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