I got intrigued by this Dutch article mentioning Docker and CoreOS. So on this Saturday, after reading the article, I made an attempt to setup CoreOS on VirtualBox (already installed on my Mac).
I wanted to start with a bare minimum install to see what CoreOS was all about and run into newbie problems almost straight away, attempting to install it, as a standalone environment via an ISO file. The following will give you a heads-up and start your Docker experience within 30 minutes or so. If not done so already, download VirtualBox to get started.
Okay, so I downloaded the ISO of CoreOS here:
- Booting CoreOS from an ISO (150 Mb at current)
VirtualBox is already installed on my Mac, and updated to the latest version, I created a default Linux environment via the wizard:
Then I associated my downloaded CoreOS ISO file to the IDE controller under the storage section.
Okay, Everything setup and ready to go.
After startup, you will be automatically logged in via the “core” account.
So how to get a standalone install up and running…?
I found the following article “Installing CoreOS” which is very helpful (but not with some of my blanks filled in 😛 ).
So just like in the article, I started started with (on my VirtualBox disk /dev/sda)
sudo coreos-install -d /dev/sda -C stable
Cool, here we go…
Tada, I thought, But just as my counterpart on “Installing CoreOS“, he didn’t read the CoreOS manuals and I didn’t properly read his (LOL)
…because after a restart via…
sudo shutdown -h now
…and then removing the ISO file from the virtual CD/DVD controller…
The new VirtualBox CoreOS environment comes up with…
PASSWORD? Duh?! What password and/or for which user? Root? Core?
Long story short…There is no password (as also mentioned in “Installing CoreOS“). So I also started actually reading the CoreOS documentation, especially this first part of creating the cloud-config file.
I don’t have GitHub (or at least not an account that is actually used by me), so I wanted to start with an appropriate default called user “marco”.
Now how to create a “password hash” with the current bare minimum in place?
After attaching the ISO file again to the CD/DVD controller, the machine will startup again with its LiveCD/ISO standard environment.
OpenSSL is available in this bare CoreOS minimum environment ,so I did the following…
sudo openssl passwd -1 > cloud-config-file
I entered a password like “test” and confirmed it in the verifying step.
The newly created file cloud-config-file has now the password hash value which I edited with via as specified in the cloud-config file documentation (in this case, for now, with the bare minimum: a user account).
When I had finished this, updating the file cloud-config-file, I made another attempt at downloading and installing the CoreOS software.
sudo coreos-install -d /dev/sda -C stable -c cloud-config-file
Another “Success!” remark, so via via shutting down the VirtualBox environment again, removing the ISO file from the CD/DVD controller, it now reboots and you are able to login via your named “user” and with the password value used for creating the “password hash”.
So now its time to see what it can do 😉
So next up trying the following.
- Getting started with Docker
- Running CoreOS on Vagrant
- Docker getting started guide
- An alternative: Boot2Docker
Tip before hand: add an extra (local) virtual network adapter, so you can connect and open a shell to your VirtualBox CoreOS machine for, for example, committing Docker commands and more.
HTH/M
