OpenBSD: add VMM to 'packer' porting Go software
Channel: BSDCan
Date: 2019-06-19

OpenBSD: add VMM to 'packer' (porting Go software)

The red pill taken to develop a Go "plugin" for packer.io to be able to create VM images on OpenBSD for VMM and many other virtualizers.
by Philipp Buehler

The sysadmin view of virtualization usually starts at a hypervisor running some kind of "image". Packer is a framework to create such an image using various host and virtualized operating systems and adding some more bolts.

This talk shows the efforts and pitfalls of building a plugin for packer using the VMM framework on OpenBSD. Some details go down the rabbit hole (or reducing it) to provide a Go binary runnable as a plugin. For ease of installation, the ways how to package this as an OpenBSD 'port' are shown.

On top a bigger picture is provided on how to provide configurable OpenBSD images "at scale" by using the above accomplishments.