ThorneLabs

Create a CentOS 6 Vagrant Base Box from Scratch Using VirtualBox

• Updated March 17, 2019

Vagrant makes it easy to spin-up local virtual machines using VirtualBox or VMware Fusion. There are many Vagrant Boxes available to use immediately after downloading and installing Vagrant. However, I prefer to know exactly how my virtual machine image is created. This post will walk you through creating a CentOS 6.5 Vagrant Base Box from scratch using VirtualBox.

If you prefer VMware Fusion to VirtualBox, read how to create a CentOS 6.5 Vagrant Base Box from scratch using VMware Fusion.

Install VirtualBox

First, download and install the latest version of VirtualBox.

Install Vagrant

Second, download and install the latest version of Vagrant.

Prepare the CentOS 6.5 Virtual Machine

The following steps were written for VirtualBox 4.3.8 and may differ for other versions.

  1. Download CentOS 6.5 x86_64.
  2. Open VirtualBox and click New.
  3. Give the virtual machine a Name: centos-6.5-x86_64.
  4. From the Type dropdown menu choose Linux.
  5. From the Version dropdown menu choose Red Hat (64 bit).
  6. Under Memory size, leave RAM at 512 MB (Vagrant can change this on-the-fly later).
  7. Under Hard drive, select Create a virtual hard drive now, and click Create.
  8. Under File location, leave the default name.
  9. Under File size, change the size to 40.00 GB.
  10. Under Hard drive file type, select VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image).
  11. Under Storage on physical hard drive, select Dynamically allocated, and click Create.
  12. The virtual machine definition has now been created. Click the virtual machine name and click Settings.
  13. Go to the Storage tab, click Empty just under Controller: IDE, then on the right hand side of the window click the CD icon, and select Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file….
  14. Navigate to where the CentOS-6.5-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso was downloaded, select it, and click Open.
  15. Go to the Audio tab and uncheck Enable Audio.
  16. Go to the Ports tab, then go to the USB subtab, and uncheck Enable USB Controller.
  17. Click Ok to close the Settings menu.
  18. Finally, start up the virtual machine to begin installation.

Install CentOS 6.5

You can install the operating system manually or using a Kickstart Profile. I will be providing steps to install the operating system manually and using a Kickstart Profile.

Take note, no where in the following steps do I install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. So far, I have not found a need for them. Feel free to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions if you need them.

Follow the steps in one of the following two sections, Manual Installation or Kickstart Profile Installation.

Manual Installation

Install the operating system however you like. Most of the default options can be used.

Once the operating system has finished installing and booted, perform the following post-install steps to make it work with Vagrant.

Open the virtual machine console and login as the root user (password is vagrant).

By default, eth0 is not brought up, so bring it up:

ifup eth0

Install additional repository packages:

yum install -y openssh-clients man git vim wget curl ntp

Enable the ntpd service to start on boot:

chkconfig ntpd on

Set the time:

service ntpd stop
ntpdate time.nist.gov
service ntpd start

Enable the ssh service to start on boot:

chkconfig sshd on

Disable the iptables and ip6tables services from starting on boot:

chkconfig iptables off
chkconfig ip6tables off

Set SELinux to permissive:

sed -i -e 's/^SELINUX=.*/SELINUX=permissive/' /etc/selinux/config

Add vagrant user:

useradd vagrant

Create vagrant user’s .ssh folder:

mkdir -m 0700 -p /home/vagrant/.ssh

If you want to use your own SSH public/private key then create an SSH public/private key on your workstation (you may already have), and copy the public key to /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys on the virtual machine.

Otherwise, if you want to use the SSH public/private key provided by Vagrant, run the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellh/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub >> /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys

Change permissions on authorized_keys files to be more restrictive:

chmod 600 /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys

Make sure vagrant user and group owns the .ssh folder and its contents:

chown -R vagrant:vagrant /home/vagrant/.ssh

Comment out requiretty in /etc/sudoers. This change is important because it allows ssh to send remote commands using sudo. Without this change vagrant will be unable to apply changes (such as configuring additional NICs) at startup:

sed -i 's/^\(Defaults.*requiretty\)/#\1/' /etc/sudoers

Allow user vagrant to use sudo without entering a password:

echo "vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" >> /etc/sudoers

Open /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and make it look exactly like the following:

DEVICE=eth0
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no
BOOTPROTO=dhcp

Remove the udev persistent net rules file:

rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Clean up yum:

yum clean all

Clean up the tmp directory:

rm -rf /tmp/*

Clean up the last logged in users logs:

rm -f /var/log/wtmp /var/log/btmp

Clean up history:

history -c

Shutdown the virtual machine:

shutdown -h now

Once the virtual machine is shutdown, open Settings for the virtual machine.

Go to the Storage tab, select Controller: IDE, and click the green square with red minus icon in the lower right hand corner of the Storage Tree section of the Storage tab.

Click OK to close the Settings menu.

Next, jump to the Create the Vagrant Box section.

Kickstart Profile Installation

I used this Kickstart Profile to automate the build.

When the CentOS boot menu appears, highlight Install or upgrade an existing system, hit the Tab key to bring up the anaconda boot line, and append the following:

noverifyssl ks=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jameswthorne/kickstart-profiles/master/centos-6-x86_64-vagrant-box.txt

Hit the Enter key and wait for the installation to finish.

At the end of the install, shutdown the virtual machine, and open Settings again for the virtual machine.

Go to the Storage tab, select Controller: IDE, and click the green square with red minus icon in the lower right hand corner of the Storage Tree section of the Storage tab.

Click OK to close the Settings menu.

Next, jump to the Create the Vagrant Box section.

Create the Vagrant Box

Make sure the value of the base command line switch matches the name of the virtual machine in VirtualBox:

vagrant package --output centos-6.5-x86_64.box --base centos-6.5-x86_64

Adding the Vagrant Box

Add the newly created Vagrant Box to vagrant (this will copy the Vagrant Box to another location):

vagrant box add centos-6.5-x86_64 centos-6.5-x86_64.box

In addition, the VirtualBox virtual machine can be deleted.

Create a Vagrant Project and Configure Vagrantfile

You can have as many vagrant projects as you want. Each will contain different Vagrantfiles and different virtual machines. So, create a directory somewhere to house your Vagrantfile and associative virtual machines:

mkdir -p ~/Development/vagrant-test

cd ~/Development/vagrant-test

Create the Vagrantfile:

vagrant init centos-6.5-x86_64

You now have a Vagrantfile that points to the centos-6.5-x86_64 Base Box you just created.

If you are using your own SSH private/public key, and not the SSH private/public key provided by Vagrant, you need to tell Vagrantfile where to find your SSH private key, so add the following to your Vagrantfile:

config.ssh.private_key_path = "~/.ssh/id_rsa"

Lastly, if you do not want Shared Folders setup between your workstation and virtual machine, disable it by adding the following to your Vagrantfile:

config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", id: "vagrant-root", disabled: true

Start Using Vagrant

Spin up your first virtual machine:

vagrant up

If everything spins up properly you can see the status of your virtual machine using vagrant status, you can SSH into your virtual machine using vagrant ssh, or you can destroy your virtual machine using vagrant destroy.

References