BoxGrinder is a set of projects that help you grind out appliances for multiple virtualization and Cloud providers.
Visit us at boxgrinder.org, or join boxgrinder on irc.freenode.net
BoxGrinder Build is a command line tool to help you build appliances. With an appliance definition and just a single command, BoxGrinder can create your appliance, target it to a platform and deliver it.
The BoxGrinder Meta appliance is pre-configured with an optimal environment prepared to use BoxGrinder right from launch. Just download the latest appliance from boxgrinder.org in your desired format, launch it, and you're ready to grind out images!
It is a great way to use or test BoxGrinder in a virtual environment without affecting your local system.
Visit the BoxGrinder Meta appliance usage article to learn more.
At present the project officially supports the following OSes in x86_64 and i386 variants:
Fedora (13, 14, 15)
RHEL (5.x, 6.x) and CentOS (5.x)
Acquiring and installing BoxGrinder is very simple, with RPMs ensuring the correct dependencies are pulled and installed. However, depending upon your OS of choice, the prerequisites for installing BoxGrinder vary slightly.
Administrative level permissions (root or equivalent)
BoxGrinder and all of its dependencies reside within the official Fedora repositories, therefore there are no special requirements. Simply install via your package manager.
EPEL and BoxGrinder repositories locations must be added to your package manager in order to install BoxGrinder and resolve its dependencies successfully.
For detailed instructions, see: Preparing your environment
Once the prerequisites are satisfied, install BoxGrinder via a package manager, for instance in YUM;
sudo yum install rubygem-boxgrinder-build
to install BoxGrinder Build.
You should remove BoxGrinder through your system package manager, for instance with YUM:
sudo yum remove rubygem-boxgrinder*
BoxGrinder.org's quick-start tutorial is the best place to learn the fundamentals of BoxGrinder Build, enabling you to rapidly leverage the feature-set on offer.
The following sections provide a basic overview of functionality.
Most of the features of BoxGrinder Build are provided through plugins, with three primary variants (Operating System, Platform and Delivery), each catering for a phase of the build process. Furthermore, the flexible and extensible structure of BoxGrinder Build enables users to seamlessly add new features and functionality.
As of version 0.9.0 BoxGrinder Build is distributed with standard plugins installed by default.
Operating System - provide support to run and build for a given OS
Platform - ability to produce appliances for a specific platform, such as Amazon's EC2 or VirtualBox VM
Delivery - send the completed appliance, for instance by SFTP or bundled as an AMI and uploaded to S3.
Learn more: BoxGrinder Build, BoxGrinder Plugins
Many plugins allow, or mandate, some degree of configuration before they
are executed. These properties are aggregated into a single per-user
configuration file, at ~/.boxgrinder/config
. The user should
consult the documentation of a given plugin to determine what fields it
should be configured with, and which fields (if any), are requisite.
plugins: sftp: host: 192.168.0.1 username: boxgrinder path: /home/boxgrinder/appliances
In this example, the SFTP plugin's fields are all mandatory.
Learn more: BoxGrinder Plugins
Appliances are defined in YAML, the following “JEOS” definition can be used by BoxGrinder to produce a basic, but fully functional appliance;
name: f14-basic summary: Just Enough Operating System based on Fedora 14 os: name: fedora version: 14 hardware: partitions: "/": size: 2 packages: - @core
With this simple definition, BoxGrinder will produce a Fedora 14 appliance with the Core group of packages. You can easily add packages, repositories, and harness a plethora of powerful features in a concise, declarative manner.
For an introduction to Appliance Definitions, see: Quick-start, building your first appliance
For fuller explanations of all parameters BoxGrinder offers, see: Appliance definition parameters
The BoxGrinder Build CLI is a simple
interface through which you can instruct BoxGrinder to build your appliances. You can
view a brief manual by using boxgrinder-build --help
, and
version information through boxgrinder-build --version
BoxGrinder Build is run with a mandatory appliance definition, along with optional platform and delivery plugin specifiers. BoxGrinder resolves the packages and associated dependencies in the appliance definition, and installs them into the new image it generates based upon the operating system and versions specified.
boxgrinder-build [appliance definition file] [options]
The two most common options are [-p|--platform=]
and
[-d|--delivery=]
. Neither is mandatory, if platform is omitted
then only the raw KVM image is created. You can can later return and target
a build to different platforms, and BoxGrinder will always reuse the intermediary
data where it is available. If you wish to force a rebuild, you can use the
[-f|--force]
flag.
It is possible to manually provide key-value pairs for platform and delivery plugin configuration on the command line. These will override any pre-existing plugin parameters set in the BoxGrinder config file.
Shell commands can be executed in post
sections of the
appliance definition files, which is useful for basic configuration.
However, it is advisable that more complex configuration and installation
of custom software is performed properly through RPM files. This is often
best achieved through local repositories, which can be configured as ephemeral
in order to avoid the repository being installed into the resultant
image's package manager.
See: BoxGrinder Build Usage Instructions, How to use local repositories
boxgrinder-build fedora-14.appl -p vmware -d sftp
Build an image based upon fedora-14.appl, and produce an image
targeted at the vmware platform. Once complete, deliver by
sftp. Note that each of these plugins must be configured in
~/.boxgrinder/conf
or by providing the key-value pairs as
command-line arguments.
boxgrinder-build fedora-14.appl -p virtualbox -d local
Assuming that BoxGrinder had succeeded in building the prior image, the RAW file is again used as an intermediary without needing to be rebuild. An image targeted at VirtualBox is then produced, and delivered to a local file, as determined in conf.
setarch i386 boxgrinder-build fedora-14.appl
Build an i386 appliance (on an x86_64 machine).