Ubuntu 14.04 Fails to build with bento/packer

[timvisher]

I was trying to build an ubuntu 14.04 box just now and can't seem to succeed. It looks like something goes wrong in the initial boot process and then it gets stuck in the language selection screen.

Key	Value
Host OS	Mac 10.11 (15A284)
Guest OS	bin/bento build --only=virtualbox-iso ubuntu-14.04-amd64 @ 89214273c0c7ad61dd41a6df3ba37bbbc4189fe7
arch	amd64 iiuc (3 GHz Intel Core i7)
packer	0.8.6
virtualbox	5.0.6r103037

Thoughts?

[timvisher]

It looks like roughly the same thing is happening on CentOS 7.1

[rickard-von-essen]

See my comment on hashicorp/packer#2156, is is usually a problem with your host being to slow/under heavy load. Try decreasing the load or you run in a nested VM assign more resources.

[cheeseplus]

@timvisher as @rickard-von-essen mentions it's likely a load issue - I also see a bunch of random key presses (tttttttttt) in the output which is likely/potentially causing problems.

Also when reporting these issues please be specific to the host OS, guest OS, arch, packer version, as well as the virtualbox (or specific provider) versions. That said, the GIF is awesome <3

[timvisher]

@cheeseplus Added the versioning information to the description here (did I miss the contributing to this repo link when opening the issue?).

As far as reducing the load, my load is consistently ~1.5-2 which I was trained to react to as ridiculously high, but doesn't seem to negatively affect performance for any other applications. I tried quitting essentially everything else and running the build and the same thing happened.

[cheeseplus]

Didn't miss anything, but there should be an ISSUES.md added with some requirements as most reproing issues with virtualization/packer is already tricky.

The only things that stand out to me at the moment are

1. the errant keystrokes I am noticing in the gif (right after the language screen and
2. 10.11 - we haven't upgraded the builders our of early adoption fears

[timvisher]

@cheeseplus

1. the errant keystrokes I am noticing in the gif (right after the language screen

Yeah. I figured that was the boot command being typed before the vm was ready to receive it.

2. 10.11 - we haven't upgraded the builders our of early adoption fears

If you'd like I can serve as a guinea pig for 10.11 compat branches.

[cheeseplus]

The keypresses from that gif don't correspond to anything in the template which would just be the boot_command section for the respective builder.

We shouldn't really need to do much for 10.11 compat on this side unless things on the packer or hypervisor side break/change. That said I'm upgrading one of the builders to 10.11 to test things now that it's been a bit since release.

[cheeseplus]

Also seeing similarities in hashicorp/packer#1796 - seems this may just be a side affect of undue load with regard to packer.

[cheeseplus]

@timvisher I guess the real question is whether you can build anything with Packer - while I totally believe this is an issue I'm not sure it's specific to the bento templates themselves. I've tried to repro on my most resource constrained builder (Mac Mini 2.5Ghz i5 / 4GB RAM / HDD) but thus far can't force the condition to occur

[timvisher]

So I lied, I suppose. I restarted my box and quit literally everything. This got my loadavg down to ~1.5. I then opened Terminal.app (I generally use iTerm but I've heard that it might have issues with notifyd on 10.11) and ran a bin/bento build --only=virtualbox-iso ubuntu-14.04-amd64 and it worked. No double key presses or anything. One notable thing that happens is that the initial dialog box flickers quite a bit. It looks like Cancel is being pressed over and over again. Don't know if that points us in any direction.

During the build the loadavg spike to ~2.5 at times but never went over that. My loadavg tends to sit around 2.

[cheeseplus]

I haven't upgraded to 10.11 myself or for the builders - that said I'm going to close this issue as it seems to be a general Packer issue.