VirtualBox

The VirtualBox plugin is able to create VirtualBox virtual machines and export them in the OVA or OVF format.

Installation

To install this plugin add this code into your Packer configuration and run packer init

packer {
    required_plugins {
        virtualbox = {
          version = "~> 1"
          source  = "github.com/hashicorp/virtualbox"
        }
    }
}

Alternatively, you can use packer plugins install to manage installation of this plugin.

$ packer plugins install github.com/hashicorp/virtualbox

Note: Update to Packer Plugin Installation

With the new Packer release starting from version 1.14.0, the packer init command will automatically install official plugins from the HashiCorp release site.

Going forward, to use newer versions of official Packer plugins, you'll need to upgrade to Packer version 1.14.0 or later. If you're using an older version, you can still install plugins, but as a workaround, you'll need to manually install them using the CLI.

There is no change to the syntax or commands for installing plugins.

Components

The plugin comes with multiple builders able to create VirtualBox machines, depending on the strategy you want to use to build the image. The following VirtualBox builders are supported:

Builders

• virtualbox-iso - Starts from an ISO file, creates a brand new VirtualBox VM, installs an OS, provisions software within the OS, then exports that machine to create an image. This is best for people who want to start from scratch.

• virtualbox-ovf - This builder imports an existing OVF/OVA file, runs provisioners on top of that VM, and exports that machine to create an image. This is best if you have an existing VirtualBox VM export you want to use as the source. As an additional benefit, you can feed the artifact of this builder back into itself to iterate on a machine.

• virtualbox-vm - This builder uses an existing VM to run defined provisioners on top of that VM, and optionally creates a snapshot to save the changes applied from the provisioners. In addition the builder is able to export that machine to create an image. The builder is able to attach to a defined snapshot as a starting point, which could be defined statically or dynamically via a variable.