Add "Why I'm building custom Vagrant boxes" post

2026-05-25 22:45:03 -04:00
parent 3a02a37833
commit 734e2434f5
3 changed files with 62 additions and 10 deletions
@@ -3,8 +3,7 @@
 install:
 	bundle config set --local path 'vendor/bundle'
 	bundle install
-	bundle exec jekyll serve
+	bundle exec jekyll serve --future

 clean:
 	rm -rf _site vendor .bundle .jekyll-cache
-
@@ -1,8 +0,0 @@
---
-layout: single
-title: "Hello, world!"
-date: 1970-01-01
-author_profile: true
---
-
-Hello, world!
@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+---
+layout: single
+title: "Why I'm building custom Vagrant boxes"
+date: 2026-05-25
+author_profile: true
+---
+
+_TL;DR: I've built custom Vagrant boxes for Debian 13 and Rocky Linux 10 using
+Packer.
+[Grab them from the registry](https://portal.cloud.hashicorp.com/vagrant/discover/krislamo.org)
+or [take my configs to build them](https://git.krislamo.org/kris/pkrbuilds)
+yourself._
+
+When
+[HashiCorp relicensed its free software](https://www.theregister.com/software/2023/08/11/hashicorp-changes-its-source-licence-to-bsl/1551785)
+to the non-free BSL in 2023, the two projects that received significant
+community-backed forks under the existing MPL terms were Terraform (OpenTofu)
+and Vault (OpenBao), unsurprisingly given their weight in maintaining production
+environments across the industry. That left less consequential HashiCorp
+software, like Vagrant, without the momentum to keep it free, which I've used
+for many years to design, test, and understand systems infrastructure.
+
+Despite this, nearly three years later, you can still install the
+[free version of Vagrant on Debian](https://packages.debian.org/trixie/vagrant)
+because a maintainer continues to patch 2.3.7 to make it work (HashiCorp's
+non-free version is on 2.4.9 at the time of writing). Vagrant is just a
+convenience wrapper that automates the lifecycle of transient test virtual
+machines, so the urgency to find another solution has been low, especially as
+long as Debian continues to package it.
+
+Following the Debian 13 release, Debian Vagrant box updates stalled for a while
+after the
+[maintainer decided to stop publishing images](https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg2049694.html)
+due to Vagrant's non-free upstream status and breaking changes to HashiCorp's
+image hosting platform. That led me to start building
+[custom Debian 13 boxes](https://git.krislamo.org/kris/pkrbuilds/src/branch/main/debian-13)
+with Packer.[^packer] One clear benefit of a custom box is baking in the NFS
+client for host file sharing, so it's present from first boot, rather than
+installed during the first `vagrant up`, as you'd have to on the current
+official Debian image.
+
+Lately, I've also been looking to run Rocky Linux boxes and ran into yet another
+issue with official distro Vagrant boxes: the Rocky Linux registry links have
+been [broken for months](https://git.resf.org/infrastructure/meta/issues/138),
+making all official Rocky Linux boxes entirely unavailable. So now I'm building
+and publishing both Debian 13 and
+[Rocky Linux 10](https://git.krislamo.org/kris/pkrbuilds/src/branch/main/rocky-10)
+Vagrant boxes for the libvirt provider.
+
+Thankfully, Debian appears to have resumed updating its boxes more recently,
+which is great, and likely the path most people should take for Debian. Still, a
+deeper understanding of building custom boxes, greater control over updates, and
+the additional flexibility of baking the NFS client have led me to continue
+rolling my own. I publish them mostly for my own convenience, but since they're
+public, feel free to use them or build them yourself if they're useful.
+
+[^packer]:
+    There's some irony in concern for a free Vagrant and then building images
+    with Packer, as it's the same BSL relicense. But it's the obvious tool, in
+    the same ecosystem, and made for exactly this. And like Vagrant, it's low
+    stakes enough.