Hyper-V provider

[tsmolka]

I have just tested ubuntu1604 build with Hyper-V provider and I would like your feedback. Would you be interested in adding this provider to boxcutter?

Few notes:

• There is a trivial bug in hyperv-iso builder that prevents boot_command to be processed properly (builder/hyperv/iso: missing InterpolateContext hashicorp/packer#5184). With this fixed packer works as expected.
• Preseed is different because linux-tools-$(uname -r) and linux-cloud-tools-$(uname -r) are needed for obtaining guest IP and can't be installed during provisioning.
• Released box for testing - https://app.vagrantup.com/tsmolka/boxes/ubuntu1604

[StefanScherer]

This is awesome. Maybe my next machine at work will have HyperV installed, so I'm looking forward to have some boxcutter VMs for it.
Packer 1.0.4 has your fix for 5184.
Right now I'm not able to test the template, but I'll try soon.

[StefanScherer]

I'm trying your pull request with a cherry-pick to update to 16.04.3 ISO URL's (could you please rebase your PR?).

It seems that Packer has some problems with the boot_command. The last key strokes show some errors and I only get initrd=/installngz

I had this several times. After manually fixing the string to initrd=/install/initrd.gz -- and pressing ENTER the Packer build seems to work. I remember that other providers also had timing issues typing long boot commands.

My setup is an Azure VM running Windows Server 2016 with Packer 1.0.4.

One other thing to mention. We have to quote the file name for the -var-file option. Otherwise PowerShell ignores the .json extension. So my command to run your PR was:

 packer build -only=hyperv-iso -var-file="ubuntu1604.json" ubuntu.json

The Azure VM was created using a Terraform template: https://github.com/StefanScherer/packer-windows/tree/my/hyperv/terraform

[tsmolka]

Hi Stefan, I have just merged my branch with master to upgrade to 16.04.3 ISO (no issue there). I can reproduce issues with boot_command you are mentioning on Azure VM as well. On physical machine this works as expected.

I have quickly tested "generation": "2" VM where boot_command seems to be more reliable. Since floppy is not supported I had to use preseed/url.

When testing, you will probably need to:

• run your own DHCP server such as http://www.dhcpserver.de/
• enable firewall exceptions for packer to serve preseed via HTTP

[StefanScherer]

Thanks. In the meantime I've opened hashicorp/packer#5291 and it seems a bug in Packer. I went through the sources, but couldn't find the right place. It seems the hyperv builder uses some PowerShell code where the delay between each key stroke should be added.

My Azure VM has the DHCP feature installed and running, so this shouldn't be a problem. And yes, packer.exe should have a firewall exception as for other providers as well.
I will try your latest commit tomorrow.

[StefanScherer]

OK, after adding a firewall rule for packer.exe I make a little progress. But right now the VM has only a black screen, can react on ctrl+alt+delete events. When I type ctrl+alt+f1 I can make the tty visible and login. The VM has an IP address from the Windows DHCP server running on the host machine. I also can ssh into the VM manually.
But packer is not able to fetch the IP address of that VM, the Hyper-V manager also does not show the IP address.

In Azure I have to use an internal VM switch with NAT, the external switch didn't work there.
I'll dig deeper with packer debug logs and see what happens there.
Any hint is very appreciated.

[tsmolka]

This might be caused by the fact that I used linux-headers-$(uname -r) linux-tools-$(uname -r) linux-cloud-tools-$(uname -r) in pkgsel/include instead of linux-tools-virtual-lts-xenial linux-cloud-tools-virtual-lts-xenial as recommended in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/supported-ubuntu-virtual-machines-on-hyper-v.

I hit similar issues with Debian VM after kernel upgrade.

[StefanScherer]

Tried to remove the "uname -r" packages, installed the lts-xenial packages, rebooted the VM, but Hyper-V Manager still does not show an IP address in the networking tab.

I also tried the example showed in the packer.io docs for hyperv-iso, but it also hangs at the same point.

BTW: Your vagrant box tsmolka/ubuntu1604 works in my Azure VM and shows an IP address and also vagrant ssh is working. Only thing was that the vagrant up timed out after 120 seconds. This is generation 1.

[tsmolka]

Not sure what is causing networking issue then.

This timeout could be caused by SMB synced_folder. You might want to pass mount_options when connecting from linux guest to newer Windows hosts or disable completely if not needed:

config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", disabled: false, mount_options: ["vers=3.0"]

[StefanScherer]

Thanks, I'll try that. In the meantime I tried the previous packer template with generation 1 again, but had also no luck seeing the IP address in the Hyper-V Manager. I found out that only two of the three hv-xxx-daemon were running. the hv-kvp-daemon crashed after 60 seconds.

When I start it again with sudo systemctl start hv-kvp-daemon it keeps running, but I still cannot see an IP address in Hyper-V manager. Playing with sudo ifdown eth0 and sudo ifup eth0 which works fine in your Vagrant box (16.04.2, /usr/lib/linux-tools/4.4.0-62-generic/hv_kvp_daemon), but doesn't work in the packer build (16.04.3, /usr/lib/linux-tools/4.4.0-87-generic/hv_kvp_daemon).

I also have tried the generation 2 build with 16.04.2 ISO file with the 4.4.0-62 version, but hv_kvp_daemon also stops after the first minute.