is commonly used to speed up Packer builds by pointing at pre-downloaded ISOs instead of using the default download Internet URLs.

The variables SSH_USERNAME and SSH_PASSWORD can be used to change the default name & password from the default vagrant/vagrant respectively.

The variable INSTALL_VAGRANT_KEY can be set to turn off installation of the default insecure vagrant key when the image is being used outside of vagrant. Set INSTALL_VAGRANT_KEY := false, the default is true.