A lot of projects are already available on GitHub to build .box files for vagrant. An excellent example and a source of inspiration for this work is windows-2016-vagrant.
The goal of this project is to provide:
- An easy to use building environment for Windows OS boxes
- Updated and syspreped images that can easily be created/destroyed to avoid Windows License issues
- An easier debugging environment to build boxes by separating this process into 4 steps
At the moment of writing, the only supported provider is virtualbox. The project was built to easily extend to other providers.
This project has only been tested on Ubuntu Linux host machine.
- pipenv (python 3)
- A provider
- Virtualbox (the only supported at the moment)
- packer - https://www.packer.io/
- packer plugin
- Windows update - https://github.com/rgl/packer-provisioner-windows-update. Instructions here
- vagrant - https://www.vagrantup.com/
The use build-boxes, you need to install the python depedencies. They can easily be installed using the following commands
git clone https://github.com/df3l0p/build-boxes.git
python3 -m pipenv install # for python 3.6
python3 -m pipenv install --path=/usr/bin/python3.8 # For python>3.6
To switch in the pipenv environment
pipenv shell
At this point, you are able to build boxes
To list all supported boxes
invoke build.list-boxBuilding all steps for a box
invoke build.build-box -b <box_name> -p <provider>
invoke build.build-box -b windows_10-amd64 -p virtualboxBuilding steps since a particular step for a box
invoke build.build-box -b <box_name> -p <provider> -i <step_since>
invoke build.build-box -b windows_10-amd64 -p virtualbox -i 2Building a specific step for a box
invoke build.build-box -b <box_name> -p <provider> -s <build_number>
invoke build.build-box -b windows_10-amd64 -p virtualbox -s 4Each building step's output can be found in the output folder
At the end of the building process, a .box file is created. This file can be added to vagrant with the following command
vagrant box add -f <box name> <path to box>
vagrant box add -f windows-2019-amd64-datacenter-virtualbox ./output/virtualbox/windows_2019-amd64/4/windows_2019-amd64-virtualbox.boxAt this point you can now references the boxes in your Vagrantfile to bootstrap your desired environment. You can use the lab-builder project for already prepared environments.
We need to help to improve this project and specially add other providers. You can find below information that is important for contributing to this project. You will need to understand how packer works if you want to add new Windows box images.
Here is a description of the structure of this project
build-boxes
├── env
│ ├── <windows box>
│ │ ├── 1-bootstrap.json -- Packer conf for the 1st step
│ │ ├── 2-update.json -- Packer conf for the 2nd step
│ │ ├── 3-provision.json -- Packer conf for the 3rd step
│ │ ├── 4-finalize.json -- Packer conf for the 4th step
│ │ └── Autounattend.xml -- Autounattend conf file for bootstraping windows
├── logs -- logging folder for the building process
├── Pipfile -- Python requirements file. See pipenv documentation
├── Pipfile.lock -- Lock of Python dependencies version
├── readme.md
├── res -- Resource folder
│ ├── scripts -- Provisioners scripts
│ └── vagrantfile -- Vagrantfile templates
└── tasks -- Source code of project's build tools
├── build.py
├── core
│ ├── BoxBuilder.py
│ ├── __init__.py
│ └── utils.py
└── __init__.py
The building process has been separated in 4 steps. The main reason for that is to ease the development of boxes and increase flexibility when updating boxes. The building process is done with packer.
You can find below further information about the building steps
The bootstraping step aims to download the iso, create the virtual machine and apply a few fixes in case for the next steps
This step applies all the windows updates for the box. The virtual machine is restarted multiple times if some patches require a restart
The provision step's goal is to:
- Add guest additions to the VM
- Make the last configurations on the OS
- Install all the tools
The last step for generating the .box file will:
- Remove all the building artefacts from the OS
- Sysprep the windows box
If you are planing to use those boxes in the lab-build project, make sure you use the following naming convention to add the box to Vagrant (to match what was used in Vagrantfile of that project)
windows-<version>-<architecture>-<license>-<provider>
- version
- 10
- 2016
- 2019
- ...
- architecture
- amd64
- i386
- ...
- license
- pro
- enterprise
- ...
- provider
- virtualbox
- vmware
- ...
Windows packer main source of inspiration - https://github.com/rgl/windows-2016-vagrant
Windows packer best practices - https://hodgkins.io/best-practices-with-packer-and-windows
Packer documentation - https://www.packer.io/docs/
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
See COPYING to see the full text.
Here are the commands executed by pyinvoke:
1st step
CHECKPOINT_DISABLE=1 PACKER_LOG=1 PACKER_LOG_PATH=logs/windows_10-amd64-virtualbox.log \
packer build -only=windows_10-amd64-virtualbox -on-error=abort env/windows_10-amd64/1-bootstrap.json2nd step
CHECKPOINT_DISABLE=1 PACKER_LOG=1 PACKER_LOG_PATH=logs/windows_10-amd64-virtualbox.log \
packer build -on-error=abort env/windows_10-amd64/2-update.json3rd step
CHECKPOINT_DISABLE=1 PACKER_LOG=1 PACKER_LOG_PATH=logs/windows_10-amd64-virtualbox.log \
packer build -on-error=abort env/windows_10-amd64/3-provision.json4th step
CHECKPOINT_DISABLE=1 PACKER_LOG=1 PACKER_LOG_PATH=logs/windows_10-amd64-virtualbox.log \
packer build -on-error=abort env/windows_10-amd64/4-finalize.jsonUse wmi-cli to troubleshoot and understand what is going on when packer keeps trying to connect to your remote computer through WinRM.
-
Install go to build
wmi-cli. You can follow this procedure to install go on Linux. Link -
Install godep (to build automatic go dependecies)
go get github.com/tools/godep- Download wmi-cli project and build
cd /opt/
sudo git clone https://github.com/masterzen/winrm-cli
cd winrm-cli
make- Usage
winrm -hostname 127.0.0.1 -port 4311 -username vagrant -password vagrant "whoami"