Packer: Vagrant.box with VirtualBox builder does not include packages installed with shell provisioner

Created on 18 Nov 2016 · 10Comments · Source: hashicorp/packer

A very simplified use case fails, I must be doing something terribly wrong, already tried community help with no luck.

Packer version: Packer v0.12.0
Host: 16.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 16.1.0
VirtualBox version is 5.1.8r111374
Packer debug log gist: https://gist.github.com/gokhansengun/d71227622538d207e18e91ac02df4e4f

I would like to pack an image based on ubuntu 16.04.1 iso with virtualbox-iso provider and provision a few packages (jq and subversion) using shell provisioner (by calling apt). After Vagrant Box is produced, I use that box with Vagrant, sshing into the box shows that the installed packages are not there!!

I thought that this could be file system sync issue and added a few sync commands around and then wait for 30 seconds with no luck.

Please find the repo reproducing the issue below. I am also attaching the packer log file, it actually shows below error but still creating the box as if it is a soft or unrelated error.

2016/11/18 21:06:45 packer: 2016/11/18 21:06:45 stderr: VBoxManage: error: No storage device attached to device slot 1 on port 0 of controller 'IDE Controller'
2016/11/18 21:06:45 packer: VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001), component SessionMachine, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports
2016/11/18 21:06:45 packer: VBoxManage: error: Context: "DetachDevice(Bstr(pszCtl).raw(), port, device)" at line 393 of file VBoxManageStorageController.cpp
2016/11/18 21:06:45 ui: [1;32m==> virtualbox-iso: Unregistering and deleting virtual machine...[0m

Reproduction:

Clone the repository: https://github.com/gokhansengun/packer-shell-provision-issue
Issue the following commands. You will see that the jq and svn packages that are installed with jq-svn-setup.sh script provisioner, is not available in the image.

HOST $ PACKER_LOG=1 packer build ubuntu1604.json
HOST $ vagrant up virtualbox
HOST $ vagrant ssh virtualbox
VM$ jq
The program 'jq' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt install jq
VM$ svn
The program 'svn' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt install subversion

buildevirtualbox question

Source

gokhansengun

Most helpful comment

OK I found the issue myself, this is more of a Vagrant issue. For those who will encounter with this issue later, here is what happens.

When you use the box file produced with Packer inside Vagrant like below, Vagrant automatically add this box to its list of boxes vagrant box list.

virtualbox.vm.box = "file://builds/virtualbox-ubuntu1604.box"

Further builds in the Packer produces new boxes locally but when they are referenced in Vagrant, Vagrant does not check whether the box it added before has changed or not, it goes ahead and uses the old box which is causing a lot of mess.

Removing the box with vagrant box remove <box_name> fixed the issue for me.

gokhansengun on 21 Nov 2016

👍4

All 10 comments

Try:

vagrant destroy -f
vagrant up virtualbox
vagrant ssh virtualbox

rickard-von-essen on 18 Nov 2016

Sorry, did not mention that but I am starting the test with everything clean vagrant destroy -f and rm -rf builds/*. Issue persists.

gokhansengun on 18 Nov 2016

I have seen this issue as well. I build a packer box with virtualbox as the provider and post-processed it to vagrant but the vagrant.box has none of the shell provisioner packages i had installed. Despite the .ovf having all the correct packages.

tameem92 on 18 Nov 2016

This sequence of commands works as expected:

packer build -only=virtualbox-iso ubuntu1604.json
vagrant destroy -f
vagrant up --provider virtualbox virtualbox
vagrant ssh virtualbox -c "svn --version"
[email protected]'s password:
svn, version 1.9.3 (r1718519)
   compiled Mar 14 2016, 07:39:01 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
[...]

(Your vagrant box is missing the default ssh key)

Closing this since there is no bug here. If you still have problems follow up this on the mailing list.

rickard-von-essen on 19 Nov 2016

@rickard-von-essen, issue still persists for me. Could you please tell which OS and VirtualBox version you are using? As I mentioned I was already doing vagrant destroy -f.

gokhansengun on 20 Nov 2016

VirtualBox 5.1.6r110634
Vagrant 1.8.6
macOS Sierra 10.12.1

rickard-von-essen on 20 Nov 2016

OK I found the issue myself, this is more of a Vagrant issue. For those who will encounter with this issue later, here is what happens.

When you use the box file produced with Packer inside Vagrant like below, Vagrant automatically add this box to its list of boxes vagrant box list.

virtualbox.vm.box = "file://builds/virtualbox-ubuntu1604.box"

Removing the box with vagrant box remove <box_name> fixed the issue for me.

gokhansengun on 21 Nov 2016

👍4

:+1:

rickard-von-essen on 21 Nov 2016

I know the last comment on this issue was over ~2.5yrs ago; but I've also run into surprising behaviour as described by @gokhansengun -- Does anyone know if there is a way to tell Vagrant to check for new updates to the box? Perhaps config.vm.box_url helps here?

prologic on 22 Jul 2019

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for _30 days_ ⏳. This helps our maintainers find and focus on the active issues.

If you have found a problem that seems similar to this, please open a new issue and complete the issue template so we can capture all the details necessary to investigate further.