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Description

Using distrobuilder or something based on the internals of distrobuilder to build LXC images.

Use Case(s)

As per LXC documentation, using LXC templates the way it currently seems this plugin is doing is not recommended, and doesn't work very well. Getting LXC Templates to run is not very easy, and in some cases (all my attempts with alpine linux) it doesn't work at all. The official way to do it instead is to use distrobuilder, which constructs a rootfs for the image that can be used to spawn an lxc container from, using the rootfs as a starting point. This would make building lxc containers easier, and wouldn't require having a working LXC template script for each distro, but just the download sources.

Potential configuration

This could be done by using the shared package of the distrobuilder package to download the base rootfs, which can then be used to start up an lxc container, which can then function as it currently does

Potential References

https://github.com/lxc/distrobuilder

https://linuxcontainers.org/distrobuilder/introduction/

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Community Note

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Description

I am using Packer to provision container templates for a Proxmox VE instance, and Proxmox expects that the input .tar.gz file containing the rootfs be "direct", for lack of a better word. That is, /bin/, /dev/, and the like should be at the top level of the archive rather than contained inside of a /rootfs/ folder.

Obviously I can work around this by doing a post-process step, but it's a bit cumbersome. I'd like a way to configure the export step which lets me solve this use case. (I'm assuming this needs to be more general than something to solve this very specific case, but maybe not.)

Use Case(s)

Proxmox containers is my current use case, although I'd not be surprised to learn there is other LXC-based infrastructure that has this same problem.

Potential configuration

Not really sure. Maybe adding a key like this to the builder config?

archive_directory = $containerDir/rootfs

That syntax definitely needs some work.

Potential References

This issue was originally opened by @thedrow as hashicorp/packer#6545. It was migrated here as a result of the Packer plugin split. The original body of the issue is below.

When the export step is run, it tries to tar the rootfs.
Unfortunately I failed to notice before that it failed due to some of the files in the rootfs belonging to the container's root.
It seems that exporting the container requires us to run sudo. When running sudo you get a prompt which you can't fill since we're not listening to input.
Not sure how to resolve this correctly.

In this example,

provisioner "file" { sources = [ "srcfolder/foo" ] destination = "dstfolder" }

files are copied in "dstfolder" instead of "dstfolder/foo".

This issue was originally opened by @Dialgatrainer02 in hashicorp/packer#12907 and has been migrated to this repository. The original issue description is below.

Community Note

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When filing a bug, please include the following headings if possible. Any
example text in this template can be deleted.

Overview of the Issue

when i run packer build . i get errors saying it couldnt create the vm

and im unsure why i can create containers using
sudo lxc-create -t download -n packer-test -- -d alpine -a amd64

Reproduction Steps

install lxc
git clone https://github.com/jpancoast/image-builder.git
cd ./image-builder/lxc/examples/alpine
sudo packer init .
sudo chmod +x build.sh
sudo bash build.sh

Packer version

From packer version

Packer v1.10.2-dev

Your version of Packer is out of date! The latest version
is 1.10.2. You can update by downloading from www.packer.io/downloads

Simplified Packer Template

If the file is longer than a few dozen lines, please include the URL to the
gist of the log or use the Github detailed
format
instead of posting it directly in the issue.
git clone https://github.com/jpancoast/image-builder.git this is my first time using packer so just coping a git repo

Operating system and Environment details

OS, Architecture, and any other information you can provide about the
environment.

arch linux (just for testing)
x86_64
packer and lxc on latest versions

Log Fragments and crash.log files

Include appropriate log fragments. If the log is longer than a few dozen lines,
please include the URL to the gist of the log or
use the Github detailed format instead of posting it directly in the issue.
https://gist.github.com/Dialgatrainer02/c28b16d8a7ab72424323b91e3294d38e

Set the env var PACKER_LOG=1 for maximum log detail.