Vagrant environment that lets you copy a virtual disk image into a physical USB disk using qemu-img

Vagrantfile

# this lets you easily convert a virtual disk image into a physical disk.
#
# # Usage for converting a vmdk on the host to an attached physical USB disk
#
# vagrant up
# vagrant ssh
# qemu-img info /vagrant/box-disk1.vmdk
# sudo qemu-img info /dev/sdb
# sudo qemu-img convert -p /vagrant/box-disk1.vmdk /dev/sdb
#
# NB you need to install the VirtualBox Extension Pack.

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu-16.04-amd64"

  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.linked_clone = true
    vb.memory = 1024
    vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--usb", "on"]
    #vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--usbehci", "on"] # USB 2.0
    vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--usbxhci", "on"] # USB 3.0
    # see https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#settings-usb
    # list devices with VBoxManage list usbhost
    vb.customize [
      "usbfilter", "add", "0",
      "--target", :id,
      "--name", "USB DISK",
      "--manufacturer", "TODO",
      "--product", "TODO"]
  end

  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    apt-get update
    apt-get install -y qemu-utils
  SHELL
end