Jeff Geerling's Vagrant Box Packer Builds

This project contains the Packer build configurations for all of Jeff Geerling's (geerlingguy's) Vagrant Boxes. Each box builds a minimal base box for use with VirtualBox. Available boxes include:

• geerlingguy/ubuntu2004 - ubuntu2004 directory
• geerlingguy/ubuntu1804 - ubuntu1804 directory
• geerlingguy/rockylinux8 - rockylinux8 directory
• geerlingguy/centos7 - centos7 directory
• geerlingguy/debian11 - debian11 directory
• geerlingguy/debian10 - debian10 directory
• geerlingguy/debian9 - debian9 directory

All of these boxes are available as public, free Vagrant boxes and can be used with the command:

vagrant init geerlingguy/[box name here]

You can also fork this repository and customize a build configuration with your own Ansible roles and playbooks to build a fully custom Vagrant box using Packer. For one such example, see the Drupal VM Packer Build.

Requirements

The following software must be installed/present on your local machine before you can use Packer to build any of these Vagrant boxes:

• Packer
• Vagrant
• VirtualBox
• Ansible

Usage

Make sure all the required software (listed above) is installed, then cd into one of the box directories and run:

$ packer build -var 'version=1.2.0' box-config.json

After a few minutes, Packer should tell you the box was generated successfully, and the box was uploaded to Vagrant Cloud.

Note: This configuration includes a post-processor that pushes the built box to Vagrant Cloud (which requires a VAGRANT_CLOUD_TOKEN environment variable to be set); remove the vagrant-cloud post-processor from the Packer template to build the box locally and not push it to Vagrant Cloud. You don't need to specify a version variable either, if not using the vagrant-cloud post-processor.

Building all the boxes

Whenever VirtualBox is updated, it's best to re-build all the base boxes so they have the latest guest additions.

Assuming you have Ansible and Packer installed already, and you have a VAGRANT_CLOUD_TOKEN available in your environment, you can run the playbook to build and push updated versions for all the boxes:

ansible-playbook build-boxes.yml

You can also build and push just one box:

ansible-playbook build-boxes.yml -e "{'boxes':['debian10']}"

Testing built boxes

There's an included Vagrantfile that allows quick testing of the built Vagrant boxes. From the same box directory, run the following command after building the box:

$ vagrant up

Test that the box works correctly, then tear it down with:

$ vagrant destroy -f

License

MIT

Author

These configurations are maintained by Jeff Geerling, author of Ansible for DevOps.