How to make a FreeBSD vm in virtualbox.

[Alfred Perlstein]

Hello Release engineering team & hackers,

Ryan (cc'd) did some work on the recent FreeBSD vms that were released.

Ryan is working at Norse with us and using FreeBSD now.  His background is backend development in io.js, node.js and php on Linux.

He's now trying to get io.js working on FreeBSD.

In doing so he wanted to setup a VM, so he downloaded the vmdk and created a blog post on what was needed to be done in order to get it working under virtualbox.  That blog is here: 

  http://blog.kidicarus.cool/blog/2014/12/24/freebsd-guest-on-mac-osx-host-via-virtualbox/

After he linked it to me, I decided that it would make sense if this was scripted and would really make sense as part of the release process.

I've written a script that will make a .ova that you can one-click import into Virtualbox (and I think Fusion as well) here:

  https://gist.github.com/splbio/84bd4d2122782e99fc5c

What is the best way to get this made into part of the release process so that we can get .ovas shipped as well.

Is there a starting point for integration with the release building process?

One final question, is there a possibility we could add some changes to the image so that it auto-dhcp's an address?  Most people who just download the image won't know to "dhclient em0" or even what an "em0" is.  

Funny fact about "em0": everyone I know who's not a FreeBSD person calls it "Emo" like the "emo kids" with the funny hairstyles.  Here is an image gallery of what I'm talking about: https://www.google.com/search?q=emo&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch

Anyhow, I was wondering what you guys think of adding some hook to the release process to inject a rc.conf entry to make "ifconfig_em0='DHCP'" as part of the build?  Or is there a better way?  Suggestions on a way forward for this?

Alfred Perlstein 
Sr. Director, Appliance & Kernel Engineering 
Norse 
cell: 415 312 3931