mkoertgen/vagrant_export_vbox_vm_basebox.md

## vagrant_export_vbox_vm_basebox.md

      
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    How to export and optimize a linux VirtualBox Vagrant VM

You can export a base box from your current Vagrant VM work with
vagrant package --base <vm_name> --output <vm_name>.box

However, before doing this you may try to reduce the size of the base box.
Shrinking the box

You should remove any installation files from the vagrant home directory
in the guest VM.
Then do a 1) general clean up, 2) use zerofree and 3) compact your virtual disk image as described
here, here,
here and
here.
Here is what i did:
	sudo aptitude install zerofree
	sudo apt-get clean -y
	sudo apt-get autoclean -y
	sudo rm -rf /usr/src/vboxguest*
	sudo rm -rf /usr/share/doc
	sudo find /var/cache -type f -exec rm -rf {} \;
	
	sudo umount /vagrant
	sudo rm -rf /usr/src/linux-headers*
	sudo rm -rf /usr/share/locale/{af,an,am,ar,ary,as,ast,az,bal,be,bg,bn,bn_IN,bo,br,bs,byn,ca,ca@valencia,ckb,cr,crh,cs,csb,cv,cy,da,de,de_AT,dv,dz,el,en_AU,en_CA,en_GB,eo,es,et,et_EE,eu,fa,fa_AF,fi,fil,fo,fr,frp,fur,fy,ga,gd,gez,gl,gu,gv,haw,he,hi,hr,ht,hu,hy,id,is,it,ja,jv,ka,kk,km,kn,ko,kok,ku,ky,lb,lg,ln,lt,lo,lv,mg,mhr,mi,mk,ml,mn,mr,ms,mt,my,nb,nds,ne,nl,nn,no,nso,oc,or,os,pa,pam,pl,ps,pt,pt_BR,qu,ro,ru,rw,sc,sd,shn,si,sk,sl,so,sq,sr,sr*latin,sv,sw,ta,te,th,ti,tig,tk,tl,tr,trv,tt,ug,uk,ur,urd,uz,ve,vec,vi,wa,wal,wo,xh,zh,zh_HK,zh_CN,zh_TW,zu}

Check what works for you by using sudo du -hs / to check the size of your installation.
Finally reboot the machine using VirtualBox and enter recovery mode through
grub menu (hold shift key during boot). Check partitions using df -h. In my
case (Ubuntu Precise x64) it is /dev/mapper/precise64-root. Then wipe free disk space with zeroes
	zerofree /dev/mapper/precise64-root

which may take some minutes. Finally shut down
	shutdown -h now

Delete all snapshots,
	vagrant snapshot list
	vagrant snapshot delete ...

Compact the disk using VirtualBox console tool
	VBoxManage clonehd box-disk1.vmdk box-disk1.vdi --format vdi
	VBoxManage modifyhd box-disk1.vdi --compact
	del box-disk1.vmdk
	VBoxManage clonehd box-disk1.vdi box-disk0.vmdk --format vmdk
	del box-disk1.vdi

Finally, attach the newly shrunk disk to the VM using VirtualBox GUI and
export your base box
	vagrant package --base <vm_name> --output <vm_name>.box