Biggest water park in delhi ncr It seems like you're encountering an issue where the Ansible provisioning step during your Packer build is stuck because of SSH connection issues (specifically related to SFTP/SSH key authentication) while working with VMware and Ansible. Here are a few things you can try to resolve this issue:

1. Ensure SSH Password Authentication is Enabled: Although you mentioned that the image should accept a password, it’s worth double-checking the SSH configuration in your VM to ensure that password authentication is explicitly enabled. You can do this by connecting to the VM manually and modifying the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file:

bash Copy PasswordAuthentication yes Then restart the SSH service:

bash Copy sudo systemctl restart ssh If password authentication is enabled, you can manually verify SSH login with the password to confirm that it works as expected.

2. Force Ansible to Use Password Authentication: Since you are using password-based authentication, try configuring Ansible to explicitly use password authentication by setting up the following in your ansible.cfg file or as environment variables for the playbook:

ini Copy [defaults] transport = ssh

[ssh_connection] ssh_args = -o PubkeyAuthentication=no -o PasswordAuthentication=yes Alternatively, you can specify the SSH password in the ansible-playbook command with the --ask-pass flag:

bash Copy ansible-playbook --ask-pass ... 3. SSH Key Issues: It appears that Ansible is trying to use SSH key-based authentication (/tmp/ansible-key830595791) as part of the provisioning process. If your VM is set up to use password authentication rather than SSH keys, make sure to specify the ansible_ssh_pass variable in your playbook or command.

You can pass the password explicitly in your Ansible command:

bash Copy ansible-playbook -e ansible_ssh_pass="your_password" ... 4. Switch to SCP Instead of SFTP: Since you're receiving warnings about both SFTP and SCP transfer mechanisms failing, try to force Ansible to use SCP for file transfer. This can be done by modifying your ansible.cfg file like this:

ini Copy [ssh_connection] scp_if_ssh = True 5. Check for VM Connectivity: You’ve mentioned that the port 22 is open, but double-check if there’s any firewall or SELinux/iptables rule blocking SSH access from the Packer VM during provisioning. Use the following commands to verify connectivity:

Verify SSH access from the host machine:

bash Copy ssh -i /tmp/ansible-key830595791 ubuntu@<VM_IP> Make sure the SSH service is up and running inside the VM:

bash Copy systemctl status ssh 6. Check VMware Settings: Make sure VMware Workstation is properly configured for networking so that the VM can be accessed from the host (especially if you're using NAT or bridged networking). The VM must have proper network access (either via NAT or bridged connection) to communicate with Ansible.

7. Increase Ansible Debug Level: Since you have ANSIBLE_DEBUG=1 set, examine the debug logs for additional details about the failure, especially about SSH authentication errors, which might give you more information on why the SCP and SFTP mechanisms are failing.

Check for errors specifically related to the SSH keys or password authentication in the Ansible debug output.

Summary of Steps: Ensure password authentication is enabled inside the VM (/etc/ssh/sshd_config). Modify your ansible.cfg to disable key-based authentication if using password authentication. Add ansible_ssh_pass to specify the password explicitly. Force Ansible to use SCP by setting scp_if_ssh=True. Verify connectivity and SSH service in the VM. Increase Ansible debug output to get more detailed error information. These steps should help resolve the issue you're encountering with SSH/SCP connection failures in the Packer and Ansible workflow. Let me know if you need further clarification!