It's been busy, so unfortunately it's already been almost two weeks I wrote my introductory story on Vagrant. Today I happen to have an afternoon off, and I noticed that Oracle Linux 7 Update 5 is out. I based my first boxes on 7.4, so nice moment to start with creating a new Base Box.

De essentials on creating a Vagrant base box can be read here. But I'm going to guide you trough the process step by step, so I hope you will be able to repeat this yourself, using this guide-through.

First of, Vagrant recommends Packer to automate the creation of base boxes. But I'm a bit confused, because in this guide it is apparently stated that this is deprecated by march 2018. I haven't tried Packer yet, but I feel that over the years I created a base VM only a few times. I used to create a base VM that I import/clone to create new VMs over and over again. And often, I start of with a VM that already contains a pre-installed database for instance.

Vagrant has a built in command to create a base box out of an existing VM. That is what I use.

Base box requirements

What is a Base Box actually? Well, it's in fact sort of a template that is used by Vagrant to create and configure a new VM and provision that. It should contain the following

• An OS: I use Oracle Linux 7 Update 5 for this story. I also have a base box with Ubuntu. Ubuntu has some peculiarities I want to discuss later on in this series. For this base box I'll install a server-with-gui. But further as basic as possible.
• A vagrant user. The vagrant user is used for provisioning the box. We'll place a public insecure key in it, that will be replaced by Vagrant at first startup. We'll add vagrant to the sudoers list, so the user can sudo without passwords.
• A started ssh daemon:  Vagrant connects via ssh using the vagrant-user to do the provisioning.
• A NAT (Network Address Translation) Adapter as the first one: needed to do kernel/package updates without further network configuration.
• VirtualBox GuestAdditions installed: Vagrant makes use of shared folders to map the project folder to get to the scripts. Also it's convenient to add an extra stage folder mapping. 
• Password of root: not a requirement, but apparently it's a bit of a standard to set the root password to vagrant as ease of sharing. But at least note down the passwords.

That's about it. Maybe I forget something, but since it's digital, I can edit it later... So let's get started.

Download  Oracle Linux

All the serious enterprise stuff of Oracle can be downloaded at edelivery. Search for Oracle Linux:
Then add the 7.5 version to the Cart by clicking it:

Follow the wizard instructions and you'll get to:
I downloaded V975367-01.iso        Oracle Linux Release 7 Update 5 for x86 (64 bit), 4.1 GB.

Create the VM

The ISO is downloading, so let's create a VM in VirtualBox. I assume VirtualBox with VirtualBox Extension Pack is installed. And for later on Vagrant of course.

From the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager, create a new VM, I called it OL75, for Oracle Linux 64 bit:
I followed the wizard and gave it 10240 MB memory and a 128GB dynamically allocated virtual disk:

In the VM Settings, I set the number of processors to 4 and for now I kept everything to the default.

In the meantime my download is ready, so in the VM Settings, under Storage I added the disk by clicking the disk icon next to the IDE controller:

Then navigate to your downloaded iso:
and select it. Now the VM is ready to kick-off:


It will startup automatically after a minute, but let's not wait that long.

I don't need much, but in the Sofware Selection I do want Server with GUI:
But with out selecting other packages. What I might need later on, I'll install at provisioning.

I do not like default local domain networknames. So I changed the network hostname to darlin-vce.darwin-it.local:
Hostname darlin stands for Darwin Linux and vce for Virtual Course Environment.

Then hit Begin Installation:


Soon in the installation the installer asks for the Root password:
And the password is as said: vagrant.
Then I add also a vagrant with the same password:
Having done that, we need to wait for the installer to finish. At the end of the Install, do a reboot:

This leads to 2 questions to be answered. One is about accepting the licensing. I assume that can be answered without guidance. The other is about connecting the network.

You need to switch on the network adapter, but to have it done automatically you need to configure it and check the box Automatically connect to this network when it is available on the General tab. You'll need to have this done, otherwise Vagrant will have difficulties in connecting to the box.
Then finish the configuration:

Install guest additions

To be able to install the guest additions, we need to add some kernel packages. We could have done that by installing additional kernel packages. But I wanted to have a as basic as possible installation. And the following is more fun...

So open a terminal and switch to the super user:

[vagrant@darlin-vce ~]$ su -
Password: 
Last login: Tue Apr 24 09:41:21 EDT 2018 on pts/0
...

Then stop package kit, because it will probably hold a lock pausing yum:

[root@darlin-vce ~]# systemctl stop packagekit

And then install the packages kernel-uek-devel kernel-uek-devel-4.1.12-112.16.4.el7uek.x86_64, that are suggested by the GuestAdditions installer, by the way:

[root@darlin-vce ~]# yum -q -y install kernel-uek-devel kernel-uek-devel-4.1.12-112.16.4.el7uek.x86_64
No Presto metadata available for ol7_UEKR4
warning: /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7Server/ol7_latest/packages/cpp-4.8.5-28.0.1.el7.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID ec551f03: NOKEY
Public key for cpp-4.8.5-28.0.1.el7.x86_64.rpm is not installed
Public key for kernel-uek-devel-4.1.12-124.14.1.el7uek.x86_64.rpm is not installed
Importing GPG key 0xEC551F03:
 Userid     : "Oracle OSS group (Open Source Software group) "
 Fingerprint: 4214 4123 fecf c55b 9086 313d 72f9 7b74 ec55 1f03
 Package    : 7:oraclelinux-release-7.5-1.0.3.el7.x86_64 (@anaconda/7.5)
 From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle

Having done that, insert the GuestAdditions CD:
It brings the following pop-up, click Run:

And provide the Administrator password:

In my case the script ran and during that the display got messed up. But after a reset of the VM (I waited until I got the impression it was done), the VM got up with a Hi-res display, indicating that the install went ok. Also the bi-directional clipboard worked.

Configure vagrant user

Again in a terminal switch to super user and add the following line to the /etc/sudoers file:

vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Exit and as vagrant user create a .ssh folder in the vagrant home folder, cd to it and create the file authorized_keys:

[vagrant@darlin-vce ~]$ mkdir .ssh
[vagrant@darlin-vce ~]$ cd .ssh
[vagrant@darlin-vce .ssh]$ vi authorized_keys

Insert the following content:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEA6NF8iallvQVp22WDkTkyrtvp9eWW6A8YVr+kz4TjGYe7gHzIw+niNltGEFHzD8+v1I2YJ6oXevct1YeS0o9HZyN1Q9qgCgzUFtdOKLv6IedplqoPkcmF0aYet2PkEDo3MlTBckFXPITAMzF8dJSIFo9D8HfdOV0IAdx4O7PtixWKn5y2hMNG0zQPyUecp4pzC6kivAIhyfHilFR61RGL+GPXQ2MWZWFYbAGjyiYJnAmCP3NOTd0jMZEnDkbUvxhMmBYSdETk1rRgm+R4LOzFUGaHqHDLKLX+FIPKcF96hrucXzcWyLbIbEgE98OHlnVYCzRdK8jlqm8tehUc9c9WhQ== vagrant insecure public key

This is the insecure key of vagrant that can be downloaded here.
It will be replaced by Vagrant at first startup.

Package the box

So, now we have a base install that can function as a base box for Vagrant. Thus we can now shut it down to export it to an OVA (just as a backup for VirtualBox) and then create are base box out of it.

After creating your export of the OVA, that I skip describing here, you just open a command window. I assume you have Vagrant installed.

To package the box, you use the package subcommand of vagrant:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.16299.371]
(c) 2017 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

d:\Projects\vagrant>vagrant package --base OL75 --output d:\Projects\vagrant\boxes\OL75v1.0.box
==> OL75: Exporting VM...
==> OL75: Compressing package to: d:/Projects/vagrant/boxes/OL75v1.0.box

d:\Projects\vagrant>

Conclusion

Well, that concludes this part of the series. We have our own base box and it's barely 3GB. Next: create a VM with it. Stay tuned.