Packer and vsphere-plugin: no error when the iso path is bad

Packer
1

Hi,

I’m using Packer 1.42.2 and the vsphere-plugin 2.0.0 to create VM on my vCenter.

My problem: when I run apacker build, I have absolutely no error message when the parameter iso_paths contains a path where there is no ISO (mistake when I have typed the path). There is no error and the VM boots without the ISO. So packer is waiting for SSH to become available but of course it never happens because no ISO mounted and all the process installation is blocked (at the end there is a timeout of course).

I have lost lot of amount of time before to understand the problem (finally very simple to fix). It could be very nice to have a simple packer build error message at the beginning of the build. Something like “Sorry, no ISO image available on this path ”.

The path has this form (it’s path in a vmware datastore):

[DATASTORE_FOO] _iso4packer/ubuntu/24.04/ubuntu-24.04.2-live-server-amd64.iso

But the path is bad (the subfolder 24.04 doesn’t exist). When I have fixed the path, the build was OK of course. It could be nice if packer raises an error with a clear message when the path is a kind of “404 Not Found”. Is it possible to fix that?

Just in case, here is the output of a build where my problem is present (ie no error).

Thanks for your help. :slight_smile: