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Automated macOS Virtual Machine Builder with Packer and Vagrant for Apple Silicon Macs & Parallels Desktop

Create virtual macOS machines or Vagrant boxes in an automated, customizable fashion using Packer. This tool is designed specifically for Macs with Apple Silicon chip and leverages Parallels Desktop.

Overview

This project provides automated Packer scripts to build macOS virtual machines or Vagrant boxes. It offers the flexibility to utilize either an IPSW file from the internet or a pre-built macvm virtual machine. The selected source can be defined by setting the macvm_path variable in the variables.pkrvars.hcl file. By default, the script will use and auto-download the IPSW for macOS 13.4.1 if no source is specified in the variables.pkrvars.hcl file.

Prerequisites

Before running the scripts, ensure you have the following software installed on your machine:

Should you wish to use an IPSW other than the default (macOS 13.4.1), you'll need to download it manually and specify the ipsw_url and ipsw_checksum variables in the variables.pkrvars.hcl file. You can locate the IPSW files at IPSW me.

Calculating IPSW Checksum

If you opt for an alternate IPSW, you'll need to determine and define its checksum. Use the following command to calculate the checksum:

shasum -a 256 <path_to_ipsw>

You can then specify the resulting checksum in the variables.pkrvars.hcl file as follows:

ipsw_checksum: "sha256:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

Usage

Prior to utilizing the Packer script, you must first establish the required variables in the variables.pkrvars.hcl file. You can use the variables_TEMPLATE.pkrvars.hcl file as a template or duplicate it to variables.local.pkrvars.hcl and modify it accordingly. Some of these variables have default values and don't need to be set explicitly.

You can set the following variables:

user = {
  username = "parallels"
  password = "parallels"
}
output_directory = "out"
machine_name = "macOs-ventura-13.4.1"
machine_specs = {
  cpus   = 4,
  memory = 8192,
}
boot_command = ""
boot_wait = "6m"
macvm_path = ""
ipsw_url = ""
ipsw_checksum = ""
addons = [
]
create_vagrant_box = false

Refer to the detailed variables guide for information on each variable.

New! Power of OCR in macOS automation

In packer-plugin-parallels v1.2.0, we introduced an OCR / Image recognition based boot scripts support for macOS VMs. To use this, define screens and corresponding actions like :

boot_screen_config { # This configuration represents single screen.
    boot_command     = ["<leftShiftOn><tab><leftShiftOff><spacebar>"] # boot command to execute when this screen is detected.
    screen_name      = "Language" # Give a name to identify in the logs.
    matching_strings = ["English", "Language", "Australia", "India"] # If system detects all of these texts in current screen, the corresponding boot_command will be executed.
  }

# Next screen - the configuration can go on!
boot_screen_config {
    boot_command     = ["<leftShiftOn><tab><leftShiftOff><spacebar>"]
    screen_name      = "Country"
    matching_strings = ["Select Your Country or Region"]
    is_last_screen   = true # Stops boot when boot_command of this screen executed.
  }

# If none of the screens are matching, execute an "empty" config :
boot_screen_config {
    boot_command     = ["<wait1s><enter>"]
    screen_name      = "Empty"
    matching_strings = []
  }

This feature allows to execute complex installation / configuration procedures faster and accurate in macOS VMs. Refer to our examples provided for more details. We've covered installation procedures for macOS 12, 13 and 14. This includes navigating through the initial steps, enabling remote login, enabling passwordless sudo for provisioning and installing Parallels tools.

Packer Commands

Initialize Plugins

To initialize the Packer plugins, navigate to the directory containing the script and run the following command:

packer init .

Validate Build Configuration

Validate the build configuration with the following command in the directory containing the script:

packer validate -var-file variables.local.pkrvars.hcl .

A successful validation will yield the output:

The configuration is valid.

Build Machine

To initiate the build of the virtual machine, execute the following command in the directory with the script:

packer build -var-file variables.local.pkrvars.hcl .

This action will generate a new virtual machine as per the settings in the Packer script, placing it in the out directory. If the create_vagrant_box variable is set to true, a Vagrant box will also be generated in the out folder.

Note: The build process duration depends on your machine's capabilities and internet connection speed. Post-build, the machine will not auto-attach to Parallels Desktop. This has to be performed manually.