Overview of the Issue

Whilst creating IPv6-only packer images, we ran into the following problems:

• Packer was still waiting/polling for an assigned IP address to the VM, although it had already received an IPv6 address.

  This was solved by assigning an IPv6 range (e.g. 2001:db8:dead:beef::/64) to the ip_wait_address variable inside the source "vsphere-iso" "[name]" stanza. This was necessary due to the vSphere ISO builder defaulting to IPv4: https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations/hashicorp/vsphere/latest/components/builder/vsphere-iso#wait-configuration

• Packer was still waiting/polling for SSH to become available, even after passing the IP check.

  Still unresolved. The SSH wait seems to continue using the detected IP address of the VM, but doesn't work around the implications of the address being an IPv6 address:

  2023/11/29 08:44:32 packer-plugin-vsphere_v1.2.2_x5.0_linux_amd64 plugin: 2023/11/29 08:44:32 VM IP seems stable enough: 2001:db8:dead:beef::1
  ==> vsphere-iso.adis-tester: IP address: 2001:db8:dead:beef::1
  2023/11/29 08:44:32 packer-plugin-vsphere_v1.2.2_x5.0_linux_amd64 plugin: 2023/11/29 08:44:32 [INFO] Waiting for SSH, up to timeout: 30m0s
  2023/11/29 08:44:32 packer-plugin-vsphere_v1.2.2_x5.0_linux_amd64 plugin: 2023/11/29 08:44:32 [DEBUG] TCP connection to SSH ip/port failed: dial tcp: address 2001:db8:dead:beef::1:22: too many colons in address
  ==> vsphere-iso.adis-tester: Using SSH communicator to connect: 2001:db8:dead:beef::1
  ==> vsphere-iso.adis-tester: Waiting for SSH to become available...
  2023/11/29 08:44:37 packer-plugin-vsphere_v1.2.2_x5.0_linux_amd64 plugin: 2023/11/29 08:44:37 [DEBUG] TCP connection to SSH ip/port failed: dial tcp: address 2001:db8:dead:beef::1:22: too many colons in address
  2023/11/29 08:44:42 packer-plugin-vsphere_v1.2.2_x5.0_linux_amd64 plugin: 2023/11/29 08:44:42 [DEBUG] TCP connection to SSH ip/port failed: dial tcp: address 2001:db8:dead:beef::1:22: too many colons in address
  

Might be the same problem as described in hashicorp/packer#9360.

Reproduction Steps

• Follow the tutorial steps in https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/virtual-machine/vsphere-provider.
• Pivot from the tutorial and assign a static IPv6 address using CloudInit's user-data.
• Declare ip_wait_address and assign it an IPv6 range as a string inside packer/vsphere-iso_basic_ubuntu.pkr.hcl.
• Run PACKER_LOG=1 packer build. It will wait/poll for SSH to become available indefinitely.

Packer Version

Packer v1.9.4

Plugin Version and Builders

Plugin: packer-plugin-vsphere_v1.2.2_x5.0_linux_amd64

Builder: vsphere-iso

VMware vSphere Version

7.0.3

Guest Operating System

Both tested with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Simplified Packer Buildfile

• https://github.com/hashicorp/learn-terraform-vsphere/blob/main/packer/vsphere-iso_basic_ubuntu.pkr.hcl with ip_wait_address added in the source "vsphere-iso" "[name]" stanza.
• https://github.com/hashicorp/learn-terraform-vsphere/blob/main/packer/user-data with added netplan data, e.g:

  network:
    network:
      version: 2
      renderer: networkd
      ethernets:
        foobar:
          match:
            name: 'ens*'
          dhcp4: false
          dhcp6: false
          addresses:
            - 2001:db8:dead:beef::2/64
          nameservers:
            search: [example.com]
            addresses:
              - 2001:db8:dead:beef::3
              - 2001:db8:dead:beef::4
          routes:
            - to: ::/0
              via: 2001:db8:dead:beef::1
  

Operating System and Environment Details

Packer was run from my Ubuntu 22.04 LTS desktop.