Addressing issue and Fixes for packer-based AMI's & Compatibility

[pratik2135]

This PR addresses a series of issues encountered while creating a Packer-based AMI for the Jenkins controller and agent. The changes include configuration updates, compatibility fixes, and module improvements to ensure smooth AMI creation, Jenkins deployment, and Terraform integration.

🧩 Context / Problem Statement

While building Jenkins AMI images using Packer and Ansible, several issues were encountered due to outdated or unsupported configurations and package installation conflicts:

• ❌ SSH Connection Failure due to pubkeyacceptedalgorithms not being recognized.
• ❌ AWS CLI installation failure in an externally-managed Python environment.
• ❌ GPG key download failure during HashiCorp repository setup.
• ❌ Unsupported remote_src parameter in Ansible script module.
• ❌ Jenkins controller used an outdated version that blocked essential plugin downloads.

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Note: This setup and investigation were conducted on several different machines to better understand and replicate the errors encountered.

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✅ Changes Implemented

🔧 Packer Configuration

• Removed unsupported pubkeyacceptedalgorithms from the SSH configuration to resolve connectivity issues.

📦 AWS CLI & Python Environment Fix

• Replaced pip-based CLI installation with apt-based and direct URL-based installation.
• Ensured dependencies (curl, unzip, etc.) are installed via Ansible before CLI installation.

🔐 HashiCorp GPG Key Fix

• Updated GPG key download using curl -fsSL for clean, silent fetch.
• Used --dearmor to convert the GPG key to the required binary format.
• Ensured idempotency with appropriate creates directive in Ansible.

🧾 Secret Retrieval Fix

• Removed unsupported remote_src parameter from the Ansible script module to fix failure during AWS SSM secret retrieval.

🏗️ Jenkins AMI and Terraform Updates

• Upgraded Jenkins to version 2.492.1.
• Created a new Jenkins controller AMI with the updated version.
• Updated Terraform configuration to use the new AMI.
  • Ensured only the launch template was modified — no disruption to other resources.

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📸 Screenshots / Logs

Refer to the attached screenshots for:

• Error traces
• Configuration changes
• Successful plugin install validation

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🧪 Testing

• ✅ Successfully built Jenkins controller and agent AMIs.
• ✅ Verified AWS CLI installation through Ansible provisioning.
• ✅ Ran terraform plan post-AMI creation — only the intended AMI change observed.
• ✅ Jenkins controller

Request for Review

This PR is ready for review. I’d appreciate feedback on:

• 🔍 Compatibility with the repository’s Ansible and Terraform standards.
• 🧹 Opportunities to improve idempotency and maintainability in the automation scripts.

Let me know if any changes are needed!