- `iso_skip_cache` (bool) - Use iso from provided url. Qemu must support curl block device. This defaults to `false`. - `accelerator` (string) - The accelerator type to use when running the VM. This may be `none`, `kvm`, `tcg`, `hax`, `hvf`, `whpx`, or `xen`. The appropriate software must have already been installed on your build machine to use the accelerator you specified. When no accelerator is specified, Packer will try to use `kvm` if it is available but will default to `tcg` otherwise. ~> The `hax` accelerator has issues attaching CDROM ISOs. This is an upstream issue which can be tracked [here](https://github.com/intel/haxm/issues/20). ~> The `hvf` and `whpx` accelerator are new and experimental as of [QEMU 2.12.0](https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/2.12#Host_support). You may encounter issues unrelated to Packer when using these. You may need to add [ "-global", "virtio-pci.disable-modern=on" ] to `qemuargs` depending on the guest operating system. ~> For `whpx`, note that [Stefan Weil's QEMU for Windows distribution](https://qemu.weilnetz.de/w64/) does not include WHPX support and users may need to compile or source a build of QEMU for Windows themselves with WHPX support. - `disk_additional_size` ([]string) - Additional disks to create. Uses `vm_name` as the disk name template and appends `-#` where `#` is the position in the array. `#` starts at 1 since 0 is the default disk. Each string represents the disk image size in bytes. Optional suffixes 'k' or 'K' (kilobyte, 1024), 'M' (megabyte, 1024k), 'G' (gigabyte, 1024M), 'T' (terabyte, 1024G), 'P' (petabyte, 1024T) and 'E' (exabyte, 1024P) are supported. 'b' is ignored. Per qemu-img documentation. Each additional disk uses the same disk parameters as the default disk. Unset by default. - `cpus` (int) - The number of cpus to use when building the VM. The default is `1` CPU. - `disk_interface` (string) - The interface to use for the disk. Allowed values include any of `ide`, `scsi`, `virtio` or `virtio-scsi`^\*. Note also that any boot commands or kickstart type scripts must have proper adjustments for resulting device names. The Qemu builder uses `virtio` by default. ^\* Please be aware that use of the `scsi` disk interface has been disabled by Red Hat due to a bug described [here](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1019220). If you are running Qemu on RHEL or a RHEL variant such as CentOS, you *must* choose one of the other listed interfaces. Using the `scsi` interface under these circumstances will cause the build to fail. - `disk_size` (string) - The size in bytes of the hard disk of the VM. Suffix with the first letter of common byte types. Use "k" or "K" for kilobytes, "M" for megabytes, G for gigabytes, and T for terabytes. If no value is provided for disk_size, Packer uses a default of `40960M` (40 GB). If a disk_size number is provided with no units, Packer will default to Megabytes. - `skip_resize_disk` (bool) - Packer resizes the QCOW2 image using qemu-img resize. Set this option to true to disable resizing. Defaults to false. - `disk_cache` (string) - The cache mode to use for disk. Allowed values include any of `writethrough`, `writeback`, `none`, `unsafe` or `directsync`. By default, this is set to `writeback`. - `disk_discard` (string) - The discard mode to use for disk. Allowed values include any of unmap or ignore. By default, this is set to ignore. - `disk_detect_zeroes` (string) - The detect-zeroes mode to use for disk. Allowed values include any of unmap, on or off. Defaults to off. When the value is "off" we don't set the flag in the qemu command, so that Packer still works with old versions of QEMU that don't have this option. - `skip_compaction` (bool) - Packer compacts the QCOW2 image using qemu-img convert. Set this option to true to disable compacting. Defaults to false. - `disk_compression` (bool) - Apply compression to the QCOW2 disk file using qemu-img convert. Defaults to false. - `format` (string) - Either `qcow2` or `raw`, this specifies the output format of the virtual machine image. This defaults to `qcow2`. Due to a long-standing bug with `qemu-img convert` on OSX, sometimes the qemu-img convert call will create a corrupted image. If this is an issue for you, make sure that the the output format matches the input file's format, and Packer will perform a simple copy operation instead. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1776920 for more details. - `headless` (bool) - Packer defaults to building QEMU virtual machines by launching a GUI that shows the console of the machine being built. When this value is set to `true`, the machine will start without a console. You can still see the console if you make a note of the VNC display number chosen, and then connect using `vncviewer -Shared :` - `disk_image` (bool) - Packer defaults to building from an ISO file, this parameter controls whether the ISO URL supplied is actually a bootable QEMU image. When this value is set to `true`, the machine will either clone the source or use it as a backing file (if `use_backing_file` is `true`); then, it will resize the image according to `disk_size` and boot it. - `use_backing_file` (bool) - Only applicable when disk_image is true and format is qcow2, set this option to true to create a new QCOW2 file that uses the file located at iso_url as a backing file. The new file will only contain blocks that have changed compared to the backing file, so enabling this option can significantly reduce disk usage. If true, Packer will force the `skip_compaction` also to be true as well to skip disk conversion which would render the backing file feature useless. - `machine_type` (string) - The type of machine emulation to use. Run your qemu binary with the flags `-machine help` to list available types for your system. This defaults to `pc`. - `memory` (int) - The amount of memory to use when building the VM in megabytes. This defaults to 512 megabytes. - `net_device` (string) - The driver to use for the network interface. Allowed values `ne2k_pci`, `i82551`, `i82557b`, `i82559er`, `rtl8139`, `e1000`, `pcnet`, `virtio`, `virtio-net`, `virtio-net-pci`, `usb-net`, `i82559a`, `i82559b`, `i82559c`, `i82550`, `i82562`, `i82557a`, `i82557c`, `i82801`, `vmxnet3`, `i82558a` or `i82558b`. The Qemu builder uses `virtio-net` by default. - `net_bridge` (string) - Connects the network to this bridge instead of using the user mode networking. **NB** This bridge must already exist. You can use the `virbr0` bridge as created by vagrant-libvirt. **NB** This will automatically enable the QMP socket (see QMPEnable). **NB** This only works in Linux based OSes. - `output_directory` (string) - This is the path to the directory where the resulting virtual machine will be created. This may be relative or absolute. If relative, the path is relative to the working directory when packer is executed. This directory must not exist or be empty prior to running the builder. By default this is output-BUILDNAME where "BUILDNAME" is the name of the build. - `qemuargs` ([][]string) - Allows complete control over the qemu command line (though not qemu-img). Each array of strings makes up a command line switch that overrides matching default switch/value pairs. Any value specified as an empty string is ignored. All values after the switch are concatenated with no separator. ~> **Warning:** The qemu command line allows extreme flexibility, so beware of conflicting arguments causing failures of your run. For instance adding a "--drive" or "--device" override will mean that none of the default configuration Packer sets will be used. To see the defaults that Packer sets, look in your packer.log file (set PACKER_LOG=1 to get verbose logging) and search for the qemu-system-x86 command. The arguments are all printed for review, and you can use those arguments along with the template engines allowed by qemu-args to set up a working configuration that includes both the Packer defaults and your extra arguments. Another pitfall could be setting arguments like --no-acpi, which could break the ability to send power signal type commands (e.g., shutdown -P now) to the virtual machine, thus preventing proper shutdown. The following shows a sample usage: In JSON: ```json "qemuargs": [ [ "-m", "1024M" ], [ "--no-acpi", "" ], [ "-netdev", "user,id=mynet0,", "hostfwd=hostip:hostport-guestip:guestport", "" ], [ "-device", "virtio-net,netdev=mynet0" ] ] ``` In HCL2: ```hcl qemuargs = [ [ "-m", "1024M" ], [ "--no-acpi", "" ], [ "-netdev", "user,id=mynet0,", "hostfwd=hostip:hostport-guestip:guestport", "" ], [ "-device", "virtio-net,netdev=mynet0" ] ] ``` would produce the following (not including other defaults supplied by the builder and not otherwise conflicting with the qemuargs): ```text qemu-system-x86 -m 1024m --no-acpi -netdev user,id=mynet0,hostfwd=hostip:hostport-guestip:guestport -device virtio-net,netdev=mynet0" ``` ~> **Windows Users:** [QEMU for Windows](https://qemu.weilnetz.de/) builds are available though an environmental variable does need to be set for QEMU for Windows to redirect stdout to the console instead of stdout.txt. The following shows the environment variable that needs to be set for Windows QEMU support: ```text setx SDL_STDIO_REDIRECT=0 ``` You can also use the `SSHHostPort` template variable to produce a packer template that can be invoked by `make` in parallel: In JSON: ```json "qemuargs": [ [ "-netdev", "user,hostfwd=tcp::{{ .SSHHostPort }}-:22,id=forward"], [ "-device", "virtio-net,netdev=forward,id=net0"] ] ``` In HCL2: ```hcl qemuargs = [ [ "-netdev", "user,hostfwd=tcp::{{ .SSHHostPort }}-:22,id=forward"], [ "-device", "virtio-net,netdev=forward,id=net0"] ] `make -j 3 my-awesome-packer-templates` spawns 3 packer processes, each of which will bind to their own SSH port as determined by each process. This will also work with WinRM, just change the port forward in `qemuargs` to map to WinRM's default port of `5985` or whatever value you have the service set to listen on. This is a template engine and allows access to the following variables: `{{ .HTTPIP }}`, `{{ .HTTPPort }}`, `{{ .HTTPDir }}`, `{{ .OutputDir }}`, `{{ .Name }}`, and `{{ .SSHHostPort }}` - `qemu_img_args` (QemuImgArgs) - A map of custom arguments to pass to qemu-img commands, where the key is the subcommand, and the values are lists of strings for each flag. Example: In JSON: ```json { "qemu_img_args": { "convert": ["-o", "preallocation=full"], "resize": ["-foo", "bar"] } ``` Please note that unlike qemuargs, these commands are not split into switch-value sub-arrays, because the basic elements in qemu-img calls are unlikely to need an actual override. The arguments will be constructed as follows: - Convert: Default is `qemu-img convert -O $format $sourcepath $targetpath`. Adding arguments ["-foo", "bar"] to qemu_img_args.convert will change this to `qemu-img convert -foo bar -O $format $sourcepath $targetpath` - Create: Default is `create -f $format $targetpath $size`. Adding arguments ["-foo", "bar"] to qemu_img_args.create will change this to "create -f qcow2 -foo bar target.qcow2 1234M" - Resize: Default is `qemu-img resize -f $format $sourcepath $size`. Adding arguments ["-foo", "bar"] to qemu_img_args.resize will change this to `qemu-img resize -f $format -foo bar $sourcepath $size` - `qemu_binary` (string) - The name of the Qemu binary to look for. This defaults to qemu-system-x86_64, but may need to be changed for some platforms. For example qemu-kvm, or qemu-system-i386 may be a better choice for some systems. - `qmp_enable` (bool) - Enable QMP socket. Location is specified by `qmp_socket_path`. Defaults to false. - `qmp_socket_path` (string) - QMP Socket Path when `qmp_enable` is true. Defaults to `output_directory`/`vm_name`.monitor. - `use_default_display` (bool) - If true, do not pass a -display option to qemu, allowing it to choose the default. This may be needed when running under macOS, and getting errors about sdl not being available. - `display` (string) - What QEMU -display option to use. Defaults to gtk, use none to not pass the -display option allowing QEMU to choose the default. This may be needed when running under macOS, and getting errors about sdl not being available. - `vnc_bind_address` (string) - The IP address that should be binded to for VNC. By default packer will use 127.0.0.1 for this. If you wish to bind to all interfaces use 0.0.0.0. - `vnc_use_password` (bool) - Whether or not to set a password on the VNC server. This option automatically enables the QMP socket. See `qmp_socket_path`. Defaults to `false`. - `vnc_port_min` (int) - The minimum and maximum port to use for VNC access to the virtual machine. The builder uses VNC to type the initial boot_command. Because Packer generally runs in parallel, Packer uses a randomly chosen port in this range that appears available. By default this is 5900 to 6000. The minimum and maximum ports are inclusive. The minimum port cannot be set below 5900 due to a quirk in how QEMU parses vnc display address. - `vnc_port_max` (int) - VNC Port Max - `vm_name` (string) - This is the name of the image (QCOW2 or IMG) file for the new virtual machine. By default this is packer-BUILDNAME, where "BUILDNAME" is the name of the build. Currently, no file extension will be used unless it is specified in this option. - `cdrom_interface` (string) - The interface to use for the CDROM device which contains the ISO image. Allowed values include any of `ide`, `scsi`, `virtio` or `virtio-scsi`. The Qemu builder uses `virtio` by default. Some ARM64 images require `virtio-scsi`.