Docker-friendly Vagrant base boxes

This repository contains definitions for various Docker-friendly Vagrant base boxes. These boxes are based on Ubuntu 12.04, and differ from the ones provided in by vagrantup.com in the following ways:

We provide 2 virtual CPUs by default, so that the boxes can make better use of multicore hosts.
We provide more RAM by default: 1 GB.
We provide a bigger virtual hard disk: around 40 GB.
We use LVM so that partitioning is easier.
Our default kernel version is 3.8 (instead of 3.2), so that you can use Docker out-of-the-box.
The memory cgroup and swap accounting are turned on, for some Docker features.
Chef is installed via the Ubuntu packages that they provide, instead of via RubyGems. This way the box doesn't have to come with Ruby by default, making the environment cleaner.
Our VMWare Fusion boxes integrate VMWare Tools into DKMS. That way, any kernel upgrades won't break VMWare Tools (and thus Shared Folders): the Tools will be automatically rebuilt on every kernel upgrade.

These base boxes are automatically built from Veewee definitions. These definitions makes building boxes quick and unambigious. The entire building process is described in the definitions; no manual intervention is required.

We provide prebuilt boxes at https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/vagrant/boxes/, but you can build them yourself if you so wish.

The boxes are also available on Vagrant Cloud.

Using these boxes in Vagrant

If you have Vagrant 1.5, you can use our boxes through Vagrant Cloud:

vagrant init phusion/ubuntu-12.04-amd64

On older Vagrant versions, you can modify your Vagrantfile to use our boxes. Here is an example Vagrantfile which works with both VirtualBox and VMWare Fusion. It also automatically installs the latest version of Docker.

# Vagrantfile API/syntax version. Don't touch unless you know what you're doing!
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"

Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "phusion-open-ubuntu-12.04-amd64"
  config.vm.box_url = "https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/vagrant/boxes/ubuntu-12.04.3-amd64-vbox.box"

  config.vm.provider :vmware_fusion do |f, override|
    override.vm.box_url = "https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/vagrant/boxes/ubuntu-12.04.3-amd64-vmwarefusion.box"
  end

  if Dir.glob("#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/.vagrant/machines/default/*/id").empty?
    # Install Docker
    pkg_cmd = "wget -q -O - https://get.docker.io/gpg | apt-key add -;" \
      "echo deb http://get.docker.io/ubuntu docker main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list;" \
      "apt-get update -qq; apt-get install -q -y --force-yes lxc-docker; "
    # Add vagrant user to the docker group
    pkg_cmd << "usermod -a -G docker vagrant; "
    config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => pkg_cmd
  end
end

You can login with username vagrant and password vagrant. This user has sudo privileges. The root user also has password vagrant.

The prebuilt boxes are available at https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/vagrant/boxes/

Next steps

These Vagrant boxes are provided to you by Phusion. You may want to check out these too:

Discussion forum - For discussions about this project.
Phusion Passenger - A fast, robust application server for Ruby, Python, Node.js, and Meteor.
baseimage-docker - A minimal Ubuntu Docker base image modified for Docker-friendliness.
The Phusion blog - For interesting articles and updates.
Follow us on Twitter

Building the boxes yourself

Setup your environment

Install Vagrant.
Install VirtualBox or VMWare Fusion.
Install 7-zip (OS X: brew install p7zip).
bundle install --path vendor

The --path is important! Not installing with --path will break Vagrant.

Building a box and importing it into Vagrant

VirtualBox:

bundle exec rake virtualbox:all

VMWare Fusion:

bundle exec rake vmware_fusion:all

initcron / open-vagrant-boxes