Packer templates for CentOS

Overview

This repository contains Packer templates for creating CentOS Vagrant boxes.

Current Boxes

We no longer provide pre-built binaries for these templates.

Building the Vagrant boxes with Packer

To build all the boxes, you will need VirtualBox, VMware Fusion/VMware Workstation and Parallels installed.

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

We make use of JSON files containing user variables to build specific versions of CentOS. You tell

packer

-var-file=

centos.json

For example, to build CentOS 7, use the following:

$ packer build -var-file=centos7.json centos.json

If you want to make boxes for a specific desktop virtualization platform, use the

-only

$ packer build -only=virtualbox-iso -var-file=centos7.json centos.json

The boxcutter templates currently support the following desktop virtualization strings:

• parallels-iso

  - Parallels desktop virtualization (Requires the Pro Edition - Desktop edition won't work)

• virtualbox-iso

  - VirtualBox desktop virtualization

• vmware-iso

  - VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation desktop virtualization

Building the Vagrant boxes with the box script

We've also provided a wrapper script

bin/box

$ bin/box build centos7

Or if you just want to build CentOS 7 for VirtualBox:

$ bin/box build centos7 virtualbox

Building the Vagrant boxes with the Makefile

A GNU Make

Makefile

• build

  - Create basebox

  *.box

  files

• assure

  - Verify that the basebox

  *.box

  files produced function correctly

• deliver

  - Upload

  *.box

  files to Artifactory, Atlas or an S3 bucket

The pipeline is driven via the following targets, making it easy for you to include them in your favourite CI tool:

make build   # Build all available box types
make assure  # Run tests against all the boxes
make deliver # Upload box artifacts to a repository
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

vagrant plugin install vagrant-serverspec

The

Makefile

test-*

make test-virtualbox/centos66-nocm.box

Similarly there are targets with the prefix

ssh-*

make ssh-virtualbox/centos66-nocm.box

Upon logout

make ssh-*

Contributing

1. Fork and clone the repo.
2. Create a new branch, please don't work in your

   master

   branch directly.
3. Add new Serverspec or Bats tests in the

   test/

   subtree for the change you want to make. Run

   make test

   on a relevant template to see the tests fail (like

   make test-virtualbox/centos65

   ).
4. Fix stuff. Use

   make ssh

   to interactively test your box (like

   make ssh-virtualbox/centos65

   ).
5. Run

   make test

   on a relevant template (like

   make test-virtualbox/centos65

   ) to see if the tests pass. Repeat steps 3-5 until done.
6. Update

   README.md

   and

   AUTHORS

   to reflect any changes.
7. If you have a large change in mind, it is still preferred that you split them into small commits. Good commit messages are important. The git documentation project has some nice guidelines on writing descriptive commit messages.
8. Push to your fork and submit a pull request.
9. Once submitted, a full

   make test

   run will be performed against your change in the build farm. You will be notified if the test suite fails.

Would you like to help out more?

Contact [email protected]

Acknowledgments

Parallels provided a Business Edition license of their software to run on the basebox build farm.

SmartyStreets provided basebox hosting for the boxcutter project since 2015 - thank you for your support!