Building macOS 11.x VMs with packer and Fusion

trodemaster · June 1, 2021, 8:16pm

I have submitted a feature request for a new provisioned type that can send keyboard commands to the os being built. What this would enable for macOS 11+ guests is to do things like approving kernel extensions and other security settings that can only be changed by users at the console. There are likely many other use cases for this general purpose provisioner for non-linux OSs.

If that capability would help you out please the feature request on git.

github.com/hashicorp/packer

New provisioner - keyboard command via vnc

opened 08:03PM - 01 Jun 21 UTC

trodemaster

enhancement

#### Community Note Please vote on this issue by adding a 👍 [reaction](http…s://blog.github.com/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments/) to the original issue to help the community and maintainers prioritize this request. Please do not leave "+1" or "me too" comments, they generate extra noise for issue followers and do not help prioritize the request. If you are interested in working on this issue or have submitted a pull request, please leave a comment. #### Description I have run into an increasing number of situations that the existing provisions like shell fall to address. What I propose is a new provisioner that re-uses the same functionality as the boot command in the various builders. This "keyboard command" provisioner would send keyboard commands to the guest when called. The vmware and qemu builders are the ones I'm most focused on having this feature. I'm sure that the vsphere and other desktop hypervisors would also benefit from this builder. #### Use Case(s) OS configuration that requires keyboard input. With Linux on arm systems having the ability to change bios/uefi settings after configuring part of the install. The main use case however is with macOS machine images a number of security settings are not able to be changed via scripting in macOS 11 or later. Being able to call a provisioner to send a sequence of keys at the correct time during a build will provide a really flexible tool to make any of these kinds of changes. #### Potential configuration ``` provisioner "keyboard_command" { key_interval = "15ms" keygroup_interval = "120ms" commands = [ "<leftSuperon><f5><leftSuperoff>", "<leftCtrlon><f2><leftCtrloff>", "u<down><down><down>", "<enter>", "<leftSuperon><f5><leftSuperoff><wait10>", "<leftCtrlon><f2><leftCtrloff>", "w<down><down>", "<enter>" ] } ``` #### Potential References https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-vmware/blob/main/builder/vmware/common/step_vnc_boot_command.go

Blake

beatrupp · August 26, 2021, 9:29am

Hi again! I’m trying to build Big Sur images, and running into the problem of “Waiting for SSH to become available…”. I did try several combinations of packer versions and VMWare versions to no avail. The VM starts and waits logged in while packer apparently waits for SSH, indefinitely.

Any ideas how to proceed here?

trodemaster · August 26, 2021, 3:13pm

That part of the process is very timing dependent. If the “typing the boot command” part is happening before the OS is ready it will fail like you are seeing. First thing I would try is increasing the boot wait by 2 minutes.