mirage-xen-virtualbox

A Packer template to build an environment in which to run MirageOS unikernels under Xen. It uses Vagrant, Virtualbox and is based on Ubuntu 14.04. It's based on the blog post here: http://www.skjegstad.com/blog/2015/01/19/mirageos-xen-virtualbox/

Ubuntu packer template based on: https://github.com/shiguredo/packer-templates/tree/develop/ubuntu-14.04

How to build

You'll need to have Packer, Vagrant, Virtualbox (and ideally a speedy internet connection...)

• clone this repo and cd into it
• packer build template.json
• .. wait awhile..
• If successful, this will result in a vagrant .box file being generated: virtualbox-xen.box

How to use

There are a few possibilties of how to use it. The simplest is documented here

• Import the .box file into Vagrant vagrant box add virtualbox-xen.box --name virtualbox-xen
• In an empty directory, vagrant init virtualbox-xen - this creates a Vagrantfile
• Spin up the box and provision it: vagrant up
  • this sets up a bridge interface and installs opam and mirage for the vagrant user
• vagrant ssh
• Then clone eg. mirage-skeleton and build :)

I think it should be possible to customise the Vagrantfile generated in step 2 to allow NFS shared folders, or a different private network subnet. But I haven't tested those yet (see TODO)

BUGS (KNOWN)

FIXED For some reason https://github.com/mattgray/mirage-xen-virtualbox/blob/master/scripts/toolchain.sh does not install m4 correctly, causing opam install -y mirage to fail during provisioning. The fix is to vagrant ssh and install manually, then repeat the opam install <xyz>

direct networking does not work out of the box (have to do some manual setup of tap0, but maybe this is an issue with ocaml-tuntap or mirage-net-unix ?

TODO

• Do virtualbox guest additions work with xen at all?
• script to install xen
• NFS for shared folders?
• configure bridge adaptor + DHCP
• Vagrantfile template with host only + NIC promiscuos mode settings
• Install avahi-daemon?
• Install git / build essential
• Install ocaml / opam (into image?)
• Test building a skeleton
• Figure out why m4 is not installed by packer scripts, thus preventing provisioners from working
• Test bridge config works with overridden private_network in Vagrantfile
• Test NFS synced folders
• make tun/tap work
• Make it so that mirage builds can be pushed to the box and compiled and run with no command line interaction to the VM
• Make it so that running unikernels can be registered into avahi DNS automatically by parsing console output for DHCP assigned IPs
• Support VMWare? But i don't have vmware available to test