Virtual Machines and NAV¶

Virtualization technology makes working with NAV development much easier. It also enables user’s to try out NAV quickly, using virtual appliances.

NAV’s source code includes tools for using Docker containers during development, and for producing an OVF-based virtual appliance running NAV (for testing or production purposes).

Building a Docker image¶

NAV includes a Dockerfile that describes a Debian-based Docker image, which will run all of NAV directly from the source code tree, within a container. You can read more about this in Using NAV with Docker for development.

Build a virtual appliance¶

The tools/virtual-appliance/build-virtual-appliance.sh script uses Packer in conjunction with Virtualbox to produce a Debian Wheezy-based virtual appliance, using the latest release of NAV available from the NAV APT repository.