Vagrant linked clones

[Dennis Chang]

Hi all,

I'm not sure how linked clones work. So please correct my misunderstanding.

I have a Vagrantfile

```

$setup = <<-SETUP

  echo "Running as $(id)"

  yum update -y

  yum install -y java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel

SETUP

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  config.vm.define "master-01" do |master|

    master.vm.box = "centos/7"

    master.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|

      v.cpus = 1

      v.memory = 1024

      v.linked_clone = true

    end

    master.vm.provision "shell", inline: $setup

  end

  config.vm.define "clone-01" do |clone|

    clone.vm.box = "centos/7"

    clone.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|

      v.cpus = 2

      v.memory = 2048

      v.linked_clone = true

    end

    master.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-INLINE

      # download and start application (depends on Java)

    INLINE

  end

```

So ideally, I only run yum update only once (I noticed that the VM snapshot blows up to 1.5 GB) because it takes time. But in my example, when I spinup clone-01, clone-01 doesn't have Java already installed and it fails (to startup).

So my question is, how *should* I define a Vagrantfile for multi-machines where one machine is a linked clone of another where I only need to run yum update -y once?.

Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong here?

Thanks,

[Dennis Chang]

I understand now. I'm following https://medium.com/oracledevs/two-birds-with-one-home-cloned-vagrant-multi-machines-2ee5ba75fad8

and I see that a master VM is created that never gets started.

Vagrant uses VirtualBox linked clones to create new VMs.

So if I want to update the master,  I have to update the base box it is based on.

[dragon788]

If you don't want to maintain a whole Packer pipeline you can also run updates against the base box and then use `vagrant package` to export the updated version and use that new version in your cluster (after doing a `vagrant box add --name my-centos/7 path/to/exported.box`).

[Dennis Chang]

I did go that route yesterday and re-packaged a base box to a new box.

Today I used packer to create the base box instead. Either way works.

Thanks for the suggestion.