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| page_title | sidebar_current |
|---|---|
| Box Format - VirtualBox Provider | virtualbox-boxes |
Boxes
As with every provider, the VirtualBox provider has a custom box format.
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.
Note: 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 your own custom boxes, this is for you.
Prior to reading this page, please understand the basics of the box file format.
Contents
A VirtualBox base box is an archive of the resulting files of exporting a VirtualBox virtual machine. Here is an example of what is contained in such a box:
$ tree
.
|-- Vagrantfile
|-- box-disk1.vmdk
|-- box.ovf
|-- metadata.json
0 directories, 4 files
In addition to the files from exporting a VirtualBox VM, there is a "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 requires this to be correct in order to function properly.
When bringing up a VirtualBox backed machine, Vagrant imports 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 that ships with Vagrant.
-
VirtualBox Guest Additions so that things such as shared folders can function. There are many other benefits to installing the tools, such as improved networking performance.