Packer, Vagrant and Hyper-V

Had the need to build an Ubuntu vagrant box for Hyper-V. This repo contains some simple scripts to build an Ubuntu Vagrant Box for Hyper-V. You can find the boxes on Vagrant Cloud https://portal.cloud.hashicorp.com/vagrant/discover/sture

Setup on Windows

• Hyper-V needs to be installed and set up
• Vagrant needs to be installed and set up
• Packer needs to be installed and set up. Download from https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/install and extract exe file. Add file to PATH.

Firewall

Packer will need to access localhost on a spesific port to be able to perform cloud setup. An exception in the Hyper-V Default switch will be needed.

Have a look at: https://github.com/marcinbojko/hv-packer or add in elevated Powershell.

Remove-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Packer_http_server" -Verbose
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Packer_http_server" -Direction Inbound -Action Allow -Protocol TCP -LocalPort
8000-9000

Vagrant Cloud

To be able to push the box to Vagrant Cloud a "service principal" user have to be added to the Vagrant Cloud account. This service principal will give a hcp_client_id og hcp_client_secret that can be used when pushing to Vagrant Cloud. The Vagrant Cloud owner or namespace is configured with vagrant_cloud_user.

Repository layout

• variables.pkr.hcl contains common variables and plugin definitions
• build.pkr.hcl contains the VM build and packaging workflow
• publish.pkr.hcl contains the Vagrant Cloud publish workflow
• boxes/*.pkrvars.hcl selects which Ubuntu version to build
• common/scripts and common/templates contain shared provisioning and box assets

Hyper-V design choices

This repository intentionally builds an Ubuntu Vagrant box for Hyper-V, not a generic multi-provider box.

• Generation 2 is used with dynamic memory disabled and secure boot explicitly turned off for more predictable Ubuntu boots on Hyper-V.
• The guest network is standardized around eth0. The build config and guest boot settings are aligned to keep interface naming predictable.
• The guest installs the linux-azure kernel track to better match Hyper-V as the target platform.
• The packaged box resets its machine identity before packaging so cloned VMs generate a fresh identity on first boot.
• The included Vagrantfile keeps runtime CPU and memory lower than the build settings on purpose.
• /vagrant is disabled by default because shared folder behavior with Hyper-V is not as reliable as on some other Vagrant providers.

Build box

Run all commands from the repository root.

You can either run the Packer commands manually or use the included PowerShell helper script.

To use the helper script for optional publish, create a local .env file first:

Copy-Item .env.example .env

Then edit .env and add your Vagrant Cloud credentials:

hcp_client_id=your-vagrant-cloud-client-id
hcp_client_secret=your-vagrant-cloud-client-secret
vagrant_cloud_user=your-vagrant-cloud-user

The .env file is ignored by git and is only needed if you choose to publish.

Run the helper script:

.\build.ps1

You can also skip the interactive prompts by providing parameters:

.\build.ps1 -Box ubuntu2404 -DeleteCache $true -Publish $true

To force fully non-interactive execution, add -NonInteractive:

.\build.ps1 -NonInteractive -Box ubuntu2404 -DeleteCache $false -Publish $true

To run only the prerequisite checks without starting a build:

.\build.ps1 -PreflightOnly

To run preflight plus packer init and packer validate without building:

.\build.ps1 -ValidateOnly

Or non-interactively for a specific box:

.\build.ps1 -NonInteractive -ValidateOnly -Box ubuntu2404

The script will:

• run preflight checks for Packer, Vagrant, Hyper-V, and the Packer_http_server firewall rule
• let you choose which box definition to build
• ask whether packer_cache should be deleted first to force fresh downloads
• run packer validate for the selected box before build
• run the build
• ask whether the completed box should be published to Vagrant Cloud
• print the published Vagrant Cloud version and direct HashiCorp URL after a successful publish

Supported script parameters:

• -Box ubuntu2404 selects a box definition by name or file name without prompting
• -DeleteCache $true or -DeleteCache $false answers the cache question without prompting
• -Publish $true or -Publish $false answers the publish question without prompting
• -ValidateOnly runs preflight, packer init, and packer validate, then exits
• -NonInteractive disables prompts and requires the necessary parameters for the selected mode
• -PreflightOnly runs only the prerequisite checks and exits

To initialize packer and download all plugins run:

packer init .

Validate the build configuration for a specific box:

packer validate -var-file .\boxes\ubuntu2404.pkrvars.hcl .

Build the box artifact:

packer build --var-file .\boxes\ubuntu2404.pkrvars.hcl --force -only="build.hyperv-iso.efi" .

Publish an already-built box to Vagrant Cloud:

packer build --var-file .\boxes\ubuntu2404.pkrvars.hcl --var "hcp_client_id=your-vagrant-cloud-client-id" --var "hcp_client_secret=your-vagrant-cloud-client-secret" --var "vagrant_cloud_user=your-vagrant-cloud-user" --force -only="publish.null.core" .

The publish workflow uses vagrant_cloud_version. If you do not provide one, Packer falls back to a timestamp-based version with second-level precision so repeated publishes do not reuse the same version.

You can also set the version manually when publishing directly:

packer build --var-file .\boxes\ubuntu2404.pkrvars.hcl --var "hcp_client_id=your-vagrant-cloud-client-id" --var "hcp_client_secret=your-vagrant-cloud-client-secret" --var "vagrant_cloud_user=your-vagrant-cloud-user" --var "vagrant_cloud_version=2026.07.10.153045" --force -only="publish.null.core" .

Optional overrides for the build workflow:

packer build --var-file .\boxes\ubuntu2404.pkrvars.hcl --var "switch_name=Default switch" --var "hyperv_configuration_version=11.0" --force -only="build.hyperv-iso.efi" .

Available box definitions:

.\boxes\ubuntu2204.pkrvars.hcl
.\boxes\ubuntu2404.pkrvars.hcl