Post A68dRtmHDdmUtmM0P3 by mjd@hackers.town
(DIR) More posts by mjd@hackers.town
(DIR) Post #A68cGCikrZ90DkZB4q by mjd@hackers.town
2021-04-11T12:48:02Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Does anyone know of a non-Hashicorp alternative to Hashicorp's 'Packer?'Hashicorp is ok, but Vagrant is/was a bit ... less well thought out than it should have been, perhaps. And I'd like to avoid similar 'growing pains' with packer.It needs to build more than just Debian, so no, the debian-centric tooling (which I have used before) and definately more than RHEL (which I have also used before) are out.I need to build a full image, repeatable, updateable, and without reliance on any particular init system. (Hell I don't even know that packer does that. Fellow at work uses it, and I'll need to learn it at some point for that... but for my OWN projects, I want to be less reliant on ... Hashicorp... in case they get... you know. Purchased. Purloined. Pilfered. Popped. Pissy. )... is Purloined different from Pilfered in this context? Hmm.
(DIR) Post #A68cGD55WX0bL110t6 by Clifford@social.garwood.io
2021-04-11T13:23:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@mjd There are lots of packer builders out there, you don’t have to use vagrant. I’m using the qemu builder and deploy templates to my libvirt environment. At work, we build templates with VMware workstation. Most Linux distros are derivatives of Debian and RHEL, which OS are you targeting?My workflow is pretty minimal. I have an ISO hosted on a PXE enabled network and a kickstart file that sets the basics. I leave more sophisticated and reliable configuration to Chef.
(DIR) Post #A68ckRaQ9pZP0s5Uu0 by Clifford@social.garwood.io
2021-04-11T13:28:38Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@mjd Not sure if there is a good alternative though😔
(DIR) Post #A68dRtmHDdmUtmM0P3 by mjd@hackers.town
2021-04-11T13:36:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Clifford I was actually referring to the packer program itself - something that builds in a similar way.And yes, I'd be using KVM / QEMU to make the underlying image.None of the distros I prefer are derivatives of Debian (except Devuan) or RHEL. For customer use, I'll probably go with Devuan if I have to maintain it, if they are maintaining it, it's likely RHEL/Debian. I also want BSD support, and plan 9. So the answer is "All of them."I'd prefer NOT rolling my own, which I have been doing for some time. Was sort of hoping packer was a bit more than automated install (such as with a preseed file for cent(dead)OS or debian's preseed; and I CANNOT remember the debian 'make initial os' thing, which someone expanded in a xentools thing ... used long ago...)Basically: just looking to see if anyone knows of a 'packer' tool that is not Hashicorp, and is maintained.(I'd also probably use ansible, tho it's redhat now... ): But salt was bought too. I DON'T do Ruby.)
(DIR) Post #A68hQhpYYIaLN9Zgxs by mjd@hackers.town
2021-04-11T13:37:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Clifford Shorter answer:I'm worried about locking myself into the Hashicorp infrastructure, and looking to see if anything exists that is not heavily roll-your-own.
(DIR) Post #A68hQiGquoQ4joLUVk by Clifford@social.garwood.io
2021-04-11T14:21:05Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@mjd Yeah, hashicorp has done a great job of creating scalable workflows. I can’t think of another tool as versatile as packer for creating images. I don’t see why you couldn’t use it for any OS though. But I can respect not wanting to use it for whatever your guiding principles may be. Good luck in your search.
(DIR) Post #A6A3MADjxnWW7m5Ni4 by alrs@lsngl.us
2021-04-12T06:01:44Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@mjd I've not used Packer since it was in Ruby. It was pretty useless, back then. A couple of summers ago when I needed to bring my Github back to life I hung out in the Packer repo with a linter and fixed bugs, so it's in a lot better shape than it was. Maintainers are very reasonable about accepting pull requests without being dicks. https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/commits?author=alrs