HCL2 environment variables followup

Packer
1

Hi!

I’m excited to use HCL2 styled configs since HCL2: allow calling env as input var default value by azr · Pull Request #10240 · hashicorp/packer · GitHub, I’m using environment variables like his in the HCL config

–
variable “aws_az” {
type = string
default = env(“AWZ_AZ”)
}

variable “aws_profile” {
type = string
default = env(“AWS_PROFILE”)
}

variable “aws_region” {
type = string
default = env(“AWS_REGION”)
}

The variables aren’t being set and used and I’m getting

–
Error: NoCredentialProviders: no valid providers in chain. Deprecated.
For verbose messaging see aws.Config.CredentialsChainVerboseErrors

If I hard code these three variables, it obviously works
Am I setting something/using the variables incorrectly?

Note : packer inspect returns an empty string for these variables but if I run
echo $AWS_REGION, I get the correct value, eg: ‘us-east-1’

Packer version : 1.7.0
macos : 10.13
the environment variables are set, I’m using the standard shell

2

And then I’m using the variables within the source block as
profile = “${var.aws_profile}”

Which returns the profile isn’t set and there aren’t no credentials

3

Very strange. I can’t reproduce. The following works for me:

source "null" "example" {
  communicator = "none"
}

variable "myvar" {
  default = env("MYVAR")
}

build {
  name = "mybuild"
  sources = [
    "source.null.example"
  ]
  provisioner "shell-local" {
    inline = ["echo myvar is ${var.myvar}"]
  }
}
1 Like
4

Hey, apologies I was away for a computer for two weeks, I tried this to no avail - see I don’t get anything here, do you think it has to do w my os ver?
cat tes.pkr.hcl

source "null" "example" {
communicator = "none"
 }

variable "myvar" {
  default = env("MYVAR")
}

build {
  name = "mybuild"
  sources = [
    "source.null.example"
  ]
  provisioner "shell-local" {
    inline = ["echo myvar is ${var.myvar}"]
  }
}

echo $MYVAR
123
packer --version
1.7.0
packer build tes.pkr.hcl

mybuild.null.example: output will be in this color.
    ==> mybuild.null.example: Running local shell script: /var/folders/81/pgbj934n0kg56bv_fc8qnf2j06sxf5/T/packer-shell667017858
        mybuild.null.example: myvar is
    Build 'mybuild.null.example' finished after 42 milliseconds 3 microseconds.

==> Wait completed after 42 milliseconds 181 microseconds

==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
--> mybuild.null.example: Did not export anything. This is the null builder
5

had a colleague test this on macos 10.15.6 and it’s the same behavior for them

6

nevermind, this was us being silly cause we’re not used to zsh, my variables were not really “environment” variables, those weren’t being listed as a part of env, I exported them out and things are working like a charm!
muchas gracias! ( apologies for the confusion )