How to set up and configure environment to build images for Hyper-V ?

[yuravk]

It will be good to know how to set up and configure environment to build cloud images for Hyper-V. As it is complex task which include different components like Windows system with Hyper-V and WSL with "interconnection" between them.

My try results with no success to build the image.

The environment runs Windows Server 2025 Datacenter (build 26100.2894) as VMware VM.

The following roles and components are installed:

1. Hyper-V 10.0.26100.1882
2. packer version 1.12.0 [go1.22.9 windows amd64]
3. WSL version 2.4.10.0 with:

• AlmaLinux 9.5
• ansible package version 7.7.0

Building of hyperv-iso.almalinux-9 with packer on Windows PowerShell results:

Error: Failed preparing provisioner-block "ansible" ""

  on almalinux-9-vagrant.pkr.hcl line 230:
  (source code not available)

1 error(s) occurred:

* Error running "ansible-playbook --version": exec: "ansible-playbook":
executable file not found in %PATH%

I believe there is a kind of misconfiguration on the environment.
Having a detailed instruction for that will be very helpful.

[LKHN]

Hi Yuriy,

You can create these wrappers and put into $PATH for calling Ansible from the WSL1

ansible.bat

@echo off
REM "alias" for packer ansible provisioner running in cmd/powershell
set args=%*
REM replace backslashes with slashes
call set args=%%args:\=/%%
REM fix drive letters
call set args=%%args:C:=/mnt/c%%
REM call set args=%%args:D:=/mnt/d%%
REM call set args=%%args:E:=/mnt/e%%

wsl -d AlmaLinuxOS-9-WSL1 ANSIBLE_PIPELINING=%ANSIBLE_PIPELINING% ANSIBLE_REMOTE_TEMP=%ANSIBLE_REMOTE_TEMP% ANSIBLE_SCP_EXTRA_ARGS=%ANSIBLE_SCP_EXTRA_ARGS% ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=%ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING% ansible %args%

ansible-galaxy.bat

@echo off
REM "alias" for packer ansible provisioner running in cmd/powershell
set args=%*
REM replace backslashes with slashes
call set args=%%args:\=/%%
REM fix drive letters
call set args=%%args:C:=/mnt/c%%
REM call set args=%%args:D:=/mnt/d%%
REM call set args=%%args:E:=/mnt/e%%

wsl -d AlmaLinuxOS-9-WSL1 ANSIBLE_PIPELINING=%ANSIBLE_PIPELINING% ANSIBLE_REMOTE_TEMP=%ANSIBLE_REMOTE_TEMP% ANSIBLE_SCP_EXTRA_ARGS=%ANSIBLE_SCP_EXTRA_ARGS% ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=%ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING% ansible-galaxy %args%

ansible-playbook.bat

@echo off
REM "alias" for packer ansible provisioner running in cmd/powershell
set args=%*
REM replace backslashes with slashes
call set args=%%args:\=/%%
REM fix drive letters
call set args=%%args:C:=/mnt/c%%
REM call set args=%%args:D:=/mnt/d%%
REM call set args=%%args:E:=/mnt/e%%

wsl -d AlmaLinuxOS-9-WSL1 ANSIBLE_PIPELINING=%ANSIBLE_PIPELINING% ANSIBLE_REMOTE_TEMP=%ANSIBLE_REMOTE_TEMP% ANSIBLE_SCP_EXTRA_ARGS=%ANSIBLE_SCP_EXTRA_ARGS% ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=%ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING% ansible-playbook %args%