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How to Switch Packer's Powershell provisioner

Introduction​

When baking Windows AMIs, back-to-back bakes may fail on a seemingly random, intermittent basis. Since there are multiple open Packer issues with how Powershell scripts and their environment variables are handled, it has been observed that switching the Powershell provisioner from winRM to SSH addresses this issue.

Prerequisites​

Administrator access to the Spinnaker environment.

Instructions​

Apply the following changes to the Packer config:

  • In the variables block, change: "aws_winrm_username": null  to:  "aws_ssh_username": "Administrator"* In the ```builders``` block, change: ```"communicator": "winrm"``` to: ```"communicator": "ssh"```* In the provisioner block, add the following: "execute_command": "powershell -executionpolicy bypass \"& { if (Test-Path variable:global:ProgressPreference){$global:ProgressPreference='SilentlyContinue'};. {{.Vars}}; &'{{.Path}}'; exit $LastExitCode }\"" Then, in the Spinnaker configuration manifest
  • Under virtualizationSettings, change: winRmUserName to: sshUserName: Administrator* Save and apply the changes to the environment