When creating the VM, let’s mostly follow Vagrant’s advice: Now we can download the Fedora Server Net-Install ISO and click together our virtual machine with virt-manager. $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o preallocation=off fedora-server-29.qcow2 20Gįormatting 'fedora-server-29.qcow2', fmt=qcow2 size=21474836480 cluster_size=65536 preallocation=off lazy_refcounts=off refcount_bits=16 Okay, we just need to create an image with preallocation turned off: An image with preallocated metadata is initially larger but can improve performance when the image needs to grow. Preallocation mode (allowed values: “off”, “metadata”, “falloc”, “full”). 2 There’s no way to change this from the GUI, so we first need to create the storage using the command line.

But wait! This will do some kind of metadata preallocation when creating the VM image, resulting in a really large file on the host system. We’ll be mainly using the virt-manager GUI because I’m lazy.

Step 2: Configure the Operating System for Vagrant.

Step 1: Create the VM and install Fedora.

I especially like QEMU's logo, even though design-wise it's a bit banal.

Since my host is also Linux my obvious choice for running VMs is QEMU/ KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) with hardware acceleration: I’ll use Vagrant’s libvirt provider.

I’d like to use a current version of Fedora Server (presently 29) because of its up-to-date repositories and built-in SELinux support.

So far so good! Now, I’ve got some extravagant expectations: There’re also numerous base images available so getting started just takes three commands. This is something Vagrant promises to do (in combination with some tool for provisioning like Ansible). This lack of reproducibility isn’t very scientific! Wouldn’t it be nice to have some kind of specification - human readable, but also executable - for quickly creating VMs in a matter of seconds? But they are a pain to install and after using them for some time it’s hard to remember all the steps that were necessary to get the machine to its current state. Virtual machines are nice for playing around with different operating systems 1, software setups and network configurations. Wayfarers Looking at the Statue of Jizo Bosatsu in a Pine Grove at Hashiba (ca. Creating a Vagrant Base Box (from Fedora 29 Server, using Libvirt as Provider)

Vagrant create box from iso