Add support for serial ports

[grule-draeger]

Community Note

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Description

The current version of the plugin lacks support for configuring serial ports. This feature would enable users to add and configure serial ports during the provisioning process.

Use Case(s)

• External device communication: Communicating to external device located on the host
• Data Logging: Send output to virtual serial port to be stored on Datastore for later processing

Potential configuration

source "vsphere-iso" "my_base_template" {
  ...
  serial = "FILE:[Datastore] directory/output_file"
  ...
}

source "vsphere-iso" "my_base_template" {
  ...
  serial = "DEVICE:/dev/ttyS0,yield=true"
  ...
}

source "vsphere-iso" "my_base_template" {
  ...
  serial = "DEVICE:COM1"
  ...
}

Potential References

• VMware documentation on Using Serial Ports with vSphere Virtual Machines
• VMware VM Hardware Serial APIs
• Serial port configuration in packer-plugin-vmware