Provision Blocks

Provision blocks define steps to run on the guest after boot. They execute in order and abort on the first failure.

Shell Provisioner

Inline Command

provision "shell" {
    inline "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y nginx"
}

Executes the command directly on the guest via SSH.

Script File

provision "shell" {
    script "scripts/setup.sh"
}

The script file is uploaded to /tmp/vmctl-provision-<step>.sh on the guest, made executable with chmod +x, and executed. The path is resolved relative to the VMFile directory.

Validation

A shell provisioner must have exactly one of inline or script. Specifying both or neither is an error.

File Provisioner

provision "file" {
    source "config/app.conf"
    destination "/etc/app/app.conf"
}

Uploads a local file to the guest via SFTP.

Required Fields

Execution Behavior

• Provisioners run sequentially in the order they appear.
• Shell provisioners stream stdout and stderr to your terminal in real-time.
• A non-zero exit code from any shell provisioner aborts the sequence.
• All output is also logged to provision.log in the VM's work directory.
• vmctl waits up to 120 seconds for SSH to become available before starting provisioners.