Packer Templates for Ubuntu with ZFS Root

This repository contains Packer templates for building Amazon Machine Images for Ubuntu with a ZFS root filesystem. Currently the following distributions are supported:

• Ubuntu 16.04 ("Xenial") LTS
• Ubuntu 16.10 ("Yakkety")

The template is easily modified for Debian distributions, however.

A detailed description of how the template works is available on the operator-error.com blog, in the post Building ZFS Root Ubuntu AMIs with Packer.

Running a build

Note that you'll need the Packer v0.12.3 in order to build these templates.

Use the xenial or yakkety targets of the Makefile in root of the repository to build an AMI in us-west-2, and copy it to all regions.

The following environment variables must be set in order for the build to succeed:

• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Credits

Thanks to:

• Scott Emmons for this post about the steps required to build Linux AMIs with a ZFS root filesystem.
• Sean Chittenden for reviewing the template and blog post prior to publication.
• Zachary Schneider for reviewing the template and blog post prior to publication.