Packaging an existing virtualbox vm for use with vagrant

It's not super-obvious from the vagrant documentation, but you can use the "vagrant package" command to package up an existing VirtualBox VM. This will shut down the VM, create the metadata.json, and zip up the disk. To use it you need to know the name that VirtualBox has for your VM, list them with:

$ VBoxManage list vms
"ubuntu-lucid64" {aaaabbbb-cccc-dddd-1234}
"CentOS build" {aaaabbbb-cccc-dddd-1234}

Package up the vagrant VM with:

$ vagrant package --base "CentOS build" --output centos_5.11_64
$ vagrant box add centos_5.11_64 --name centos_5.11_64

Workaround for broken vagrant up ssh "unsupported encryption type"

Vagrant is still not playing nicely with SSH certificates loaded into ssh-agent. In my case this seemed to only be a problem during provisioning (i.e. "vagrant up"), using "vagrant ssh" after the box was up worked fine. The error is:

The private key you're attempting to use with this Vagrant box uses
an unsupported encryption type. The SSH library Vagrant uses does not support
this key type. Please use `ssh-rsa` or `ssh-dss` instead. Note that
sometimes keys in your ssh-agent can interfere with this as well,
so verify the keys are valid there in addition to standard
file paths.

You can try clearing out some keys from ssh agent with:

$ ssh-add -D
All identities removed.

Except ssh is probably lying if you're running goobuntu, the keys are still there. There's all sorts of confusion about this behaviour, which seems to be the fault of gnome-keyring, which allegedly only allows you to delete manually added keys. If your SSH certs are automatically loaded it seems like you're out of luck.

By far the easiest workaround is to simply temporarily disable the ssh agent:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK="" vagrant up

Python: distinguish strings from other iterable objects

I often want to do a sanity check on a parameter that is supposed to be an iterable. The problem is that strings are also iterable, but iterating over the characters in a string is basically never what I want. This will raise if I'm passed a string or something that isn't iterable.

import collections

def CheckForIterable(someparam):
  if (isinstance(someparam, basestring) or not isinstance(someparam, collections.Iterable)):
    raise ValueError("Expected an iterable, got %s" % str(someparam))

In [50]: CheckForIterable("a")
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
 in ()
----> 1 CheckForIterable("a")

 in CheckForIterable(someparam)
      1 def CheckForIterable(someparam):
      2   if (isinstance(someparam, basestring) or not isinstance(someparam, collections.Iterable)):
----> 3     raise ValueError("Expected an iterable, got %s" % str(someparam))

ValueError: Expected an iterable, got a

In [51]: CheckForIterable(["a"])

In [52]: CheckForIterable((1,2))

In [53]: CheckForIterable((1))
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
 in ()
----> 1 CheckForIterable((1))

 in CheckForIterable(someparam)
      1 def CheckForIterable(someparam):
      2   if (isinstance(someparam, basestring) or not isinstance(someparam, collections.Iterable)):
----> 3     raise ValueError("Expected an iterable, got %s" % str(someparam))

ValueError: Expected an iterable, got 1

Building an OS X vagrant VMware Fusion VM

Install VMWare Fusion, vagrant, pay money to buy the vagrant vmware plugin.  Follow the instructions in the email to install the plugin and download and install the license, something like:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vmware-fusion
vagrant plugin license vagrant-vmware-fusion ~/license.lic

This blog has great instructions to build the OS X base box. Boiling it down:

• Install the base OS in VMWare Fusion with user/pass of vagrant/vagrant. This is fairly easy with modern VMware Fusion and an installer dmg.
• Install VMWare tools from the VMWare menu.
• Install all updates:

  sudo softwareupdate --install --all

• If you want to be able to install and use Homebrew, install the relevant Command Line Tools for XCode from apple (developer account required).
• If you want to be able to make packages, copy PackageMaker.app to /Applications from the Auxiliary Tools for XCode Late - July 2012 from apple (developer account required).
• Enable remote logon (i.e. SSH) via System Preferences > Sharing
• Setup passwordless sudo, vagrant ssh, and ssh config as vagrant recommends.
• If you created any snapshots during this process, delete them
• Set the free disk space to zero (not sure this is actually necessary, but the original post claims better compression):

  $ diskutil secureErase freespace 0 Macintosh\ HD
  $ sudo halt
  

• Defrag and compress as vagrant recommends:

  cd ~/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/OS X 10.8.vmwarevm
  /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vdiskmanager -d Virtual\ Disk.vmdk
  /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vdiskmanager -k Virtual\ Disk.vmdk
  

• Copy the relevant files to a new directory:

  mkdir ~/vagrantbox
  cd ~/vagrantbox/
  cp Virtual\ Disk.vmdk OS\ X\ 10.8.nvram OS\ X\ 10.8.vm* .
  

• Create a basic metadata.json

  echo '{"provider":"vmware_fusion"}' > metadata.json
  

• Zip it up:

  tar -cvzf OS_X_10.8.5.box ./*
  

• Add it to vagrant:

  vagrant box add OS_X_10.8.5 OS_X_10.8.5.box
  

• Add a config to your Vagrantfile:

    config.vm.define "OS_X_10.8.5" do |box|
      box.vm.box = "OS_X_10.8.5"
      # Random keypair generation and insertion doesn't seem to work on OS X
      box.ssh.insert_key = false
      box.vm.provider "vmware_fusion" do |v|
        v.vmx["memsize"] = "4096"
        v.vmx["numvcpus"] = "2"
      end
    end
  

• Try it out:

  vagrant up OS_X_10.8.5

If you're seeing this error message you didn't install the vmware fusion vagrant plugin:

The provider 'vmware_fusion' could not be found, but was requested to
back the machine 'OS_X_10.8.5'. Please use a provider that exists.