FreeBSD Cooker

Scotty, I need a FreeBSD VM in three minutes, or we're all dead

Overview

Create FreeBSD VM images, ready to be imported by a hypervisor. The mechanism can download sources, create UFS or ZFS based installations, setup many common settings (e.g. insert values into rc.conf), bootstrap pkgng and run puppet manifests in the newly created VM and lastly create an Open Virtulization Format image of the VM, ready to be imported. This is alpha work in heavy progress, which means that there are numerous bugs and omissions. Use at your own risk, or better yet, issue pull requests with usefull stuff I can include here. As a last caveat, I am not a makefile guru, so please please please do not use this to teach yourself or someone else how to write one.

Synopsis

 #create a UFS Image
 make all 

 #create a ZFS image, 10Gb virtual disk, 1Gb RAM
 make all ZFS=1 HOSTNAME=foo.bar IP=3.4.5.6/24 SIZE_GB=10 MEMORY=1024

When finished, there will be a target.ova file containing a FreeBSD VM with the specified parameters. In most cases, this ova can be easily imported into a hypervisor.

Installation

Just clone this repo somewhere in a FreeBSD system you have enough disk space, issue make like in the examples above. Also, you will need vmdktool, which is in the ports collection under sysutils. The simplest way to install it would be:

pkg install vmdktool

Also, if you intend to build a ZFS VM, obviously your FreeBSD parent system will have to be able to support ZFS. So I would really recommend a FreeBSD 10.x to get all the features and stability of that release.

Supported Parameters

HOSTNAME: Will be inserted into target's rc.conf.
IP: In CIDR notation, will be inserted into target's rc.conf.
DEFAULTROUTER: A default gateway, usually just an IP. Defaults to undefined, which means that unless defined explicitly, it won't be setup in rc.conf.
IPV6: ifconfig_em0_ipv6 to be inserted into rc.conf, sets up IPv6. Defaults to "inet6 accept_rtadv". To disable, set it to empty, like IPV6="" or something similar.
NAMESERVER: Set nameserver value(s). I have set a default of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, but you really should set your own values. Multiple values can be set with e.g. NAMESERVER=1.1.1.1 NAMESERVER+=2.2.2.2, etc. To disable, set to empty, like NAMESERVER="".
SIZE_GB: Size of the entire virtual disk image that will be created.
SIZE_SWAP: Size of the swap partition inside the virtual disk. Default 1Gb.
BSD_VERSION: Version of FreeBSD that will be installed, default 10.1.
BSD_ARCH: Architecture of FreeBSD that will be installed, default amd64.
MIRROR: Mirror to use when downloading images.
TIMEZONE: Timezone that will be setup, default Europe/Athens.
MEMORY: Size of RAM in Mbytes, default 512.
NCPUS: Number of virtual CPUs allocated, default 1.
PASSWORD_HASH: File containing the password hash of the root password of the image. Default password_hash, see below how to create it.
ZFS: If set to any non-empty value (e.g. ZFS=1), the virtual disk will be paritioned and made bootable using a ZFS-based scheme. The default is to create a traditional UFS scheme.
PKGNG: This is a list of package names that will be installed. Just to get things going, I have set a default value of vim-lite, so that the popular editor will be preinstalled in the image. To add more values, PKGNG+=whatever_you_like. When this list is not empty, the Makefile will bootstrap pkgng before doing anything else. To disable everything, set PKGNG to empty, like PKGNG=""
PUPPET: If non-empty, this variable represents one or more filenames of puppet manifests that will be transfered to the VM and be applied there. To deactivate, set it to empty, like PUPPET="". To add more manifests, try something like PUPPET+=foo.pp, etc. Remember that the puppet apply command runs in the host system by chrooting into the VM target directory. Please do not try to use any Puppet Facts that may not be available, e.g. ip_address. Note, the puppet command may emit warnings about not being able to initialize the ZFS library, this error doesn't appear to cause any serious problem

Password Creation

CAUTION: I highly recommend that you change the default password hash contained in the password_hash file and set your own.

Setting up a password for the image involves the following steps:

Run the (provided) mkpasswd.pl script.
When prompted for a password, enter the desired password.
Copy the SHA-512 hash and paste it inside the password_hash file. (Or redirect the output of mkpassword to the hash file directly) I could make the script not echo the password characters with Term::ReadKey or something similar, but for the time being I'd like to keep the dependencies minimal. Conditional load of Term::ReadKey coming up.

Workflow

Create, format and make a bootable raw image, using either UFS or ZFS.
Create metadevice of above image, mount the root partition.
Deploy standard FreeBSD Distributions in root partition.
Customize installation with hostname, IP address, password, etc.
Unmount partition.
Convert partition to vmdk format.
Create an appropriate OVF manifest and pack it with the vmdk into an OVA archive.

Acknowledgements

I made heavy usage of the ZFS example contained in https://calomel.org/zfs_freebsd_root_install.html, so, many many thanks to these fine folks.

Author

Athanasios Douitsis

aduitsis@cpan.org

License

Although there is hardly anything original inside this simple Makefile, everything is released under the same license as FreeBSD itself (i.e. BSD license). In other words, do as you please with it. However, use it at your own risk, there is no liability involved whatsoever.

aduitsis / freebsd-cooker