Linux – Vagrant box most similar to Amazon EC2 instances

amazon ec2linuxpackage-managementvagrant

Are there any 'boxes' available to download for Vagrant that closely mirror the Linux version and packages available for Amazon EC2 instances?

I am testing locally using Vagrant, currently using the Precise32 box. I am deploying my code to Amazon EC2 instances with the 'Amazon Linux AMI 2013.03' AMI.

The problem I am facing is that the packages available to install on the Precise32 box have different names e.g.

  • php5-fpm – in the vagrant box
  • php54-fpm – in the Amazon EC2 instance.

Although I could fix this by using variables in the Puppet config files to handle the different package names, that sounds a bit like a hack.

So are there any vagrant boxes available that will mirror the Amazon EC2 environment closely.

Or is it possible for me to tell a vagrant box to use the same packages source as an Amazon EC2 instance?

To clarify one thing – the reason I want to do this is so that I can test locally without having to commit everything first. Although Vagrant has support for AWS as a provider, that wouldn't actually achieve being able to test locally.

Best Answer

No, there is no way to use Amazon Linux outside of EC2. If you want to use a Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivative (which Amazon Linux is), I recommend using CentOS 6 both in Vagrant and on EC2. You will find many CentOS base boxes here, and the official AMIs are listed here.