Packer unable to communicate with AWS Instance - amazon-web-services

Question

I am just playing with packer and I created a simple template like so:
{
"variables": {
"aws_access_key": "{{env `AWS_ACCESS_KEY`}}",
"aws_secret_key": "{{env `AWS_SECRET_KEY`}}"
},
"builders": [
{
"type": "amazon-ebs",
"access_key": "{{user `aws_access_key`}}",
"secret_key": "{{user `aws_secret_key`}}",
"region": "us-east-1",
"vpc_id": "MY_DEFAULT_VPC_ID",
"subnet_id": "MY_PUBLIC_SUBNET_ID",
"source_ami": "ami-a025aeb6",
"instance_type": "t2.micro",
"ssh_username": "ubuntu",
"ami_name": "packer-example {{timestamp | clean_resource_name}}"
}
]
}
When I run packer build initial_ami.json I get the following error.
amazon-ebs: output will be in this color.
==> amazon-ebs: Prevalidating any provided VPC information
==> amazon-ebs: Prevalidating AMI Name: packer-example 1628354042
amazon-ebs: Found Image ID: ami-a025aeb6
==> amazon-ebs: Creating temporary keypair: packer_***********
==> amazon-ebs: Creating temporary security group for this instance: packer_****
==> amazon-ebs: Authorizing access to port 22 from [0.0.0.0/0] in the temporary security groups...
==> amazon-ebs: Launching a source AWS instance...
==> amazon-ebs: Adding tags to source instance
amazon-ebs: Adding tag: "Name": "Packer Builder"
amazon-ebs: Instance ID: i-******
==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for instance (i-*****) to become ready...
==> amazon-ebs: Using SSH communicator to connect: 172.**.*.**
==> amazon-ebs: Waiting for SSH to become available...
==> amazon-ebs: Timeout waiting for SSH.
==> amazon-ebs: Terminating the source AWS instance...
==> amazon-ebs: Cleaning up any extra volumes...
==> amazon-ebs: No volumes to clean up, skipping
==> amazon-ebs: Deleting temporary security group...
==> amazon-ebs: Deleting temporary keypair...
Build 'amazon-ebs' errored after 6 minutes 51 seconds: Timeout waiting for SSH.
==> Wait completed after 6 minutes 51 seconds
==> Some builds didn't complete successfully and had errors:
--> amazon-ebs: Timeout waiting for SSH.
==> Builds finished but no artifacts were created.
So everything is fine until it tries to connect on the ssh port of the instance. It seems to be using 172.... IP so I don't think it will connect to the instance. My questions are:
Is this issue caused by the fact that packer is creating an instance without public IP?
If so, then how do I force packer to create an instance with a public IP and then use that public IP to connect to the ssh service?

Answer 1

I would suggest you not use public IP while building Packer image rather set the ssh_interface to private_ip so it can be connected from the vpc itself if you are using it as part of your ci/cd process or else you would be charge a hell lot of data transfer cost if you build them more frequently

Answer 2

Ok I figured it out, all we need to do is set:
"associate_public_ip_address": true in the builder section of the template file.