packer-centos7

A Packer template to build CentOS 7 Vagrant base boxes for VirtualBox.

This project supports the creation of the following kind of base boxes:

• bare: A minimal installation without Virtual Box Guest Additions on a 16GB dynamically sized disk;
• vbga: A minimal installation with Guest Additions on a 32GB dinamically sized disk.
• gui: A basic GNOME workstation, derived from the vbga base box.
• mate: A basic MATE desktop workstation, derived from the gui base box.

The bare base box may be built with the following command:

packer build -var-file linux.json -var-file bare.json centos.json

Customizable variables may be provided on the command line or by means of variable files. Note that the linux.json var file reflects my personal conventions on where to keep local installation images, you may want to provide your own location. This will result in a centos7-bare.box file being created, which may be installed with the following command:

vagrant box add -f --name centos7-bare centos7-bare.box

To build the vbga base box, replace bare with vbga in the commands above. Once you have built and installed the centos7-vbga.box you may build the centos7-gui box with the following command:

packer build centos-gui.json

The new box will be stored in the centos7-gui/package.box file. It may be installed as follows:

vagrant box add -f --name centos7-gui centos7-gui/package.box

Once the centos7-gui box is installed you may build the centos7-mate one by replacing mate for gui in the last two commands.

This project was derived from the templates available in the packer-templates project. Sibling packer-centos8, packer-centos8-stream and packer-fedora projects may be used to build CentOS 8, CentOS 8 Stream and Fedora boxes.