Demo Lab

Local and cloud demo environments for the RCD-CUI framework.

Pre-Baked Vagrant Boxes

Pre-baked boxes allow you to boot a fully provisioned demo cluster in under 5 minutes instead of the usual 20-30 minute provisioning cycle.

See specs/009-vagrant-prebaked-boxes/quickstart.md for detailed workflows.

Quick Start

# First time: provision and bake
./demo/scripts/demo-setup.sh        # Provisions from scratch, offers to bake at end
./demo/scripts/demo-bake.sh --list  # Verify baked boxes

# Subsequent runs: boot from baked boxes
./demo/scripts/demo-setup.sh        # Detects boxes, offers fast boot

# Refresh boxes after code changes
./demo/scripts/demo-refresh.sh      # Destroy → provision → bake

QEMU Provider Limitations

QEMU (vagrant-qemu) is supported on a best-effort basis for box baking. Key differences from VirtualBox and libvirt:

• Packaging method: QEMU uses raw disk image export (qemu-img convert) rather than native vagrant package, since vagrant-qemu does not support the package command.
• Box file size: QEMU boxes may be larger than VirtualBox or libvirt equivalents due to the disk conversion process, even with qcow2 compression.
• Additional prerequisites: QEMU baking requires qemu-img and jq to be installed on the host.
• VM halt/restart: During baking, QEMU VMs are halted for disk export and restarted afterward. This adds time compared to other providers.
• Disk location: The script locates QEMU disk images at .vagrant/machines/<vm>/qemu/vq_*/linked-box.img. If your vagrant-qemu version stores disks elsewhere, baking may fail.

Environment Variables

Variable	Values	Default	Description
DEMO_USE_BAKED	0, 1, unset	unset	Force fresh (0), force baked (1), or prompt (unset)
DEMO_PROVIDER	virtualbox, libvirt, qemu	auto-detect	Override provider detection
DEMO_STALE_DAYS	integer	7	Staleness threshold in days