Packer provisioners failing on azure-arm

Question

I have the following build in a Packer .hcl file. The first provisioner succeeds but the other two always fail. Does anyone have a working azure-arm provisioner to install software on a Windows image?

build {
    sources = ["source.azure-arm.autogenerated_1"]

    provisioner "powershell" {
        inline = ["Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server", "while ((Get-Service RdAgent).Status -ne 'Running') { Start-Sleep -s 5 }", "while ((Get-Service WindowsAzureGuestAgent).Status -ne 'Running') { Start-Sleep -s 5 }", "& $env:SystemRoot\\System32\\Sysprep\\Sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /quiet /quit", "while($true) { $imageState = Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Setup\\State | Select ImageState; if($imageState.ImageState -ne 'IMAGE_STATE_GENERALIZE_RESEAL_TO_OOBE') { Write-Output $imageState.ImageState; Start-Sleep -s 10  } else { break } }"]
    }
    provisioner "powershell" {
        #  inline = ["Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force", "Invoke-Expression((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))"]
        #  inline = ["Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))"]
        inline = ["Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))"]
    }

    provisioner "powershell" {
        inline = ["choco install -y 7zip", "choco install -y notepadplusplus"]
    }
}

Answer 1

There is a problem with the order. The following part of your provisioner is responsible for the generalization process, which should be run last

"while ((Get-Service WindowsAzureGuestAgent).Status -ne 'Running') { Start-Sleep -s 5 }", "& $env:SystemRoot\\System32\\Sysprep\\Sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /quiet /quit", "while($true) { $imageState = Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Setup\\State | Select ImageState; if($imageState.ImageState -ne 'IMAGE_STATE_GENERALIZE_RESEAL_TO_OOBE') { Write-Output $imageState.ImageState; Start-Sleep -s 10  } else { break } }"

Change the order of provisioners or add your commands above the generalization phase

build {
    sources = ["source.azure-arm.autogenerated_1"]

    provisioner "powershell" {
        inline = ["Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))"]
    }
    
    provisioner "powershell" {
        inline = ["choco install -y 7zip", "choco install -y notepadplusplus"]
    }

    provisioner "powershell" {
        inline = [
            "Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server",
            "ADD YOUR COMMANDS HERE"
            "while ((Get-Service RdAgent).Status -ne 'Running') { Start-Sleep -s 5 }",
            "while ((Get-Service WindowsAzureGuestAgent).Status -ne 'Running') { Start-Sleep -s 5 }",
            "& $env:SystemRoot\\System32\\Sysprep\\Sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /quiet /quit",
            "while($true) { $imageState = Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Setup\\State | Select ImageState; if($imageState.ImageState -ne 'IMAGE_STATE_GENERALIZE_RESEAL_TO_OOBE') { Write-Output $imageState.ImageState; Start-Sleep -s 10  } else { break } }"
        ]
    }
}