Installing in a VM#

A virtual machine is the tested path and the cheapest way to evaluate Wheelhouse. Attach the ISO as a virtual CD, give the machine a disk and at least two NICs, and follow the same installer as a physical box: the same image, the same systemd units and the same first-boot sequence.

What to give it#

Resource	What it needs
Firmware	UEFI or legacy BIOS; both are built into the image. Turn Secure Boot off.
CPU	two cores minimum, four is comfortable
Memory	2 GB minimum, 4 GB comfortable, 8 GB if you plan to install container apps
Disk	one virtual disk, 16 GB minimum, 32 GB or more comfortable
NICs	at least two — one WAN, one LAN. `virtio` works.
Optical	the ISO, attached as a virtual CD

virtio disks work too. From the boot menu onwards the install is identical to the physical path, so Boot it and Every installer question are the pages to follow.

There is no appliance image#

Cloning a VM you built#

To use one machine as a template, build it once and clone it. Two things must differ on every copy.

Regenerate /etc/machine-id. The licence fingerprint and the DHCP client identity are both derived from the machine's identity, so a fleet of clones sharing one machine-id is a fleet of routers that count as the same installation to the licence server and hand the same client identity to your provider.

Give each clone its own host name. It is the router's name, the common name on the self-signed certificate, and how you tell them apart in the fleet view.

For many identical machines built from one description, rather than one machine cloned, use a seed instead — Installing without a keyboard. Each machine's identity is then fresh by construction.

Using a seed on a VM#

A seed is easier on a VM than on hardware: build the ISO and attach it as a second virtual disk rather than writing a USB stick.

bash

tools/wheelhouse-seed.py --user-data seed.yaml --out seed.iso

Then attach seed.iso alongside the Wheelhouse ISO and boot. The installer finds it, installs to the machine's only other disk, and reboots.

What has been verified in a VM#

Booting the live image	Yes, repeatedly.
Installing to a disk and rebooting into it	Yes, both keyboard-driven and unattended from a seed carrying a full 214-command configuration.
Refusing to reinstall over itself with the seed still attached	Yes.
Multi-WAN behaviour	Verified on a dual-WAN VM built from the ISO.

Installing to a disk and rebooting into it has also been done several times on physical hardware, on one machine. No other board is on record. What you need has the whole inventory.