How To Install packer on Kali Linux

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install packer on Kali Linux.

What is packer

packer is:

Packer is an open source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in parallel. Packer does not replace configuration management like Chef or Puppet. In fact, when building images, Packer is able to use tools like Chef or Puppet to install software onto the image.

A machine image is a single static unit that contains a pre-configured operating system and installed software which is used to quickly create new running machines. Machine image formats change for each platform. Some examples include AMIs for EC2, VMDK/VMX files for VMware, OVF exports for VirtualBox, etc.

For the documentation of Packer, please see https://www.packer.io/docs.

There are three methods to install packer on Kali Linux. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install packer Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install packer using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install packer

Install packer Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install packer using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install packer

Install packer Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude on Kali Linux first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Kali Linux. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install packer using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install packer

How To Uninstall packer on Kali Linux

To uninstall only the packer package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove packer

Uninstall packer And Its Dependencies

To uninstall packer and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Kali Linux, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove packer

Remove packer Configurations and Data

To remove packer configuration and data from Kali Linux we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge packer

Remove packer configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove packer configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge packer

Dependencies

packer have the following dependencies:

• libc6

References

• packer website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install packer package on Kali Linux using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.