When the VM is up and running you hit return and the installation proceeds uploading the configuration script prepared in the very first step, and lauching it execution. This is extremely in-elegant: any suggestion is welcome. iso file (a virtual DVD) that is attached to the VM, and threfore available to cloud-init.Īt this point the script launches the VM, and waits for your prompt to start the successive steps. In the two files you find the name of the host, the name of the (unique) user, and its RSA public key for authentication. The following step creates the cloud-init configuration files ( user-data and meta-data): they will be used by the cloud-init support inside the VM (remember, it is created from a cloud image) to configure it from the inside. ova, create the VM, configure networking, and prepare the drives.

Next the Virtual Machine is created: download the. The first part of the script creates a vm-config.sh file that will be later uploaded to the running VM and, there, executed to configure it. This one is mainly written for those that want to adapt it. If you do not touch at all you obtain a customizable running VM.

VMkeyboard the console keyboard (if you do not touch this line it will be the same as your host machine).

VMlocale the localization (if you do not touch this line it will be the same as your host machine).

VMtimezone the timezone (if you do not touch this line it will be the same as your host machine).

VMusername the name of the initial user.

VMname the name of your VM (as in the VirtualBox dashboard).

Customizing the scriptĬustomization is carried out by editing the bash variables on top of the script. Surprise, it is faster than the procedure based on the mini.iso. Using a mix of VBOxMangage commands and the cloud-init tools you obtain a tasksel dialog to proceed with you customization. You have many options here about the image format to use: I refer to the. So I decided to find a way to do without the mini.iso, and I wrote this script that takes to the ''tasksel'' step starting from a cloud image in the ubuntu repository. An askubuntu post on the topic (there are several) is here. A distribution of the mini.iso for Ubuntu 20.04 is indeed still available here, but there is no guarantee that its availability will continue after Focal Fossa. This is a bad news for those (like me) that formerly used this distribution to produce lightweight virtual machines for development, teaching, testing, etc. The mini.iso for the Ubuntu distribution is legacy since version 20.04LTS (Focal Fossa). Living without the Ubuntu mini.iso (in VirtualBox)

Ubuntu virtualbox images