Red Hat Enterprise Linux create Libvirt Vagrant Box for local testing

RHEL in Vagrant with Libvirt.md

Steps

Replace X with major version and Y with minor version in this guide

1. Register for a no-cost Red Hat Developer subscription
2. Download RHEL DVD Image (Tested with 8.6 and 7.9)
3. Create a QEMU/KVM libvirt VM (I use virt-manager) Attach this boot image as boot disk. I used 20GB as the disk size. Name this VM rhelX.Y
4. Set installation destination to the local drive
5. configure networking so that you have internet access (Should work out of the box with DHCP)
6. Create a user "vagrant" with password "vagrant"
7. Select minimal installation
8. Proceed with installation
9. After installation is complete, reboot
10. Log in as vagrant user and elevate to root sudo su
11. Register to Red Hat and log in subscription-manager register
12. Install necessary packages yum install -y openssh wget gcc
13. Configure sudoers visudo Add a line vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
14. Shut down the VM
15. Create a directory for the box and navigate to it mkdir rhelX && cd rhelX
16. Compress the disk image to this directory sudo qemu-img convert -c -O qcow2 /var/lib/libvirt/images/rhelX.Y.qcow2 box.img
17. Make your user owner of this file sudo chown USER:USER box.img

Replace USER with your username

18. Create a file metadata.json with the content

{
  "provider"     : "libvirt",
  "format"       : "qcow2",
  "virtual_size" : 20
}

19. Create a file Vagrantfile with the content

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.ssh.username = "vagrant"
  config.ssh.password = "vagrant"
  config.vm.provider :libvirt do |libvirt|
    libvirt.driver = "kvm"
    libvirt.host = 'localhost'
    libvirt.uri = 'qemu:///system'
  end
  config.vm.define "new" do |custombox|
    custombox.vm.box = "rhelX"       # REPLACE THIS!!!
    custombox.vm.provider :libvirt do |virt|
      virt.memory = 2048
      virt.cpus = 2
    end
  end
end

20. Create Vagrant box file tar cvzf rhelX.box ./metadata.json ./Vagrantfile ./box.img
21. Import box into Vagrant vagrant box add --name rhelX rhelX.box

You can now use the box with

  host.vm.box = "rhelX"