Packer templates for Debian

Overview

The repository contains templates for Debian that can create Vagrant boxes using Packer.

Current Boxes

64-bit boxes:

• box-cutter/debian77 - Debian Wheezy 7.7 (64-bit), VMware 266MB/VirtualBox 202MB/Parallels 250MB
• box-cutter/debian76 - Debian Wheezy 7.6 (64-bit), VMware 266MB/VirtualBox 202MB/Parallels 251MB
• box-cutter/debian75 - Debian Wheezy 7.5 (64-bit), VMware 266MB/VirtualBox 202MB/Parallels 250MB
• box-cutter/debian6010 - Debian Squeeze 6.0.10 (64-bit), VMware 230MB/VirtualBox 156MB/Parallels 206MB

32-bit boxes:

• box-cutter/debian77-i386 - Debian Wheezy 7.7 (32-bit), VMware 249MB/VirtualBox 267MB/Parallels 205MB
• box-cutter/debian76-i386 - Debian Wheezy 7.6 (32-bit), VMware 267MB/VirtualBox 202MB/Parallels 249MB
• box-cutter/debian75-i386 - Debian Wheezy 7.5 (32-bit), VMware 271MB/VirtualBox 205MB/Parallels 249MB
• box-cutter/debian6010-i386 - Debian Squeeze 6.0.10 (32-bit), VMware 220MB/VirtualBox 152MB/Parallels 197MB

Building the Vagrant boxes

To build all the boxes, you will need both VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, and Parallels Desktop for Mac installed.

Parallels requires that the Parallels Virtualization SDK for Mac be installed as an additional preqrequisite.

A GNU Make Makefile drives the process via the following targets:

make        # Build all the box types (VirtualBox, VMware & Parallels)
make test   # Run tests against all the boxes
make list   # Print out individual targets
make clean  # Clean up build detritus

Proxy Settings

The templates respect the following network proxy environment variables and forward them on to the virtual machine environment during the box creation process, should you be using a proxy:

• http_proxy
• https_proxy
• ftp_proxy
• rsync_proxy
• no_proxy

Tests

The tests are written in Serverspec and require the vagrant-serverspec plugin to be installed with:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-serverspec

The Makefile has individual targets for each box type with the prefix test-* should you wish to run tests individually for each box.

Similarly there are targets with the prefix ssh-* for registering a newly-built box with vagrant and for logging in using just one command to do exploratory testing. For example, to do exploratory testing on the VirtualBox training environmnet, run the following command:

make ssh-box/virtualbox/debian76-nocm.box

Upon logout make ssh-* will automatically de-register the box as well.

Makefile.local override

You can create a Makefile.local file alongside the Makefile to override some of the default settings. The variables can that can be currently used are:

• CM
• CM_VERSION
• <iso_pat\h>
• UPDATE

Makefile.local is most commonly used to override the default configuration management tool, for example with Chef:

# Makefile.local
CM := chef

Changing the value of the CM variable changes the target suffixes for the output of make list accordingly.

Possible values for the CM variable are:

• nocm - No configuration management tool
• chef - Install Chef
• puppet - Install Puppet
• salt - Install Salt

You can also specify a variable CM_VERSION, if supported by the configuration management tool, to override the default of latest. The value of CM_VERSION should have the form x.y or x.y.z, such as CM_VERSION := 11.12.4

The variable UPDATE can be used to perform OS patch management. The default is to not apply OS updates by default. When UPDATE := true, the latest OS updates will be applied.

Another use for Makefile.local is to override the default locations for the Debian install ISO files.

For Debian, the ISO path variables are:

• DEBIAN77_AMD64
• DEBIAN76_AMD64
• DEBIAN75_AMD64
• DEBIAN6010_AMD64
• DEBIAN77_I386
• DEBIAN76_I386
• DEBIAN75_I386
• DEBIAN6010_I386

This override is commonly used to speed up Packer builds by pointing at pre-downloaded ISOs instead of using the default download Internet URLs: DEBIAN77_AMD64 := file:///Volumes/Debian/debian-7.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso

Acknowledgments

CloudBees is providing a hosted Jenkins master through their CloudBees FOSS program. Their On-Premise Executor feature is used to connect physical machines as build slaves running VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation, VMware ESXi/vSphere and Hyper-V.