Screen scraping vnc? docker meets windows meets vagrant meets packer

You know you are itching to have a Windows 2016 server run under Vagrant w/ libvirt so you can play with Windows Containers. You just know you are. Its what’s been missing in your life.

And since I feel for you and your empty life, I will share with you my secret recipe. Its got 0 herbs and spices, its not guarded in some vault. Its right below in a conversion from markdown to html to wordpress for you viewing pleasure.

Yes it screen-scrapes VNC. Don’t let a little detail like that dissuade you.

Here are the steps.

Upgrade vagrant from hashicorp

Install libvirt-dev and ruby-dev: apt install libvirt-dev ruby-dev (note, you may need other packages as per install instructions )

Get the latest packer-provisioner-windows-update. Put it in ~/bin

Add it to your packerconfig

cat ~/.packerconfig
{
 "provisioners": {
   "windows-update": "/home/don/bin/packer-provisioner-windows-update"
 }
}

Now set some env vars:
export CHECKPOINT_DISABLE=1
export PACKER_LOG=1
export PACKER_LOG_PATH=packer.log

Install vagrant libvirt plugin,
Install the vagrant windows-update/reload plugins:
vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt
vagrant plugin install vagrant-windows-update
vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload

Clone windows-2016-vagrant
run sudo make build-libvirt

Clone docker-windows-2016-vagrant
run vagrant up

OMG!

ps, this takes a long time. But, you can use ‘docker’ to run a windows container, from your linux host.

While doing the above, never ask why. Just do.