This repository contains the essential components required to start building and packaging you own provisioned Vagrant boxes.

This repo will help you to shorten the path to provision you Vagrant box (i.e. install the components you need, such as a Ruby stack, some databases).

Using one of the Available configurations, you can build a provisioned Vagrant box with some commands, without even having to write a Chef recipe for the provisioning!

Once your box is up, package it so that you can reuse it in others project without having to provision the box each time you need it (Ruby compilation can take some time).

Getting started

Here is a simple walkthrough on how to use this repository to provision a Vagrant box with the lucid32-ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg8.4-mongodb configuration. You can select a configuration amongst the ones describe below in "Available configurations".

Prerequisites

• Ruby
• Vagrant

Clone and prepare the repository

First, we clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/rchampourlier/vagrant-stacks.git
cd vagrant-stacks

We then need to fetch the cookbooks we will use with Chef-Solo. (Chef-Solo is used to provision the box automatically.)

Having some problems with Librarian with the latest set of cookbooks I'm using, I've moved to a custom script that allows me to fetch the cookbooks I need by specifying them inside a YAML file. Plus the cookbooks are now committed with the repository, so you should not need to fetch them.

However, if you want to change them or fetch some other cookbooks, you can edit the ingredients.yml file and perform the fetch by running ruby ingredients.rb.

Librarian use, for reference: To manage the cookbooks easily, we use Librarian.

$ gem install librarian
$ librarian-chef install

The first line installs Librarian, while the second lets it fetch the required cookbooks (which are defined within Cheffile, and get installed under cookbooks).

Select the appropriate Vagrantfile

A Vagrantfile is required to configure how Vagrant will run. There are predefined files available under vagrantfiles depending on which configuration you want to provision. Since we assume in this walkthrough you want to provision a lucid32-ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg8.4-mongodb box, let's run this:

$ cp vagrantfiles/rlucid32-ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg8.4-mongodb_Vagrantfile ./Vagrantfile

This copies the appropriate Vagrantfile in the current directory, so that Vagrant can use it.

Launch the process

The last step is to have Vagrant up the box. Thanks to the Vagrantfile we selected, it will select and download the appropriate base box, and run the provisioning necessary operations. We'll end up with a running Vagrant box provisoned according to the selected configuration.

$ vagrant up

Package the box

You will surely want to package this box so you can reuse the provisoned environment in your own projects.

Packaging is described in this Vagrant's documentation.

If you have prepared the box with vagrant up, you should now be able to export it simply and quickly with this command:

vagrant package

If everything goes well, this should create a package.box with your newly provisioned Vagrant box! Congratulations!

Use the box in your projects

Now you can share it with your team, place it on any file server, and reuse it in new projects by simpling using this in your project's Vagrantfile:

# The box and its URL
config.vm.box = "ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg-mongodb"
config.vm.box_url = "http://your-file-server.com/ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg-mongodb.box"

Should you just want to use your box from your local filesystem, comment the config.vm.box_url... line out, and run:

vagrant box add ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg-mongodb path/to/your/ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg-mongodb.box

Managing vagrant boxes

To ensure you have everything in your project repository to rebuild and maintain the required vagrant boxes (you may have several: development, benchmarking, staging), a proper organization may help. Here is an article I wrote on the subject, don't hesitate to leave your feedback or share your ideas!

Enjoy!

Available configurations

• lucid32 This configuration can be used to build a customized lucid32 from the Vagrant's default one. It may be useful for example if you want to update VirtualBox Guest Additions and package your own updated lucid32 to build more complex setup without having to update the additions each time.
• lucid32-ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg8.4-mongodb
  • Base box: lucid32 (Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS) base box from vagrantbox.es
  • Default locale (en_US) changed to (en_US.UTF8). See used postgresql_server_utf8 cookbook for more details.
  • Provisioned software:
    • base: build-essential and git (client)
    • ruby: a ruby 1.9.2-p290 stack managed with rbenv, Bundler installed globally (default gems management - within rbenv's directory)
    • postgresql: a PostgreSQL 8.4 package install from default repo (postgres' user password is... password). Compatible with UTF8 thanks.
    • mongodb: a MongoDB package install from mongo's repo
• lucid32-ruby-1.9.3-p194-pg8.4-mongodb
  • Same as lucid32-ruby-1.9.2-p290-pg8.4-mongodb with Ruby 1.9.3-p194
• lucid32-ruby-1.9.3-p194-pg9.1-mongodb
  • Same as lucid32-ruby-1.9.3-p194-pg8.4-mongodb, with PostgresSQL 9.1 instead of 8.4. Installed using a fork of corouting chef-postgresql cookbook, using this PPA

Fork!

You're free to fork and submit pull requests if you want to add new configurations, or build some tools around this!

TODO

• Script the whole thing so that once a configuration is chosen, installing Librarian and the cookbooks, selecting the Vagrantfile, upping the machine and packaging is done through a single command.
• Add a recipe and a configuration to build a barebones lucid32 box with update VirtualBox Guest Additions.

Copyright and License

Copyright (c) 2012, Romain Champourlier

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.