epfl-mobots / stm32f4-dev

EPuck 2 dev virtual machine

Installing this VM requires :

1. A working internet connection.
2. vagrant
3. virtualbox
4. vagrant-vbguest. This can be installed using vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest.

Usage

Simply run vagrant up from this folder and vagrant will download the base image and configure it. This can take some time (up to an hour if internet connection is slow), so you might want to prepare some cofee.

When you are done with the VM, simply run vm halt to shutdown it. Next time you want to use it, vagrant up will be much faster because it will just boot the already-configured VM.

Custom shared dirs

In order to create custom shared directories, create a file named directories.yml containing the sharing specifications:

# directories.yml
directories:
  - host: '~/Code' # folder on your pc
    guest: '/mnt/code/' # folder on the VM
  - host: '~/Schematics'
    guest: '/mnt/elec/'

Note: This is not reflected in Packer's output virtual machine, as Packer does not touch the machine at runtime. To add custom shared folder in the Packer-built VM, use the VirtualBox GUI.

Initial config

Sadly there is still a few things to do by hand :

1. Enable non free drivers for Virtualbox by going to Settings Manager -> Additional Drivers and choosing "Continue using a manually installed driver". You should now have a much better resolution available when going to Settings Manager -> Display.
2. Configure your keyboard layout in Settings Manager -> Input Manager -> Input Method -> Add and add a swiss keyboard.

Updating the VM

If you want to update the configuration of the VM simply do :

vagrant halt # Ensures machine is stopped
git pull # Update config files
vagrant up --provision # Boot and tell Vagrant to apply the new config

De-installing

Running vagrant destroy will remove every file Vagrant used for this box.

Building for distribution

This repository also includes a Packer build script. Using the Packer build creates the VM from an Ubuntu install CD and setups it for development. The machine is then exported as a VirtualBox file (compressed as .zip), which can easily be distributed without requiring additional setup. The build can be run by running packer build packer.json.

The resulting image should be treated as "frozen"; do not modify it by hand (e.g., by adding packages): instead change the configuration, then rebuild it from scratch. This also implies that users of the image must re-download it completely.