Vagrant

A typical workflow with Vagrant would be:

$ vagrant basebox define 'mybuntubox' 'ubuntu-12.10-server-amd64'
$ vagrant basebox build 'mybuntubox'
$ vagrant basebox export 'mybuntubox'

Now you can import the generated '.box' file to the vagrant box repository:

$ vagrant box add 'mybuntubox' 'mybuntubox.box'

Export the vm to a .box file

In order to use the box in Vagrant we need to export the VM as a Basebox:

$ vagrant basebox export 'myubuntubox'

This is actually calling vagrant package --base 'myubuntubox' --output 'boxes/myubuntubox.box'.

The machine gets shut down, exported and will be packed in a myubuntubox.box file inside the current directory.

To import it into Vagrant's box repository simply type:

$ vagrant box add 'myubuntubox' 'myubuntubox.box'

The parameter 'myubuntubox' sets the name of the box that is used by Vagrant to reference the box e.g. in the Vagrantfile.

To use your newly generated box in a fresh project execute these commands:

$ vagrant init 'myubuntubox'

If you already have a project running with Vagrant, open the Vagrantfile and change the value of config.vm.box to the new boxname:

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
  config.vm.box = "myubuntubox"

Now start the new environment with vagrant up and log in with vagrant ssh to enjoy the joys of your new environment.