Packer with AWS EC2Launch

Packer
1

Hello,
Does anyone know if it is possible to use the EC2Launch V2 Format with the user-data-file property instead of a powershell script? It would be nice to be able to leverage the more declarative syntax than having to script it in powershell.

2

The following provisioner declaration worked for me for EC2Launch v2 on a Windows Server 2022 AMI:

  provisioner "powershell" {
    inline = [
      "& 'C:/Program Files/Amazon/EC2Launch/ec2launch' reset --block",
      "& 'C:/Program Files/Amazon/EC2Launch/ec2launch' sysprep --shutdown --block",
    ]
  }

You can also customise agent-config.yml (located at C:/ProgramData/Amazon/EC2Launch/config.agent-config.yml), for example to add a runScript task to invoke some custom code (separate from regular user data). You would typically use a templatefile provisioner to place the config file inside your AMI.

The default agent-config.yml looks like this:

version: 1.0
config:
  - stage: boot
    tasks:
      - task: extendRootPartition
  - stage: preReady
    tasks:
      - task: activateWindows
        inputs:
          activation:
            type: amazon
      - task: setDnsSuffix
        inputs:
          suffixes:
            - $REGION.ec2-utilities.amazonaws.com
      - task: setAdminAccount
        inputs:
          password:
            type: random
      - task: setWallpaper
        inputs:
          path: C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2Launch\wallpaper\Ec2Wallpaper.jpg
          attributes:
            - hostName
            - instanceId
            - privateIpAddress
            - publicIpAddress
            - instanceSize
            - availabilityZone
            - architecture
            - memory
            - network
  - stage: postReady
    tasks:
      - task: startSsm
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