Vagrant Windows Update Provisioner

This is a Vagrant plugin for installing Windows updates.

NB This was only tested with Vagrant 2.0.3 and Windows Server 2016.

Installation

vagrant plugin install vagrant-windows-update

Usage

Add config.vm.provision "windows-update" to your Vagrantfile to update your Windows VM during provisioning or manually run the provisioner with:

vagrant provision --provision-with windows-update

To troubleshoot, set the VAGRANT_LOG environment variable to debug.

Example

In this repo there's an example Vagrantfile. Use it to launch an example.

First install the Base Windows Box.

Then install the required plugins:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-windows-update
vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload

Then launch the example:

vagrant up

NB On my machine this takes about 1h to complete... but YMMV!

Filters

You can select which Windows Updates are installed by defining a set of filters, e.g.:

config.vm.provision "windows-update", filters: [
  "exclude:$_.Title -like '*Preview*'",
  "include:$_.Title -like '*Cumulative Update for Windows*'",
  "include:$_.AutoSelectOnWebSites"]

NB If the filters argument is not used, only important updates are installed (equivalent of declaring a single include:$_.AutoSelectOnWebSites filter).

The general filter syntax is:

ACTION:EXPRESSION

ACTION is a string that can have one of the following values:

action	description
include	includes the update when the expression evaluates to $true
exclude	excludes the update when the expression evaluates to $true

NB If no ACTION evaluates to $true the update will NOT be installed.

EXPRESSION is a PowerShell expression. When it returns $true, the ACTION is executed and no further filters are evaluated.

Inside an expression, the Windows Update IUpdate interface can be referenced by the $_ variable.

Development

To hack on this plugin you need to install Bundler and other dependencies. On Ubuntu:

sudo apt install bundler libxml2-dev zlib1g-dev

Then use it to install the dependencies:

bundle

Build this plugin gem:

rake

Then install it into your local vagrant installation:

vagrant plugin install pkg/vagrant-windows-update-*.gem

You can later run everything in one go:

rake && vagrant plugin uninstall vagrant-windows-update && vagrant plugin install pkg/vagrant-windows-update-*.gem