Infrastructure Setup: Packer and Terraform

This covers Packer and Terraform configuration for building the VM template and provisioning infrastructure on Proxmox.

Packer

credentials.pkr.hcl

Holds your Proxmox API credentials. Do not commit this to a public repository.

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proxmox_api_url          = "https://your-proxmox-ip-or-fqdn/api2/json"
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proxmox_api_token_id     = "terraform_user@pam!homelab"
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proxmox_api_token_secret = "your-proxmox-api-token-secret"

To generate a Proxmox API token: tutorial. More Packer examples: here.

packer.pkr.hcl

Plugin configuration for the Proxmox provider:

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packer {
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  required_plugins {
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    proxmox-iso = {
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      version = ">= 1.0.0"
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      source  = "github.com/hashicorp/proxmox"
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    }
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  }
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}

ubuntu-*/ubuntu-server-jammy-docker.pkr.hcl

Replace YOUR_PROXMOX_NODE_NAME with your Proxmox node name and YOUR_IP_DEPLOYMENT_MACHINE with the IP of the machine running the deploy script.

ubuntu-*/http/user-data

Replace YOUR_SSH_KEY with the SSH key generated by homelab_deploy.sh.

Terraform

terraform.tfvars

Holds credentials for Proxmox. Do not commit this to a public repository.

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proxmox_api_url          = "https://your-proxmox-ip-or-fqdn/api2/json"
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proxmox_api_token_id     = "terraform_user@pam!homelab"
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proxmox_api_token_secret = "your-proxmox-api-token-secret"
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proxmox_host             = "proxmox-host-ip"
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proxmox_user             = "proxmox-user"
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proxmox_password         = "proxmox-password"

modules/docker_vm/main.tf

Replace all placeholders with your values:

• YOUR_PROXMOX_NODE_NAME
• IP_MACHINE — VM deployment IP
• GateWay_IP
• IP_DEPLOYMENT — same as IP_MACHINE
• YOUR_SSH_KEY — generated by homelab_deploy.sh

If you’re not using NFS, comment out this block:

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resource "null_resource" "run_ansible_docker" {
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  depends_on = [local_file.ansible_inventory]
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  provisioner "local-exec" {
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    command = "LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 LANG=C.UTF-8 ansible-playbook -i ../ansible/inventory/inventory.ini ../ansible/roles/nfs_mount/main.yml"
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  }
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}

Other things configured in this file: locales, root SSH login, SSH key auth, and the Ansible integration trigger.

Next Steps

Proceed to the Deployment guide.