I created an Azure machine image for an Ansible control node using Packer.

I use the shell provisioner to install Ansible from a script as follows:

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt -y install python3-pip
pip3 install ansible
#...

This installs Ansible, but the Ansible CLI tools end up in the /.local/bin dir of the packer user (i.e. under /home/packer/.local/bin). I subsequently deploy the image to Azure using the Terraform azurerm_linux_virtual_machine resource as follows:

resource "azurerm_linux_virtual_machine" "ansible" {

  # ...

  admin_username  = var.username
  source_image_id = var.source_image_id

  admin_ssh_key {
    username   = var.username
    public_key = var.ssh_public_key
  }

  # ...
}

I’s setting the username variable is set to ryan. When I SSH into this VM as ryan, the Ansible CLI tools are are not under /home/ryan, but rather /home/packer.

How should I deal with this?

Is there a way to get packer to run as a differnet user, or should I add a user in my packer shell provisioner script e.g. sudo adduser --disabled-password --gecos "" ryan, or is there a way to get Ansible to use a differnt location for the CLI tools, or something else?

Full packer template is as follows:

source "azure-arm" "this" {
  client_id                         = var.client_id
  client_secret                     = var.client_secret
  image_publisher                   = var.source_image_publisher
  image_offer                       = var.source_image_offer
  image_sku                         = var.source_image_sku
  location                          = var.location
  managed_image_name                = var.image_name
  managed_image_resource_group_name = var.resource_group_name
  os_type                           = "Linux"
  subscription_id                   = var.subscription_id
  tenant_id                         = var.tenant_id
  vm_size                           = var.vm_size
}

build {
  sources = ["source.azure-arm.this"]
  provisioner "shell" {
    environment_vars = [
      "SSH_PUBLIC_KEY=${var.ssh_public_key}",
      "SSH_PRIVATE_KEY=${var.ssh_private_key}",
      "SSH_PASSPHRASE=${var.ssh_passphrase}",
      "PACKER_CONFIG_DIR=/home/${var.username}"
    ]
    script = "./ansible.sh"
  }
}

^^ note: I tried using the PACKER_CONFIG_DIR environment var, but this didn’t work…