I have a Packer build that I am using to create Golden Templates in a vSphere environment. I’me able to run my build fine on a local machine in my environment with all my variables set in my variable file.
I’ve now got the same packer build in my gitlab environment and set to run on a local runner as a scheduled pipeline. I’ve mapped accounts and passwords as secure CI/CD variable and mapped them in my CI file to the respective names in my variable file. This mapping appears to work correctly as my build is able to connect to my vcenter. However when the time comes to SSH to the newly built VM I get handshake errors. I’ve tracked this down to specifically the username and password not interpolating from my variable file to both my sources file for vsphere-iso and just the password nor interpolating to my actual build file(ssh username maps fine). I have to hard code the password in to the values for my ssh_username and ssh_password on my cources.pkr.hcl file for the VSphere-ISO piece. The mapping to var.ssh_username on the build file works fine. I’ve even run my build manually from my gitlab runner machine and it worked fine. It seems to only happen when it’s kicked off as a pipeline from gitlab.
Any ideas why this is happening only on my gitlab pipeline(which has all the proper packages installed)?