fredleb / vagrant-archlinux-aarch64-bootstrap

Vagrantfile and doc to bootstrap a arch linux image on Aarch64

vagrant-archlinux-aarch64-boostrap

Vagrantfile and doc to bootstrap a arch linux image on Aarch64

Assumptions

I have setup libvirt to use a conveniently located storage pool "big_pool" for my VMs. You might need to change that.

Usage

Get the latest Arch Linux image for Aarch64

Go to https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/generic and download ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz to guest/tmp

Vagrant up !

Will build the target image !

Once done, login to the VM and arch-chroot to the Arch Linux machine:

sudo arch-chroot /mnt

It's a good time to run the updates if you plan to pack the image in a box. If you do, clear the pacman cache to make the image smaller:

sudo pacman -Scc

DHCP client-id

NOTE: This is now done at the end of each vagrant up.

The clinet-id used by the DHCP to identify each client is normally derived (as it should be) from the machine's ID contained in /etc/machine-id.

Before we spawn several clones of this installation, we need to empty it (NOT DELETE IT). It will be regenerated at the next boot.

sudo truncate -s 0 /mnt/etc/machine-id

Starting the new VM

Then use the "clone" of the Virtual Machine Manager:

• do NOT clone the ubuntu disk image
• do clone the Arch taget dick image
• then open the description of the new cloned VM and remove the first disk altogether

Go to your pool and delete the cloned nvram variables file: something is wrong with it somehow...

Now you can start the VM and it enjoy far better speed than with the Ubuntu 20.04 server image...

Box it

Remember to clear the machine ID !

All of these instructions must be don in the box directory !

The Vagrantfile that is contained in the box directory will be packed in the box and will be applied as default when using this box.

Getting the disk image

Copy the target dick to a local sparse file:

qemu-img convert -O qcow2 /home/vm/big_pool/archboot_target.qcow2 ./box.img

Packing

I prepare my own Vagrantfile (see below) and metdata.json.

Then I pack them together in a box file:

tar cvzf archlinux-aarch64.box ./metadata.json ./info.json ./Vagrantfile ./box.img

or faster:

tar cv -S --totals ./metadata.json ./info.json ./Vagrantfile ./box.img | pigz -c > archlinux-aarch64.box

And added the box to my local vagrant:

vagrant box add archlinux-aarch64.box --name archlinux-aarch64