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website/docs: better document creating base boxes

This commit is contained in:
Mitchell Hashimoto 2013-11-26 13:03:48 -08:00
parent ba09bad839
commit 2092630200
4 changed files with 289 additions and 30 deletions
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3
website/docs/source/layouts/layout.erb
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@ -137,6 +137,7 @@
<li<%= sidebar_current("boxes") %>><a href="/v2/boxes.html">Boxes</a></li>
<% if sidebar_section == "boxes" %>
<ul class="sub unstyled">
<li<%= sidebar_current("boxes-base") %>><a href="/v2/boxes/base.html">Creating a Base Box</a></li>
<li<%= sidebar_current("boxes-format") %>><a href="/v2/boxes/format.html">Box File Format</a></li>
</ul>
<% end %>
@ -190,7 +191,7 @@
<% if sidebar_section == "virtualbox" %>
<ul class="sub unstyled">
<li<%= sidebar_current("virtualbox-usage") %>><a href="/v2/virtualbox/usage.html">Usage</a></li>
<li<%= sidebar_current("virtualbox-boxes") %>><a href="/v2/virtualbox/boxes.html">Boxes</a></li>
<li<%= sidebar_current("virtualbox-boxes") %>><a href="/v2/virtualbox/boxes.html">Creating a Base Box</a></li>
<li<%= sidebar_current("virtualbox-configuration") %>><a href="/v2/virtualbox/configuration.html">Configuration</a></li>
</ul>
<% end %>

11
website/docs/source/stylesheets/_pages.less
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@ -12,7 +12,8 @@
.page-contents {
h1,
h2 {
h2,
h3 {
text-transform: uppercase;
text-align: left;
.museo-sans-light;
@ -37,6 +38,14 @@
margin-top: @baseline * .5;
} //h2 first child
} //h2
h3 {
margin: (@baseline * 2) 0 @baseline;
&:first-child {
margin-top: @baseline * .5;
} //h3 first child
}
} //page-contents
/* home */

198
website/docs/source/v2/boxes/base.html.md Normal file
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@ -0,0 +1,198 @@
---
page_title: "Creating a Base Box"
sidebar_current: "boxes-base"
---
# Creating a Base Box
There are a special category of boxes known as "base boxes." These boxes
contain the bare minimum required for Vagrant to function, are generally
not made by repackaging an existing Vagrant environment (hence the "base"
in the "base box").
For example, the Ubuntu boxes provided by the Vagrant project (such as
"precise64") are base boxes. They were created from a minimal Ubuntu install
from an ISO, rather than repackaging an existing environment.
Base boxes are extremely useful for having a clean slate starting point from
which to build future development environments. The Vagrant project hopes
in the future to be able to provide base boxes for many more operating systems.
Until then, this page documents how you can create your own base box.
<div class="alert alert-block alert-warn">
<p>
<strong>Advanced topic!</strong> Creating a base box can be a time consuming
and tedious process, and is not recommended for new Vagrant users. If you're
just getting started with Vagrant, we recommend trying to find existing
base boxes to use first.
</p>
</div>
## What's in a Base Box?
A base box typically consists of only a bare minimum set of software
for Vagrant to function. As an example, a Linux box may contain only the
following:
* Package manager
* SSH
* SSH user so Vagrant can connect
* Perhaps Chef, Puppet, etc. but not strictly required.
In addition to this, each [provider](/v2/providers/index.html) may require
additional software. For example, if you're making a base box for VirtualBox,
you'll want to include the VirtualBox guest additions so that shared folders
work properly. But if you're making an AWS base box, this is not required.
## Creating a Base Box
Creating a base box is actually provider-specific. This means that depending
on if you're using VirtualBox, VMware, AWS, etc. the process for creating
a base box is different. Because of this, this one document can't be a
full guide to creating a base box.
This page will document some general guidelines for creating base boxes,
however, and will link to provider-specific guides for creating base
boxes.
Provider-specific guides are linked below:
* [VirtualBox Base Boxes](/v2/virtualbox/boxes.html)
### Disk Space
When creating a base box, make sure the user will have enough disk space
to do interesting things, without being annoying. For example, in VirtualBox,
you should create a dynamically resizing drive with a large maximum size.
This causes the actual footprint of the drive to be small initially, but
to dynamically grow towards the max size as disk space is needed, providing
the most flexibility for the end user.
If you're creating an AWS base box, don't force the AMI to allocate
terabytes of EBS storage, for example, since the user can do that on their
own. But you should default to mounting ephemeral drives, because they're
free and provide a lot of disk space.
### Memory
Like disk space, finding the right balance of the default amount of memory
is important. For most providers, the user can modify the memory with
the Vagrantfile, so don't use too much by default. It would be a poor
user experience (and mildly shocking) if a `vagrant up` from a base box
instantly required many gigabytes of RAM. Instead, choose a value such
as 512MB, which is usually enough to play around and do interesting things
with a Vagrant machine, but can easily be increased when needed.
### Peripherals (Audio, USB, etc.)
Disable any non-necessary hardware in a base box such as audio and USB
controllers. These are generally unnecessary for Vagrant usage and, again,
can be easily added via the Vagrantfile in most cases.
## Default User Settings
Just about every aspect of Vagrant can be modified. However, Vagrant does
expect some defaults which will cause your base box to "just work" out
of the box. You should create these as defaults if you intent to publicly
distribute your box.
If you're creating a base box for private use, you should try _not_ to
follow these, as they open up your base box to security risks (known
users, passwords, private keys, etc.).
### "vagrant" User
By default, Vagrant expects a "vagrant" user to SSH into the machine as.
This user should be setup with the
[insecure keypair](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/tree/master/keys)
that Vagrant uses as a default to attempt to SSH. Also, even though
Vagrant uses key-based authentication by default, it is a general convention
to set the password for the "vagrant" user to "vagrant". This lets people
login as that user manually if they need to.
To configure SSH access with the insecure keypair, place the public
key into the `~/.ssh/authorized_keys` file for the "vagrant" user. Note
that OpenSSH is very picky about file permissions. Therefore, make sure
that `~/.ssh` has `0700` permissions and the authorized keys file has
`0600` permissions.
### Root Password: "vagrant"
Vagrant doesn't actually use or expect any root password. However, having
a generally well known root password makes it easier for the general public
to modify the machine if needed.
Publicly available base boxes usually use a root password of "vagrant" to
keep things easy.
### Password-less Sudo
This is **important!**. Many aspects of Vagrant expect the default SSH user
to have passwordless sudo configured. This lets Vagrant configure networks,
mount synced folders, install software, and more.
To begin, some minimal installations of operating systems don't even include
`sudo` by default. Verify that you install `sudo` in some way.
After installing sudo, configure it (usually using `visudo`) to allow
passwordless sudo for the "vagrant" user. This can be done with the
following line at the end of the configuration file:
```
vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
```
Additionally, Vagrant doesn't use a pty or tty by default when connected
via SSH. You'll need to ake sure there is no line that has `requiretty` in
it. Remove that if it exists. This allows sudo to work properly without a
tty. Note that you _can_ configure Vagrant to request a pty, which lets
you keep this configuration. But Vagrant by default doesn't do this.
### SSH Tweaks
In order to keep SSH speedy even when your machine or the Vagrant machine
is not connected to the internet, set the `UseDNS` configuration to `no`
in the SSH server configuration.
This avoids a reverse DNS lookup on the connecting SSH client which
can take many seconds.
## Other Software
At this point, you have all the common software you absolutely _need_ for
your base box to work with Vagrant. However, there is some additional software
you can install if you wish.
While we plan on it in the future, Vagrant still doesn't install Chef
or Puppet automatically when using those provisioners. Uesrs can use a shell
provisioner to do this, but if you want Chef/Puppet to just work out of the
box, you'll have to install them in the base box.
Installing this is outside the scope of this page, but should be fairly
straightforward.
In addition to this, feel free to install and configure any other software
you want available by default for this base box.
## Packaging the Box
Packaging the box into a `box` file is provider-specific. Please refer to
the provider-specific documentation for creating a base box. Some
provider-specific guides are linked to towards the top of this page.
## Testing the Box
To test the box, pretend you're a new user of Vagrant and give it a shot:
```
$ vagrant box add my-box /path/to/the/new.box
...
$ vagrant init my-box
...
$ vagrant up
...
```
If you made a box for some other provider, be sure to specify the
`--provider` option to `vagrant up`. If the up succeeded, then your
box worked!

107
website/docs/source/v2/virtualbox/boxes.html.md
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@ -1,21 +1,26 @@
---
page_title: "Box Format - VirtualBox Provider"
page_title: "Creating a Base Box - VirtualBox Provider"
sidebar_current: "virtualbox-boxes"
---
# Boxes
# Creating a Base Box
As with [every provider](/v2/providers/basic_usage.html), the VirtualBox
provider has a custom box format.
provider has a custom box format that affects how base boxes are made.
This page documents the format so that you can create your own base
boxes. Note that currently you must make these boxes by hand. A future
release of Vagrant will provide additional mechanisms for automatically
creating such images.
Prior to reading this, you should read the
[general guide to creating base boxes](/v2/boxes/base.html). Actually,
it would probably be most useful to keep this open in a separate tab
as you may be referencing it frequently while creating a base box. That
page contains important information about common software to install
on the box.
<div class="alert alert-info">
Additionally, it is helpful to understand the
[basics of the box file format](/v2/boxes/format.html).
<div class="alert alert-block alert-warn">
<p>
<strong>Note:</strong> This is a reasonably advanced topic that
<strong>Advanced topic!</strong> This is a reasonably advanced topic that
a beginning user of Vagrant doesn't need to understand. If you're
just getting started with Vagrant, skip this and use an available
box. If you're an experienced user of Vagrant and want to create
@ -23,10 +28,71 @@ creating such images.
</p>
</div>
Prior to reading this page, please understand the
[basics of the box file format](/v2/boxes/format.html).
## Additional Software
## Contents
In addition to the software that should be installed based on the
[general guide to creating base boxes](/v2/boxes/base.html),
VirtualBox base boxes require some additional software.
### VirtualBox Guest Additions
[VirtualBox Guest Additions](http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html)
must be installed so that things such as shared folders can function.
Installing guest additions also usually improves performance since the guest
OS can make some optimizations by knowing it is running within VirtualBox.
Before installing the guest additions, you'll need the linux kernel headers
and the basic developer tools. On Ubuntu, you can easily install these like
so:
```
$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential
```
Next, make sure that the guest additions image is available by using the
GUI and clicking on "Devices" followed by "Install Guest Additions".
Then mount the CD-ROM to some location. On Ubuntu, this usually looks like
this:
```
$ sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
```
Finally, run the shell script that matches your system to install the
guest additions. For example, for Linux on x86, it is the following:
```
$ sudo sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
```
If you didn’t install a Desktop environment when you installed the operating
system, as recommended to reduce size, the install of the VirtualBox additions
should warn you about the lack of OpenGL or Window System Drivers, but you can
safely ignore this.
If the command succeeds, then the guest additions are now installed!
## Packaging the Box
Vagrant includes a simple way to package VirtualBox base boxes. Once you've
installed all the software you want to install, you can run this command:
```
$ vagrant package --base my-virtual-machine
```
Where "my-virtual-machine" is replaced by the name of the virtual machine
in VirtualBox to package as a base box.
It will take a few minutes, but after it is complete, a file "package.box"
should be in your working directory which is the new base box. At this
point, you've successfully created a base box!
## Raw Contents
This section documents the actual raw contents of the box file. This isn't
as useful when creating a base box but can be useful in debugging issues
if necessary.
A VirtualBox base box is an archive of the resulting files of
[exporting](http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html#vboxmanage-export)
@ -45,7 +111,7 @@ $ tree
```
In addition to the files from exporting a VirtualBox VM, there is
a "metadata.json" file used by Vagrant itself.
the "metadata.json" file used by Vagrant itself.
Also, there is a "Vagrantfile." This contains some configuration to
properly set the MAC address of the NAT network device, since VirtualBox
@ -54,18 +120,3 @@ requires this to be correct in order to function properly.
When bringing up a VirtualBox backed machine, Vagrant
[imports](http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html#vboxmanage-import)
the first "ovf" file found in the box contents.
## Installed Software
Base boxes for VirtualBox should have the following software installed, as
a bare minimum:
* SSH server with key-based authentication setup. If you want the box to
work with default Vagrant settings, the SSH user must be set to accept
the [insecure keypair](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/master/keys/vagrant.pub)
that ships with Vagrant.
* [VirtualBox Guest Additions](http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html) so that things such as shared
folders can function. There are many other benefits to installing the tools,
such as improved networking performance.