Packer-Windows10

A Packer build to make a pretty vanilla Windows 10 x64 box for use with VMWare Desktop or Virtualbox.

This project is just a clone of my other Windows Packer project with some very minor changes. Eventually the two projects will merge and form like Voltron.

In essence, the build does the following:

• Use an existing, vanilla, Windows 10 x64 Enterprise trial ISO
• Enable WinRM (in a slightly scary, Unauthenticated mode, for Packer/Vagrant to use)
• Create a vagrant user (as is the style)
• Grab all the Windows updates is can
• Install VM guest additions
• Turn off Hibernation
• Turn on RDP
• Set the network type for the virtual adapter to 'Home' and not bug you about it
• Turns autologin off because I like simulating end user environments, ok?

Requirements

• A copy of the Windows 10 x64 Enterprise Trial
• Packer / Vagrant - Duh. Tested with Packer 1.2.5 and Vagrant 2.1.2.
• VMWare Workstation or Fusion with The Vagrant VMWare Provider, Virtualbox, Parallels or HyperV (support for HyperV and Parallels added by gildas)
• An RDP client (built in on Windows, available here for Mac
• Git

This project works great with Virtualbox, so don't bother shelling out for VMWare Fusion without trying VirtualBox first.

Usage

This guide will assume you zero knowledge of any or all of these systems.

1. Install Vagrant.
2. Install Packer - these instructions help.
3. Download and install Virtualbox or VMWare Fusion/Workstation (with the Vagrant Plugin).
4. Ensure you have an RDP client (you do if you're running Windows) - for Mac, install this
5. Download the Windows 10 x64 Enterprise Trial, save the ISO someplace you'll remember.
6. Make a working directory somewhere (OSX suggestion mkdir ~/Packer_Projects/) and cd to that directory (e.g. cd ~/Packer_Projects/).
7. Clone this repo to your working directory: git clone https://github.com/luciusbono/Packer-Windows10 (if you don't have git installed: here are instructions.
8. Determine the MD5 hash of your iso: md5 [path to iso] in OSX FCIV -md5 [path to iso] in Windows (download it here) -- Linux people are smarter than me and likely can just calculate the md5 hash through ether-magic.
9. To actually build your VM, build against the hypervisor target you're interested in:

• For Virtualbox run packer build -only=virtualbox-iso -var 'iso_path=[path to iso]' -var 'iso_md5=[md5 of iso]' packer.json
• For VMWare Fusion/Workstation run packer build -only=vmware-iso -var 'iso_path=[path to iso]' -var 'iso_md5=[md5 of iso]' packer.json.
• For Parallels run packer build -only=parallels-iso -var 'iso_path=[path to iso]' -var 'iso_md5=[md5 of iso]' packer.json
• for HyperV run packer build -only=hyperv-iso -var 'iso_path=[path to iso]' -var 'iso_md5=[md5 of iso]' packer.json optionally, if you want to specify a different HyperV virtual switch other than "Default Switch" you can specify it in the switch_name var.

10. You will see build pause on Waiting for WinRM to become available - this is normal! If you actually access the console session on your VM you will see that it is getting updates from Microsoft's servers. This can easily take 30 minutes, so be patient. After the updates are all installed, Windows will turn it's WinRM service back on and Packer will continue with the build.
11. Run vagrant box add --name [vagrant box name] [name of .box file]. The name can be anything you want. For example, this command is valid for Virtualbox: vagrant box add --name windows10 virtualbox-iso_windows-10.box
12. Make a working directory for your Vagrant VM (OSX suggestion mkdir ~/Vagrant_Projects/windows10) and cd to that directory (e.g. cd ~/Vagrant_Projects/windows10)
13. Type vagrant init [vagrant box name] - for example vagrant init windows10
14. Type vagrant up and once the box has been launched type vagrant rdp
15. Continue through any certificate errors and login with the username: vagrant and the password: vagrant
16. Feel free to delete the .box file that packer created. You may also delete your .iso you downloaded if you wish.
17. Stop the box by typing vagrant halt. Destroy the box by typing vagrant destroy

Usage Explanation

The packer.json file requires two variables to validate. You can confirm these with a packer inspect packer.json

$ packer inspect packer.json 
  iso_md5     =
  iso_path    =
  switch_name = Default Switch

Builders:

  hyperv-iso
  parallels-iso
  virtualbox-iso
  vmware-iso

Provisioners:

  powershell
  windows-restart

Since there are two Builders, you also likely want to specify one or the other.

Valid options are virtualbox-iso or vmware-iso.

The other two variables, iso_md5 and iso_path, are the path and the MD5 hash of the Windows 10 Enterprise trial ISO.

Other things to note

Update script

The update grabbing script is a bit of a grey-box, as I basically just hijacked it (as well as lots of other code) from this awesome project - which I think is the defacto standard for Windows / Packer relations - but I wanted a leaner build. This project started as a frankenstein build, but is turning more into a ground-up rewrite of a lot of other projects' scripts and code. With the exception of the update-windows.ps1 script, which I only modified very slightly, I will slowly go through all the code in this project and make sure I kill all the cruft.

If you have multiple hypervisors installed

If, for some reason, you have multiple hypervisors, but want to run this project in Virtualbox, for example, you need to specify the provider in your vagrant up statement like so: vagrant up --provider=virtualbox

Almost nobody will fall into the camp, but it's worth mentioning. Have fun!

Sym links are off by default for synced folders

The vagrantfile template disables the SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate option. I'd rather default to an untrusted guest since most of my workflows do not require symlinks. To change this, just add config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate: true to your vagrantfile and do a vagrant reload.

Troubleshooting

vagrant rdp prompts for login credentials but vagrant/vagrant does not work

I ran into this issue on a Windows 10 host with this project. I submitted an issue. The resolution is to choose Use another account and login with .\vagrant as the login and vagrant as the password. Unforuntately, it appears that one must log in with these credentials in this manner each time you vagrant rdp (unless that issue says otherwise...).

vagrant rdp -- /public will also force mstsc into "public mode" which will clear the credentials dialogs each time.