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Date:      Wed, 31 Dec 2014 19:06:39 +0100
From:      Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org, Ryan Kois <ryan.kois@gmail.com>, Alfred Perlstein <alfred@freebsd.org>, re@freebsd.org, Claudia Yadathi <yadathi@gmail.com>
Subject:   Re: How to make a FreeBSD vm in virtualbox.
Message-ID:  <20141231180639.GE43180@ivaldir.etoilebsd.net>
In-Reply-To: <20141231151723.GA75959@hub.FreeBSD.org>
References:  <13C55A7B-4010-40FA-901B-DF8ED6BADD87@freebsd.org> <20141231042455.GB53230@hub.FreeBSD.org> <24520431-8E2A-4D70-BD2D-D8D76A98C762@freebsd.org> <20141231151723.GA75959@hub.FreeBSD.org>

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On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 03:17:23PM +0000, Glen Barber wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 10:04:38PM -0800, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> >=20
> > On Dec 30, 2014, at 8:24 PM, Glen Barber wrote:
> >=20
> > > On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 07:42:36PM -0800, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> > >> After he linked it to me, I decided that it would make sense if
> > >> this was scripted and would really make sense as part of the release
> > >> process.
> > >>=20
> > >=20
> > > We already provide VMDK images.  There is nothing, that I can see, th=
at
> > > is different from how I've been testing the various images.  Creating
> > > a new VM and attaching the VMDK to the disk controller is the intended
> > > workflow.
> >=20
> > The difference is that with a vmdk you must get the exact
> > combinations of items correct or you will wind up with a FreeBSD
> > instance that will not boot.  With the ova, you just run a single
> > command "VBoxManage FreeBSD.ova" and stuff "just works", or you can
> > even just double click on the downloaded file from within your OS
> > X / Windows/ whatever host and it "just works".
> >=20
> >=20
> > >=20
> > >> I've written a script that will make a .ova that you can one-click
> > >> import into Virtualbox (and I think Fusion as well) here:
> > >>=20
> > >>  https://gist.github.com/splbio/84bd4d2122782e99fc5c
> > >>=20
> > >=20
> > > Can you send the script as an attachment?
> >=20
> > Uh sure.  It's attached.
> >=20
>=20
> Your script relies on VirtualBox being installed on the build machine,
> which I do not like.  This is one of the major reasons I'm happy Marcel
> added VMDK support to mkimg(1) - all the components to create the
> formatted disk image exist in the base system.
>=20

Long ago I had created the quick and really dirty:
https://people.freebsd.org/~bapt/vmdkimage-srcs/

This created ova files ready to be used in virtualbox (I had problem with v=
mware
I don't remember why)

basically an ova file is a tar file in a given order with a template
(FreeBSD.ovf) and a manifest with checksums)

This is really easy to produce and I agree it would be nice if we could pro=
duce
one.

The matter for having something that worked both in vbox and vmware was pla=
ying
with the disk controler.

What I did back in the time was generating an ova from vbox extracting the =
=2Eovf
reducing to the minimum required the final ovf and ask people to import in =
in
vmware (I do not have access to any vmware)

Now that we have mkimg that should be rather easy to create an ova generato=
r at
least for virtualbox (vmware compatible might be more tricky)

The interesting part is that the ova format is normalized and used by lots =
of
the virtualisation tools out there

Best regards,
Bapt

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