TopGit tracks chef/bento on GitHub. The project has 4.4k stars. Packer templates for building minimal Vagrant baseboxes for multiple platforms
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Bento is a project that encapsulates Packer templates for building Vagrant base boxes. A subset of templates are built and published to the bento org on Vagrant Cloud. These published boxes serve as the default boxes for kitchen-vagrant.
*NOTE:
Vagrant 2.4.0+ is required for new cpu architecture support
Virutalbox 7.1.6+ required for arm64 support
When running packer build command the output directory is relative to the working directory the command is currently running in. Suggest running packer build commands from bento root directory for build working files to be placed in bento/builds/build_complete/(build_name) directory by default. If the output_directory variable isn't overwritten a directory called builds/build_complete/(build_name) will be created in the current working directory that you are running the command from
Using Public Boxes
Adding a bento box to Vagrant
vagrant box add bento/ubuntu-18.04
Using a bento box in a Vagrantfile
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
config.vm.box = "bento/ubuntu-18.04"
end
Installing Bento
install ruby environment
clone repo
cd <path/to>/bento
gem build bento.gemspec
gem install bento-*.gem
Building Boxes
Requirements
Packer >= 1.7.0
Vagrant >= 2.4.0
At least one of the following virtualization providers:
VirtualBox
VMware Fusion
VMware Workstation
Parallels Desktop Pro
UTM
qemu *1
Hyper-V *1
*1 NOTE: support for these providers is considered experimental and corresponding Vagrant Cloud images may or may not exist.
Using bento executable
build
To build a Debian vagrant box using the bento tool with the template available in the os_pkrvars dir, we can use the following command:
--cpus - Specify the number of CPUs needed in the new build
--mem - Specify the memory
--config - Use a configuration file other than default builds.yml
--on-error - Choose what to do if a build fails
--vars - Comma separated list of variable names equal values (ex: boot_wait="2s",ssh_timeout="5s")
--var_files - Comma separated list of pkrvar.hcl files to include in the builds (ex: /path/to/var_file.pkrvars.hcl,/path/to/next/var_file2.pkrvars.hcl)
--metadata-only - Only generate the metadata json file
--mirror - The template will have a default mirror link, if you wish to use an alternative one, you can utilise this configuration
--dry-run - This will not create any build, but will create a metadata file for reference
--only - Only build some Packer builds (Default: parallels-iso.vm,virtualbox-iso.vm,vmware-iso.vm
--except - Build all Packer builds except these (ex: parallels-iso.vm,virtualbox-iso.vm,vmware-iso.vm)
--debug - Print the debug logs
--gui - Packer will be building VirtualBox virtual machines by launching a GUI that shows the console of the machine being built. This option is false by default
--single - This can be used to disable the parallel builds
list
Used to list all builds available for the workstations cpu architecture. This list is also filtered by the build.yml file do_not_build: section. All entries are matched via regex to filter out build templates from the list.
This only shows what would be built with bento build and no template is specified. If any template is specified even if it's in the build.yml to be filtered it'll override the filter.
bento list
test
If you have successfully built a vagrant box using the bento tool, you should have the vagrant box and a metadata file in the builds/build_complete folder. You can use these files to test the build with a test-kitchen configuration. Run the following command to test the build.
bento test
Test results are written to builds/testing_passed (on success) or builds/testing_failed (on failure). Each provider's result is merged into the metadata file rather than replacing it, so re-running a failed provider after a fix will update only that provider's entry while preserving the results of all other previously tested providers.
upload
To upload boxes in the builds/testing_passed directory to your vagrant cloud account update the build.yml file to specify your account name and which OSs are going to be public.
Make sure you have configured the vagrant cli and logged into your account for the upload command to work.
bento upload
When running bento upload it'll read each <box_name>._metadata.json file and use the data provided to generate the vagrant cloud publish command with the descriptions, version, provider, and checksums all coming from the <box_name>._metadata.json file.
Using packer
To build a Ubuntu 22.04 box for only the VirtualBox provider
If the build is successful, your box files will be in the builds/build_complete directory at the root of the repository.
KVM/qemu support for Windows
You must download the iso image with the Windows drivers for paravirtualized KVM/qemu hardware and place it in the builds/iso/ directory.
You can do this from the command line: mkdir -p builds/iso/; wget -nv -nc https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/stable-virtio/virtio-win.iso -O builds/iso/virtio-win.iso
You can use the following sample command to build a KVM/qemu Windows box:
Templates for operating systems only available via license or subscription are also available in the repository, these include but are not limited to: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise. As the ISOs are not publicly available the URL values will need to be overridden as appropriate. We rely on the efforts of those with access to licensed versions of the operating systems to keep these up-to-date.
Networking/Firewalls
Most of the providers expect unrestricted access to networking in order to build as expected. We can't enumerate all possible firewall configurations but include some snippets below that might be useful to users.
Hyper-V Gen 2 VMs do not support floppy drives. If you previously provided resources using a floppy drive, you must add those files to your Gen 2 iso images, in particular:
autounattend.xml: The Gen 2 autounattend.xml file supports EFI partitions. Update the autounattend.xml with the correct Windows version for your systems and ensure that the partitions are correct for your situation. You also need to manage the driver disk that holds the hyper-v guest services drivers and adjust the autounattend.xml file as appropriate.
Bugs and Issues
Please use GitHub issues to report bugs, features, or other problems.
Related projects
A huge thank you to these related projects from which we've taken inspiration and often used as a source for workarounds in complex world of base box building.
These basebox templates were converted from veewee definitions originally based on work done by Tim Dysinger to make "Don't Repeat Yourself" (DRY) modular baseboxes. Thanks Tim!
Copyright 2011-2012, Tim Dysinger (<[email protected]>)
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
No homepage URL was recorded for chef/bento in TopGit's last sync. The README tab above frequently contains screenshots and demo links, or check the repository description on GitHub.
How active is development on chef/bento?
The most recent commit recorded on chef/bento was 12 days ago, based on the GitHub push timestamp. The repository has 1.1k forks — one of the better signals of community interest.
Is chef/bento open source?
Yes — chef/bento ships under the Apache-2.0 license, which makes its source code freely readable (and, depending on license terms, forkable and reusable). Source: github.com/chef/bento.
What license does chef/bento use?
chef/bento is released under the Apache-2.0 license. Always verify the LICENSE file directly on GitHub for the authoritative terms — license strings can be edited out of sync with a project's actual stance.
This TopGit page is a snapshot — the READ ME tab shows the project's own README content (links stripped, images preserved). The GitHub repository at github.com/chef/bento is the definitive source.
Read full README in the tab above.
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