This repository contains the build system used for generating USO VMs for labs and ctf.

Install the following dependencies on your machine:

• packer: https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/install#linux
• ansible: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/installation_distros.html#installing-ansible-on-specific-operating-systems

Packer requires the following plugins to be installed:

# Get Packer required plugins automatically
packer init ubuntu-25-04-vbox-amd64.pkr.hcl
# Or install them manually
packer plugins install github.com/hashicorp/virtualbox
packer plugins install github.com/hashicorp/ansible

The lifecycle of building the VM is:

• download the corresponding Ubuntu image and configure the VM resources using packer. All the configs are available in ubuntu-*.pkr.hcl.
• allow installation leveraging cloud-init and the autoinstall feature from Ubuntu. The configuration available in the GUI installation wizard are available in scripts/autoinst/ubuntu-*-autoinstall,yml.
• all the other config required for the USO lab environment are set using ansible. The scrips are available in scripts/ansible/*.yml

A Makefile is availale for building the VM:

make

For debugging purposes, start the build as following:

PACKER_LOG=1 packer build -var headless=false ubuntu-*-vbox.pkr.hcl

The cookbook guid for configuring VMs are available at the following link.

The scripts were inspired from this repository.