VM Install Venture

A blob of code for building VMs with Venture preinstalled.

Install dependencies

sudo apt-get install virtualbox qemu-utils

The packer tool is not packaged under Ubuntu, so you need to install it manually. One way to do this on amd64 is to use the provided script:

bash install-packer.sh
source ~/.bashrc

Create a VM

bash make-venture-vm-via-packer.sh

This will produce a VM in the venture-vm-virtualbox directory, and a suitably named tarball containing it.

Some tools for manual manipulations

Import to VirtualBox, boot and connect

bash import-boot-connect.sh

Note that if you modify the VM, you may wish to re-export it from VirtualBox using vboxmanage export.

Self-check the VM

bash validate-built-vm.sh

Package the VM

bash create-tgz.sh

A note on the architecture

The build process embodied here is separated into two stages:

• Create and cache a base VM provisioned with dependencies of Venture.

• Create a new VM from the base VM by loading and compiling Venture source into it.

The reason for the separation is that provisioning all the software that Venture depends upon is slow but reliable, whereas building Venture itself is comparatively faster and more error-prone. The idea is that by caching the base VM, we can cut down the time it takes to build a VM with a new version of Venture prebuilt on it.