virtuallypotato/content/posts/create-vms-chromebook-hashicorp-vagrant/index.md

---
title: "Create Virtual Machines on a Chromebook with HashiCorp Vagrant" # Title of the blog post.
date: 2023-02-20 # Date of post creation.
# lastmod: 2023-02-18T17:22:02-06:00 # Date when last modified
description: "Pairing the powerful Linux Development Environment on modern Chromebooks with HashiCorp Vagrant to create and manage local virtual machines for development and testing" # Description used for search engine.
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---
I've lately been trying to do more with [Salt](https://saltproject.io/) at work, but I'm still very much a novice with that tool. I thought it would be great to have a nice little portable lab environment where I could deploy a few lightweight VMs and practice managing them with Salt - without impacting any systems that are actually being used for anything. Along the way, I figured I'd leverage [HashiCorp Vagrant](https://www.vagrantup.com/) to create and manage the VMs, which would provide a declarative way to define what the VMs should look like. That will make it easy to build up, destroy, and redeploy a development environment in a simple, repeatable way.

Also, because I'm a bit of a sadist, I wanted to do this all on my new [Framework Chromebook](https://frame.work/laptop-chromebook-12-gen-intel). I might as well put my 32GB of RAM to good use, right?

It took a bit of fumbling, but this article describes what it took to get a Vagrant-powered VM up and running in the [Linux Development Environment](https://chromeos.dev/en/linux) on my Chromebook (which is currently running ChromeOS v111 beta).

### Install the prerequisites
There are are a few packages which need to be installed before we can move on to the Vagrant-specific stuff. It's quite possible that these are already on your system.... but if they *aren't* already present you'll have a bad problem[^problem].

```shell
sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
  build-essential \
  gpg \
  lsb-release \
  wget
```

[^problem]: and [will not go to space today](https://xkcd.com/1133/).

I'll be configuring Vagrant to use [`libvirt`](https://libvirt.org/) to interface with the [Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM)](https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page) virtualization solution (rather than something like VirtualBox that would bring more overhead) so I'll need to install some packages for that as well:
```shell
sudo apt install virt-manager libvirt-dev
```

And to avoid having to `sudo` each time I interact with `libvirt` I'll add myself to that group:
```shell
sudo gpasswd -a $USER libvirt ; newgrp libvirt
```

I'm also going to use `rsync` to share a [synced folder](https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/docs/synced-folders/basic_usage) between the host and the VM guest so I'll need to make sure that's installed too:
```shell
sudo apt install rsync
```

### Install Vagrant
With that out of the way, I'm ready to move on to the business of installing Vagrant. I'll start by adding the HashiCorp repository:
```shell
wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list
```

I'll then install the Vagrant package:
```shell
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vagrant
```

I also need to install the [`vagrant-libvirt` plugin](https://github.com/vagrant-libvirt/vagrant-libvirt) so that Vagrant will know how to interact with `libvirt`:
```shell
vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt
```

### Create a lightweight VM
Now I can get to the business of creating my first VM with Vagrant!

Vagrant VMs are distributed as Boxes, and I can browse some published Boxes at [app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search?provider=libvirt](https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search?provider=libvirt) (applying the `provider=libvirt` filter so that I only see Boxes which will run on my chosen virtualization provider). For my first VM, I'll go with something light and simple: [`generic/alpine38`](https://app.vagrantup.com/generic/boxes/alpine38).

So I'll create a new folder to contain the Vagrant configuration:
```shell
mkdir vagrant-alpine
cd vagrant-alpine
```

And since I'm referencing a Vagrant Box which is published on Vagrant Cloud, downloading the config is as simple as:
```shell
vagrant init generic/alpine38
```

That lets me know that
```text
A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now
ready to `vagrant up` your first virtual environment! Please read
the comments in the Vagrantfile as well as documentation on
`vagrantup.com` for more information on using Vagrant.
```

Before I `vagrant up` the joint, I do need to make a quick tweak to the default Vagrantfile, which is what tells Vagrant how to configure the VM. By default, Vagrant will try to create a synced folder using NFS and will throw a nasty error when that (inevitably[^inevitable]) fails. So I'll open up the Vagrantfile to review and edit it:
```shell
vim Vagrantfile
```

Most of the default Vagrantfile is commented out. Here's the entirey of the configuration *without* the comments:
```ruby
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "generic/alpine38"
end
```

There's not a lot there, is there? Well I'm just going to add these two lines somewhere between the `Vagrant.configure()` and `end` lines:
```ruby
  config.nfs.verify_installed = false
  config.vm.synced_folder '.', '/vagrant', type: 'rsync'
```

The first line tells Vagrant not to bother checking to see if NFS is installed, and will use `rsync` to share the local directory with the VM guest, where it will be mounted at `/vagrant`.

So here's the full Vagrantfile (sans-comments[^magic], again):
```ruby
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "generic/alpine38"
  config.nfs.verify_installed = false
  config.vm.synced_folder '.', '/vagrant', type: 'rsync'
end
```

With that, I'm ready to fire up this VM with `vagrant up`! Vagrant will look inside `Vagrantfile` to see the config, pull down the `generic/alpine38` Box from Vagrant Cloud, boot the VM, configure it so I can SSH in to it, and mount the synced folder:
```shell
; vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'libvirt' provider...
==> default: Box 'generic/alpine38' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
    default: Box Provider: libvirt
    default: Box Version: >= 0
==> default: Loading metadata for box 'generic/alpine38'
    default: URL: https://vagrantcloud.com/generic/alpine38
==> default: Adding box 'generic/alpine38' (v4.2.12) for provider: libvirt
    default: Downloading: https://vagrantcloud.com/generic/boxes/alpine38/versions/4.2.12/providers/libvirt.box
    default: Calculating and comparing box checksum...
==> default: Successfully added box 'generic/alpine38' (v4.2.12) for 'libvirt'!
==> default: Uploading base box image as volume into Libvirt storage...
[...]
==> default: Waiting for domain to get an IP address...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 192.168.121.41:22
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
[...]
    default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Rsyncing folder: /home/john/projects/vagrant-alpine/ => /vagrant
```

And then I can use `vagrant ssh` to log in to the new VM:
```shell
; vagrant ssh
alpine38:~$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Alpine Linux"
ID=alpine
VERSION_ID=3.8.5
PRETTY_NAME="Alpine Linux v3.8"
HOME_URL="http://alpinelinux.org"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.alpinelinux.org"
```

I can also verify that the synced folder came through as expected:
```shell
alpine38:~$ ls -l /vagrant
total 4
-rw-r--r--    1 vagrant  vagrant       3117 Feb 20 15:51 Vagrantfile
```

Once I'm finished poking at this VM, shutting it down is as easy as:
```shell
vagrant halt
```

And if I want to clean up and remove all traces of the VM, that's just:
```shell
vagrant destroy
```

[^inevitable]: NFS doesn't work properly from within an LXD container, like the ChromeOS Linux development environment.
[^magic]: Through the magic of `egrep -v "^\s*(#|$)" $file`.


### Create a heavy VM, as a treat
Having proven to myself that Vagrant does work on a Chromebook, let's see how it does with a slightly-heavier VM.... like [Windows 11](https://app.vagrantup.com/oopsme/boxes/windows11-22h2).

Again, I'll create a new folder to hold the Vagrant configuration and do a `vagrant init`:
```shell
mkdir vagrant-win11
cd vagrant-win11
vagrant init oopsme/windows11-22h2
```

And, again, I'll edit the Vagrantfile before starting the VM. This time, though, I'm adding a few configuration options to tell `libvirt` that I'd like more compute resources than the default 1 CPU and 512MB RAM:
```ruby
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "oopsme/windows11-22h2"
  config.vm.provider :libvirt do |libvirt|
    libvirt.cpus = 4
    libvirt.memory = 4096
  end
end
```

Now it's time to bring it up. This one's going to take A While as it syncs the ~6GB Box first.
```shell
vagrant up
```

Eventually it should spit out that lovely **Machine booted and ready!** message and I can log in! I *can* do a `vagrant ssh` again to gain a shell in the Windows environment, but I'll probably want to interact with those sweet sweet graphics. That takes a little bit more effort.

First, I'll use `virsh -c qemu:///system list` to see the running VM(s):
```shell
; virsh -c qemu:///system list
 Id   Name                    State
---------------------------------------
 10   vagrant-win11_default   running
```

Then I can tell `virt-viewer` that I'd like to attach a session there:
```shell
virt-viewer -c qemu:///system -a vagrant-win11_default
```

I log in with the default password `vagrant`, and I'm in Windows 11 land!
![Windows 11 running on a Chromebook!](win-11-vm.png)

### Next steps
Well that about does it for a proof-of-concept. My next steps will be exploring [multi-machine Vagrant environments](https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/docs/multi-machine) to create a portable lab environment including machines running several different operating systems so that I can learn how to manage them effectively with Salt. It should be fun!