Packer, Virtualbox, Vagrant, local file system .box HOWTO version Vagrant box?

[Bob Tanner]

Creating a Virtualbox (5.0.24 r108355) .box with Packer (0.10.0) for use in Vagrant (1.8.4).

The .box is stored on my local file system.

I cannot figure out how to version the .box when it's added to Vagrant. Below real-time/xenial64 is the box.

$ vagrant box list

opensuse/openSUSE-42.1-x86_64 (virtualbox, 1.0.0)

real-time/xenial64            (virtualbox, 0)

ubuntu/precise64              (virtualbox, 20160627.0.0)

ubuntu/trusty64               (virtualbox, 20160627.0.0)

ubuntu/trusty64               (virtualbox, 20160708.1.0)

Now the .box file itself is versioned

packer.git/build/virtualbox/base-xenial64-20160712.0.0.box

And the ubuntu boxes I'm getting from atlas (online) and they are versioned.

I'm guessing "post-processors" of "type": "vagrant" cannot be versioned? At least when I try the "version": I cannot validate.

$ packer validate ubuntu/xenial/base-xenial64.json

Template validation failed. Errors are shown below.

Errors validating build 'virtualbox'. 1 error(s) occurred:

* unknown configuration key: "version"

Any help on how to version a Virtualbox gotten from a local file system for use in Vagrant would be helpful.

Thanks.

Virtualbox-5.0.24 r108355

Packer-0.10.0

Vagrant-1.8.4

[Bernd Naumann]

Hi,

never heard that packer has that feature. But you can craft the "vagrant
version" by yourself. Its just a json.

An example for illustration, from our setup:

>
http://vagrant.sprd.net/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant.json

{
"name": "sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant",
"description": "sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant",
"versions": [
{
"providers": [
{
"checksum": "f4cb81f1179b13e01ff288cec87f0d0305005317",
"name": "virtualbox",
"url":
"http://vagrant.sprd.net/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant/boxes/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant--201606.28.0.box",
"checksum_type": "sha1"
}
],
"version": "201606.28.0"
},
{
"providers": [
{
"checksum": "c4c7bbca2d51d02911c3133fd8c2f6adbbaa179b",
"name": "virtualbox",
"url":
"http://vagrant.sprd.net/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant/boxes/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant--201607.06.0.box",
"checksum_type": "sha1"
}
],
"version": "201607.06.0"
},
{
"providers": [
{
"checksum": "b70d0f69a0061c8786330ccb2f2349a55a99ebd2",
"name": "virtualbox",
"url":
"http://vagrant.sprd.net/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant/boxes/sprd_ubuntu_16_04_vagrant--201607.11.0.box",
"checksum_type": "sha1"
}
],
"version": "201607.11.0"
}
]
}

I do this as a post-build script with python. Just pump everything in a
python object/dictionary, and use json.dumps(obj) to stream it in a file...

Hope that helps.
Greetings,
Bernd

[Alvaro Miranda Aguilera]

Hello,

As Bernd said, packer will generate a box file (tar file with vm and metadata on it)

the version is an extra bit, if you upload to atlas, it will automatically do it for you, however you can create a json file and store it on a server locally and use this versioning feature.

check this json file for example:

https://atlas.hashicorp.com/hashicorp/boxes/precise64.json

Alvaro

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[Bob Tanner]

I didn't know what question to ask, so adding this url for people who stumble on this post:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31952257/local-packer-box-versioning

[Bob Tanner]

How do you execute a python script in post-build?

Wrap it in a shell script?

Thanks.