Steps to Install & Configure Packer on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Packer is a free & HashiCorp’s open-source tool. It is used for creating identical machine images from a single configuration file. We can configure packer images with an operating system and application for the specific use-case. Using packer, we can easily build the images for multiple cloud hosting platform.

There are some steps to Install & configure Packer on Ubuntu:

Step 1: Update the System.

apt-get update

Step 2: Install Docker.

apt-get install docker.io

• Start docker service.

systemctl start docker

Step 3: Install Packer on System.

• Add Key.

curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

• Add the Repository.

apt-add-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"

• Update the packages.

apt-get update

• Install Packer.

apt-get install packer

• Check Packer version.

packer -version

• Here is the command output.

• List the available options in packer.

packer -h

• Here is the command output.

Step 4: Create a Packer Template.

• Create a directory & navigate into the directory.

mkdir project
cd project

• Create a file.

vim docker-ubuntu.pkr.hcl

• Here is the command output.

• Add the following lines:

packer {
required_plugins {
docker = {
version = ">= 0.0.7"
source = "github.com/hashicorp/docker"
}
}
}
source "docker" "ubuntu" {
image = "ubuntu:20.04"
commit = true
}
build {
name = "learn-packer"
sources = [
"source.docker.ubuntu"
]
}

• Here is the output.

Step 5: Now,Run the following commands:

• Initialize the packer configuration.

packer init .

• Here is the command output.

• Validate the file.

packer validate .

• Here is the command output.

• Build the packer image.

packer build docker-ubuntu.pkr.hcl

• Here is the command output.

• List the docker image.

docker images

• Here is the command output.

• Delete the docker image.

docker rmi Image_Id

• Here is the command output.