Packer EC2_HOME: Neither of EC2_AMITOOL_HOME or EC2_HOME environment variables are set

Question

I use packer to build Amazon AMI and I ran into the issue that:

1. The base AMI (ami-a4bdd194) does not have ec2-ami-tools install so I wrote a small script to install it using provisions attribute.
2. It installed successfully to /usr/local/bin but I still get following errors when building the the AMI.

Any help would be very appreciate! Thanks!

// Console Error log

    amazon-instance: /usr/local/bin/ec2-bundle-vol: line 3: EC2_HOME: Neither of EC2_AMITOOL_HOME or EC2_HOME environment variables are set
    amazon-instance:
    amazon-instance:
    amazon-instance:
    amazon-instance:
    amazon-instance:
==> amazon-instance: Volume bundling failed. Please see the output above for more
==> amazon-instance: details on what went wrong.

// packer.json

{
  "variables": {
    "access_key": "",
    "secret_key": "",
    "x509_cert_path": "",
    "x509_key_path": ""
  },
  "builders": [
    {
      "access_key": "{{user `access_key`}}",
      "secret_key": "{{user `secret_key`}}",
      "x509_cert_path": "{{user `x509_cert_path`}}",
      "x509_key_path": "{{user `x509_key_path`}}",
      "account_id": "123456789012",
      "ami_name": "my-packer-example {{timestamp}}",
      "instance_type": "i2.xlarge",
      "region": "us-west-2",
      "s3_bucket": "my_bucket/my_folder",
      "source_ami": "ami-a4bdd194",
      "ssh_username": "ubuntu",
      "type": "amazon-instance"
    }
  ],
  "provisioners": [
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "scripts": [
        "../tools/install-ec2-ami-tools.bash"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

// install-ec2-ami-tools.bash

#!/bin/bash

function trimString()
{
    echo "${1}" | sed -e 's/^ *//g' -e 's/ *$//g'
}

function isEmptyString()
{
    if [[ "$(trimString ${1})" = '' ]]
    then
        echo 'true'
    else
        echo 'false'
    fi
}

function installEC2AMITools()
{
    if [[ "$(isEmptyString ${EC2_HOME})" = 'true' || "$(which 'ec2-bundle-vol')" = '' ]]
    then
        sleep 10 &&
        sudo apt-get update &&
        sudo apt-get install -y 'unzip' 'wget' &&
        rm -rf 'ec2-ami-tools' &&
        rm -f 'ec2-ami-tools.zip' &&
        wget -q 'http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.zip' &&
        unzip -q 'ec2-ami-tools.zip' &&
        mv ec2-ami-tools-* 'ec2-ami-tools' &&
        sudo rsync -a --no-o --no-g 'ec2-ami-tools/' '/usr/local' &&
        rm -rf 'ec2-ami-tools' &&
        rm -f 'ec2-ami-tools.zip'
    else
        echo -e "\033[1;32mec2-ami-tools has already been installed!\033[0m"
    fi
}

function main()
{
    installEC2AMITools
}

main

Answer 1

Here's an example of a config file that works. The trick is to override the actual commands to include the required paths:

{
  "variables": {
    "x509_cert_path": "/etc/aws/aws.cert",
    "x509_key_path": "/etc/aws/aws.key",
    "environment": "staging"
  },

  "builders": [
    {
      "type": "amazon-instance",
      "name": "chef-server-{{user `environment`}}",
      "region": "eu-west-1",
      "availability_zone": "eu-west-1a",
      "source_ami": "ami-46ba5331",
      "instance_type": "m1.medium",
      "ssh_username": "ubuntu",
      "ami_name": "chef-server-{{user `environment`}} {{isotime | clean_ami_name}}",
      "s3_bucket": "provisioning-images",
      "ami_description": "Chef Server instance",
      "account_id": "xxxx-yyyy-zzzz",
      "x509_cert_path": "{{user `x509_cert_path`}}",
      "x509_key_path": "{{user `x509_key_path`}}",
      "bundle_vol_command": "sudo -n EC2_HOME=/usr/local ec2-bundle-vol --no-filter -k {{.KeyPath}} -u {{.AccountId}} -c {{.CertPath}} -r {{.Architecture}} -e {{.PrivatePath}}/* -d {{.Destination}} -p {{.Prefix}} --batch",
      "bundle_upload_command": "sudo -n EC2_HOME=/usr/local ec2-upload-bundle -b {{.BucketName}} -m {{.ManifestPath}} -a {{.AccessKey}} -s {{.SecretKey}} -d {{.BundleDirectory}} --batch --location EU --retry"
    }
  ],

  "provisioners": [
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "inline": [
        "sleep 3 && sudo apt-get install zip -y > /dev/null",
        "wget --quiet http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.zip",
        "unzip -qq ec2-ami-tools.zip",
        "sudo -E rsync -a --no-o --no-g ec2-ami-tools-*/ /usr/local/",
        "sudo apt-get install ruby -y >/dev/null"
      ]
    },

    {
      "type": "chef-solo",
      "execute_command": "{{if .Sudo}}sudo {{end}}chef-solo -E {{user `environment`}} --no-color -c {{.ConfigPath}} -j {{.JsonPath}}",
      "cookbook_paths": ["{{pwd}}/lib/cookbooks"],
      "data_bags_path": "{{pwd}}/../../data_bags",
      "encrypted_data_bag_secret_path": "/etc/chef/databags.pem",
      "environments_path": "{{pwd}}/environments",
      "run_list": ["recipe[chef::server]"],
      "json": {
        "openssh": {
          "server": {
            "allow_users": "deployer ubuntu",
            "use_p_a_m": "yes"
          }
        },
        "chef_client": {
          "config": {
            "environment": "{{user `environment`}}"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}