Instant Fresh openSUSE Tumbleweed with Docker and Vagrant Images

On my machines I run openSUSE Leap (download), a stable distribution that follows the SUSE Linux Enterprise service packs. But frequently my task is to reproduce or fix a bug in openSUSE Tumbleweed (download), the hottest rolling distribution.

In the past, I would take an ISO image of the installation DVD and install a virtual machine from scratch. (To say nothing about burning a CD, copying a boot floppy, and reinstalling a physical machine. I've been doing this for too long.)

Fortunately, things got easier with ready-made disk images for containers (Docker/Podman) and virtual machines (Vagrant).

With Docker

Get the latest Tumbleweed image from the Docker hub:

$ docker pull opensuse/tumbleweed

Run it:

$ docker run -it opensuse/tumbleweed bash
8484d09e2380:/ # grep VERSION_ID /etc/os-release
VERSION_ID="20200118"
8484d09e2380:/ # ...
...
8484d09e2380:/ # exit

Clean up, removing the container or even the Tumbleweed image:

$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE               COMMAND  CREATED          STATUS                     PORTS NAMES
8484d09e2380   opensuse/tumbleweed "bash"   58 minutes ago   Exited (127) 9 seconds ago       hungry_northcutt
$ docker rm 8484d09e2380
8484d09e2380
$ docker rmi opensuse/tumbleweed:latest 

With Vagrant

Vagrant virtual machines work with a context directory and a config file, so let's create them:

$ mkdir vagrant-tw-test; cd $_
$ vagrant init opensuse/Tumbleweed.x86_64
A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now
ready to `vagrant up` [...]

The up step downloads the base image ("box") that we declared previously, and brings up our VM instance. The ssh step connects there.

$ vagrant up
[...]
$ vagrant ssh
> grep VERSION_ID /etc/os-release 
VERSION_ID="20200114"
> ...
...
> exit

Clean up:

$ vagrant halt     # stop the VM
$ vagrant destroy  # remove its disk image
$ vagrant prune    # remove the box (base image)

See details in Meike Chabowski's article Vagrant Boxes with openSUSE Tumbleweed.