Vagrant Environment Build using Kickstart

This describes a process for setting-up a local RHEL6/7 vagrant environment in macOS for testing Ansible using the following tools:

• homebrew
• virtualbox
• vagrant
• kickstart

Prerequisites

These need to be installed or available on your macOS workstation:

• Homebrew
  • VirtualBox - $ brew cask install virtualbox
  • Vagrant - $ brew cask install vagrant
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux - obtain a free developer subscription
  • When you have this subscription you can download a RHEL DVD iso image and attach entitlements to perform package installs and updates

Create a RHEL Base Box using Kickstart Installation

A base RHEL server needs to be installed and configured within VirtualBox.

The following are example specs:

• Memory: 1024MB
• CPU: 1
• Video Memory: 16MB
• Storage: 10GB
• Network: NAT

❗The VM must have access to the Internet to download the Kickstart file and the VirtualBox Guest Additions.

Attach the RHEL iso file to the VM's cdrom and power-on.

At the install options screen, press the Tab key to modify the kernel options. Type the following:

ks=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sgurnick/vagrant_ansible_env/master/ks_rhel6.cfg noipv6
or
ks=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sgurnick/vagrant_ansible_env/master/ks_rhel7.cfg noipv6

Press Enter and an unattended install of RHEL6/7 will begin.

When the install completes, power-down the VM, remove the RHEL iso file from the VM's cdrom drive and boot-up normally.

Associate RHEL Developer Subscription via the subscription-manager utility and perform a yum update.

Power-off the VM.

Create Vagrant Environment

Clone this repo to your workstation:

$ git clone https://github.com/sgurnick/vagrant_ansible_env.git

Package the Vagrant Box

Once your RHEL base server is complete and available within VirtualBox, it needs to be packaged into a vagrant base box.

$ vagrant package --base name-of-vm-in-virtualbox --output name-of-resulting-box-file.box

Tip - if you don't know name-of-vm-in-virtualbox you can execute the following command to list available VMs:

$ vboxmanage list vms

Example packaging of VirtualBox VM into a Vagrant box:

$ vagrant package --base rhel6-sandbox --output rhel6-sandbox.box

The packaged box needs to be added into vagrant's box inventory of available base boxes.

$ vagrant box add name-of-box /path/to/box/file

Example:

$ vagrant box add rhel6-sandbox rhel6-sandbox.box
or
$ vagrant box add rhel7-sandbox rhel7-sandbox.box

Vagrantfile

The Vagrantfile in this repo defines the following VMs for this environment:

• ansible: ansible control host
• node1: test node1
• node2: test node2
• node3: test node3

To fit into your local Ansible environment, you'll want to edit the following line in the Vagrantfile:

ansible.vm.synced_folder "/Users/sgurnick/GIT_REPOS/ansible/", "/etc/ansible", owner: "ansible", group: "ansible"

Replacing /Users/sgurnick/GIT_REPOS/ansible/ with the path to your Ansible directory on your macOS workstation.

Replacing /etc/ansible with the desired path on your Ansible Vagrant node to mount your Ansible directory.

Create Vagrant VMs

To create the vagrant VMs and begin using them, issue the following commands:

$ vagrant up ansible

$ vagrant up node1

$ vagrant up node2

$ vagrant up node3