Preparing a Oracle Linux for a Vagrant box

This post is an overview of an installation and configuration process of the Oracle Linux, which will be used as a machine “box” for Vagrant software using a Virtual Box platform.

Post itself is divided into two parts:

1. Oracle Linux installation (points 1 to 12)
2. Vagrant box configuration (points 13 to 16)

Part 1 – Oracle Linux installation
 
1. Create a new Virtual Machine - machine name will be used later to create Vagrant box

2. Set memory size - it does matter only for a installation process, as it can be changed later by Vagrant

3. Create a new disk, which will be used to keep a root and a swap file systems only. Any additional disks will be added dynamically via Vagrant. In this example, a disk size is set to 8 GB.

4. Mount Oracle Linux DVD into Virtual Machine drive

5. Configure 1st network interface to be NAT 

 

6. Add port forwarding for SSH

6.Start Virtual Machine and start a Oracle Linux installation. Some of the screens have been skipped in this post but a default values have been used for those ones.

7.Choose language and keyboard

8.Configure disk using a default basic definition

9.Configure a host name for a box, configure a network with DHCP and start up at boot time.

10.Default packages will be installed only at this time. Some will be added later.

11.Wait for process to be completed
 

12.Restart machine

Part 2 – Vagrant box configuration

13. Add Vagrant related configuration

• Add user "vagrant" with password "vagrant"
• Add Vagrant public insecure public key to .authorized_keys
• Install Guest additional tools

Connect to VM using ssh
 

ssh -p 2022 root@localhost
The authenticity of host '[localhost]:2022 ([127.0.0.1]:2022)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 3e:4f:bd:ca:45:d6:e8:d4:6b:4d:02:bb:1f:c3:ad:a2.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '[localhost]:2022' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
root@localhost's password:
Last login: Sat Jul 18 21:25:57 2015 from 10.0.2.2

Add user using password vagrant

[root@oelbox ~]# useradd vagrant
[root@oelbox ~]# passwd vagrant
Changing password for user vagrant.
New password:
BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word
BAD PASSWORD: is too simple
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

Add Vagrant public key

[root@oelbox ~]# su - vagrant
[vagrant@oelbox ~]$ mkdir .ssh
[vagrant@oelbox ~]$ chmod 700 .ssh
[vagrant@oelbox ~]$ cd .ssh
[vagrant@oelbox .ssh]$ wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellh/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub -O authorized_keys
--2015-07-18 21:29:16--  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellh/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub
Resolving raw.githubusercontent.com... 23.235.44.133
Connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com|23.235.44.133|:443... connected.
WARNING: certificate common name “www.github.com” doesn’t match requested host name “raw.githubusercontent.com”.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 409 [text/plain]
Saving to: “authorized_keys”

100%[===========================================================================================================================================================>] 409         --.-K/s   in 0s

2015-07-18 21:29:17 (94.1 MB/s) - “authorized_keys” saved [409/409]

[vagrant@oelbox .ssh]$ chmod 600 authorized_keys

Choose Install Guest Additional CD from Virtual Box menu and check if CDROM it was mounted

Install required packages and add Guest tools

[root@oelbox ~]# yum install kernel-uek-devel-3.8.13-16.2.1.el6uek.x86_64
[root@oelbox ~]# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/
mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
[root@oelbox ~]# /mnt/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 4.3.20 Guest Additions for Linux............
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Removing installed version 4.3.20 of VirtualBox Guest Additions...
Copying additional installer modules ...
Installing additional modules ...
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules       [  OK  ]
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
Building the main Guest Additions module                   [  OK  ]
Building the shared folder support module                  [  OK  ]
Building the OpenGL support module                         [  OK  ]
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions              [  OK  ]
Starting the VirtualBox Guest Additions                    [  OK  ]
Installing the Window System drivers
Could not find the X.Org or XFree86 Window System, skipping. 

14. Install packages required for Oracle database and EPEL repository and Ansible. 
If you are using RedHat or Centos you can’t use oracle-rdbms packages. Oracle-ansible playbook, which will be used later will take care about all packages during a first installation.

[root@oelbox ~]# yum install oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall.x86_64 oracle-rdbms-server-12cR1-preinstall.x86_64
[root@oelbox ~]# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.SCcj3K: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 0608b895: NOKEY
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:epel-release           ########################################### [100%]
[root@oelbox ~]# yum install ansible

15. Configure sudo for vagrant user - disable requiretty and allow vagrant user to run sudo without password for all commands.

[root@oelbox ~]# visudo
#Defaults    requiretty
vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

16. Shutdown Virtual Machine.

This is end of configuration on the Linux level and this Virtual Machine can be used now as a source of the Vagrant box.


regards,
Marcin