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Install Packer

This tutorial also appears in: AWS.

Packer may be installed in the following ways:

  • Using a precompiled binary. We release binaries for all supported platforms and architectures. This method is recommended for most users.
  • Installing from source. This method is only recommended for advanced users.
  • Using your system's package manager.

»Installing Packer

Retrieve the packer binary by downloading a pre-compiled binary or compiling it from source.

To install the precompiled binary, download the appropriate package for your system. Packer is currently packaged as a zip file.

After downloading Packer, unzip the package. Packer runs as a single binary named packer.

Finally, make sure that the packer binary is available on your PATH. This process will differ depending on your operating system.

Print a colon-separated list of locations in your PATH.

$ echo $PATH

$ echo $PATH

Move the Packer binary to one of the listed locations. This command assumes that the binary is currently in your downloads folder and that your PATH includes /usr/local/bin, but you can customize it if your locations are different.

$ mv ~/Downloads/packer /usr/local/bin/

$ mv ~/Downloads/packer /usr/local/bin/

For more detail about adding binaries to your path, see this Stack Overflow article.

»Verifying the Installation

After installing Packer, verify the installation worked by opening a new command prompt or console, and checking that packer is available:

$ packer
Usage: packer [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]

Available commands are:
    build           build image(s) from template
    console         creates a console for testing variable interpolation
    fix             fixes templates from old versions of packer
    fmt             Rewrites HCL2 config files to canonical format
    hcl2_upgrade    transform a JSON template into an HCL2 configuration
    init            Install missing plugins or upgrade plugins
    inspect         see components of a template
    validate        check that a template is valid
    version         Prints the Packer version

$ packer
Usage: packer [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]

Available commands are:
    build           build image(s) from template
    console         creates a console for testing variable interpolation
    fix             fixes templates from old versions of packer
    fmt             Rewrites HCL2 config files to canonical format
    hcl2_upgrade    transform a JSON template into an HCL2 configuration
    init            Install missing plugins or upgrade plugins
    inspect         see components of a template
    validate        check that a template is valid
    version         Prints the Packer version

If you get an error that packer could not be found, then your PATH environment variable was not set up properly. Please go back and ensure that your PATH variable contains the directory which has Packer installed.

Otherwise, Packer is installed and you're ready to go!

»Troubleshooting

On some distributions, there may be another tool named packer installed by default. The following error indicates that there is a name conflict.

$ packer
/usr/share/cracklib/pw_dict.pwd: Permission denied
/usr/share/cracklib/pw_dict: Permission denied

$ packer
/usr/share/cracklib/pw_dict.pwd: Permission denied
/usr/share/cracklib/pw_dict: Permission denied

Note: On Arch Linux, there is a package named packer in the main repository and in the AUR. The package packer in the AUR is an old name for a package management tool for Arch, it's not HashiCorp Packer.

To fix this, create a symlink to packer that uses a different name like packer.io, or invoke the packer binary you want using its absolute path, e.g. /usr/local/packer.

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