This is a JSON template, a preseeding configuration for the Debian Installer (d-i), and helper scripts to automatically build Vagrant boxes [1] from Debian "testing" daily snapshots [2] with HashiCorp's Packer [3], which carry a base system.

To use this, a Packer binary [4] and Virtualbox [5] must be present. There's a Debian package of Packer [6] becoming available for Debian 9, and other distributions have packages for that, too. I've tested everything against Virtualbox 5.1.10, but other versions should also work. The builder of Packer needs the guest additions ISO image for Virtualbox, and downloads the corresponding version from http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox, if it's not to be found in one the usual places for it on the build machine.

There's a Makefile included which conveniently provides the MD5 hash of the Debian netinst ISO for the Packer template. If you have GNU Make and Python2 available you could just do:

$ make create

Otherwise, you could run the template with:

$ MD5=<hash> packer build debian-testing-vagrant.json

where <hash> must be copied from http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/amd64/iso-cd/MD5SUMS (it's the hash for debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso). Like:

$ MD5=b92a4e25eb9997824b6d0f33198327e6 packer build debian-testing-vagrant.json

A fast internet connection is needed for good performance. If the time needed to install the Debian base system within the virtual machine exceeds the preset timeout for Packer to wait for SSH to become available for that (25 minutes), you could expand ssh_wait_timeout in the template as it's needed.

When the box is created it could be used with Vagrant. First, the new box has to be added:

$ vagrant box add debian-testing-vagrant.box --name debian-testing

Then, vagrant init foo could be performed in a random working directory.

Tested with Virtualbox package 5.2.22-126460~Debian~stretch, Packer 1.3.3, Vagrant 1.9.1.

By the way, semi official Debian base boxes for Atlas are provided by the Debian Cloud Team [7].

Have fun!

Links

[1] https://www.vagrantup.com/

[2] http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/

[3] https://www.packer.io/

[4] https://www.packer.io/downloads.html

[5] https://www.virtualbox.org/

[6] https://packages.qa.debian.org/p/packer.html

[7] https://app.vagrantup.com/debian