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vagrant-base-box-creation.md

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Vagrant box creation steps

Unless you absolutely trust the provider it probably makes sense to build your own vagrant boxes. It is also an interesting learning experience to unserdtand how vagrant box works.

These are the steps to make a Debian vagrant box:

  • install debian in virtualbox (try to keep it very minimal)
  • install VirtualBox guest additions
  • remove unnecessary packages and do a general cleanup
  • add vagrant users SSH pubkey
  • zero out the free space
  • package it up
  • test
  • profit

Installing Debian

Install basic debian image, during install specify root pass: vagrant and add user vagrant with password vagrant. Call that VM: debian-wheezy (or whatever, but I will use this name). Also use the same name for machine hostname, for domain you can set vagrantup.com. Does not really matter.

Remove any unnecessary hardware from the VM settings, like audio and USB.

Installing additional packages and enabling SSH

After the installation is complete:

apt-get update 
apt-get upgrade 
apt-get install -y ssh

Now it makes sense to continue working over SSH session instead of being logged in via VirtualBox

Enable ssh port forwarding:

VBoxManage modifyvm "debian-wheezy" --natpf1 "ssh,tcp,,2222,,22"

Continuing over SSH

SSH into the vm

ssh vagrant@localhost -p 2222

Now we can install additional packages and do some pre-configuration

apt-get install -y build-essential sudo zerofree linux-headers-amd64 ca-certificates

insert virtualbox guest additions iso and run the install script from there

mount /media/cdrom 
bash /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

modify sudoers file to contain:

cat << EOF >> /etc/sudoers
vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
EOF

and download vagrant public ssh key

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellh/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub
mkdir .ssh
mv vagrant.pub .ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 700 .ssh

Configure locales

echo "LC_ALL="en_US.utf-8""| sudo tee /etc/environment

then re-generate the locales

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Cleanup

Now that the vbox kernel module is built we no longer need the development packages.

apt-get remove --purge linux-headers-amd64 build-essential
apt-get autoremove --purge

Clean apt cache

apt-get clean

stop syslog and remove old logs

/etc/init.d/rsyslog stop
find /var/log -type f -delete

Zero out the disk

Now we can clean up history and close SSH connection.

Either change runlevel by executing init 1 or reboot into single mode and once there, zero out the free space on the disk. This will allow for much better compression once the box is packaged up.

mount -o remount,ro /dev/sda1
zerofree -v /dev/sda1

After this you are done. Shut down the machine and package it up.

Packaging up

vagrant package --base debian-wheezy --output debian-wheezy.vanilla.14.12.14.box

now you can add it to vagrant

vagrant box add --name debian-wheezy.vanilla.14.12.14 debian-wheezy.vanilla.14.12.14.box

Confirm that it has been added and test it out

mdkdir test
vagrant init debian-wheezy.vanilla.14.12.14
vagrant up