Issue with CentOS 8 Custom AMI creation

The issue

Beginning on 2020-12-07 the creation of custom AMIs with the CentOS 8 operating system is failing. The problem affects both the use case of building a custom ParallelCluster AMI through the pcluster createami command and the one of use of a custom AMI at runtime. This issue does not affect the use of default ParallelCluster AMIs, nor does it affect the creation of custom AMIs by modifying a ParallelCluster AMI.

No other operating systems supported by ParalleCluster are impacted.

Affected ParallelCluster version

This issue affects ParallelCluster 2.10.0. The issue is due to a change in the name of the PowerTools package in the release 8.3. See related issue.

Error details

When using the pcluster createami command using centos8 as base_os the following error will be thrown:

packer status: ==> builds finished but no artifacts were created.
       packer status:     exit code 1
       
       no custom ami created

By looking at packer logs the root reason can be identified: The PowerTools repository is no longer available.

Error: No matching repo to modify: PowerTools

The fix

The issue has been fixed in the develop branch by patch #831. 2.10.1 contains the fix as well.