vmupdate 0.1.2

Command line utility used to keep your virtual machines up to date.

vmupdate is a command line utility used to keep your virtual machines up to date. It searches your computer for virtualizers, queries them for a list of VM’s, and runs the appropriate update commands.

• Installation

• Usage

• Configuration

• Features

• Troubleshooting

Installation

The recommended installation tool is pip:

$ pip install vmupdate

Usage

Running vmupdate is just as easy:

$ vmupdate

Or specify a custom config:

$ vmupdate --config "/path/to/config.yaml"

Configuration

Basic

This method is included for simplicity, but is not recommended due to the inherent insecurity of a plaintext password.

Credentials:
  Username: myuser
  Password: mypass

Keyring

If a Password is not specified and Use Keyring is True (default) the password will be retrieved from your host OS’s keyring provider under the name vmupdate.

Credentials:
  Username: myuser

Machines

The Machines section of the config file allows some options to be overriden at the VM level by name.

Machines:
  My Ubuntu Box:
    Username: myuser1
    Password: mypass
  My Arch Box:
    Username: myuser2
    Use Keyring: true

If a Password is not specified and Use Keyring is True the password will be retrieved from your host OS’s keyring provider under the name of the VM (i.e. My Arch Box).

Features

This list will continue expanding with later iterations of the tool.

Virtualizers

• Windows

  • VirtualBox

Guests

• Arch

  • pacman

• Ubuntu

  • apt-get

Troubleshooting

SSH

SSH is used to communicate with VM’s so you will need an SSH server enabled on each virtual machine. This is often then case by default with many *nix installations, but may have to be installed separately.

Port Forwarding

An attempt will be made to forward port 22 on each VM to a unique port on the host if such a forward does not already exist. This only needs to be done once per virtual machine and can only occur if the VM is in a stopped state. If the automatic port forwarding fails, you can configure it yourself using your virtualizer.