This example build configuration installs and configures Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64 minimal using Ansible, and then generates a Vagrant box file for use with VirtualBox.
The example can be modified to use more Ansible roles, plays, and included playbooks to fully configure (or partially) configure a box file suitable for deployment for development environments.
The following software must be installed/present on your local machine before you can use Packer to build the Vagrant box file:
You will also need the geerlingguy.packer-debian Ansible role installed, which can be installed using the command ansible-galaxy install geerlingguy.packer-debian (this assumes you already have Ansible 1.4.2 or later installed on your local machine).
If you have the role installed somewhere besides the default roles path on your machine (/etc/ansible/roles), you will need to edit the role_paths inside ubuntu1404.json to match the location of the geerlingguy.packer-debian role. If you don't have Ansible installed (perhaps you're using a Windows PC?), you can simply clone the repository from GitHub, and update the role_paths variable to match the location of the cloned role.
Make sure all the required software (listed above) is installed, then cd to the directory containing this README.md file, and run:
$ packer build ubuntu1404.json
After a few minutes, Packer should tell you the box was generated successfully.
Jeff Geerling, 2014.