Vagrant -> Packer -> Virtual Box image
Created at 2016-02-25 Updated at 2024-11-07 - 2 min. read Category experience / installation / work
A day before the Valentine Your Python event in the morning. My mentor (Anuvrat Parashar) asked me that how we are handling the system in the workshop. I told him that we have opted for devpi(PyPI server and packaging/testing/release tool). He suggested to go for vagrant image. Those who don’t know, Vagrant is computer software that creates and configures virtual development environments. It can be seen as a higher-level wrapper around virtualization software such as VirtualBox, VMware, KVM and Linux Containers (LXC), and around configuration management software such as Ansible, Chef, Salt, and Puppet.
$ vagrant init hashicorp/precise64
$ vagrant upAfter running the above two commands, you will have a fully running virtual machine in VirtualBox running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit. You can SSH into this machine with
vagrant ssh
and then install all the essential library and packages that are required. As soon as you done with it. Make package of it withvagrant package
Now take the image to the system you want to install on. Go to terminal and type
`vagrant box add ADDRESS –name NAME`
where ADDRESS in the file path of the file and NAME is the name of the box.
The problem with this image was that it was CLI. Workshop was aimed for beginner, so have to find a alternative so that it would be easy for the beginner to understand, who are not command line friendly. Then my another mentor (Akshay Arora) suggested me Packer. He also gave the link which explained how packer is used. The problem i faced there was lack of time. Only 4hrs were left for the event. So, I finally decided to go for virtual box.
Step it required were :
- Install your favorite distribution
- Install all the dependency and packages
- Then go to File -> Export Application
Your .vbox file is all set to be installed in any other system.