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[Feature request] Support Virtualbox VISO Virtual ISO to create packer custom CD

Open nicerloop opened this issue 8 months ago • 0 comments

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Description

Using packer on Windows to build a VM image that requires custom files exposed in an ISO requires packer to actually build an ISO image. Building this ISO image requires external tools not directly available.

VirtualBox has a Virtual ISO feature that can by used to avoid effectively building the ISO: Virtual ISO files, with extension .viso, are mapping instructions used at runtime to expose host files to the VM, is a way similar to the command passed to ISO image building tools.

I have experimented this use with a hand-crafted .viso file and a custom vboxmanage block.

I would rather have packer build the .viso file from the cd_files block, in the same way as with other tools, and inject it into the VM as is already done with actual ISO images build from other tools.

Use Case(s)

Building packer custom CD images on Windows with minimal external dependencies, using a Virtualbox feature. Can be used on any platform, as it does not depend on platform tools, but rather on VirtualBox feature.

Potential configuration

same as actual configuration by means of the cd_files block

Potential References

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#viso

nicerloop avatar Apr 03 '25 14:04 nicerloop