scratchpad

# Scratchpad

A dumping ground of stuff that didn't make it into the lessons.

## Using scripts for provisioning.
Note from Eaton: I just discovered the joy of shell-script based provisioning, and especially for beginners it can make things WAY simpler. It's limited, but might make sense because it gets them over the hump of "provisioning a bare machine" conceptually. The upper portion of the Vagrantfile at https://github.com/eaton/mutter/blob/master/Vagrantfile is an example. It MIGHT be worth mentioning initially.

# Backlog
Lessons which could / should be covered in a future series instead of this one.

## Lesson Title: Packaging Boxes
Major Objective: By the end of this lesson you will be able to create a new box binary which can be used as a starting point for future projects, and describe when it is appropriate to do so.
Student Self-Check Tasks: you can vagrant up a new VM with your custom box
Rationale: You probably don't want to, but you can skip the provisioning steps and start with a ready-made-perfect box. It's super simple to do once you have the "perfect" box. The major disadvantage is that your starting box needs to be kept up-to-date with the latest security patches (less of a problem for local environments) or versions of software.

## Lesson Title: Startup and Shutdown Scripts
Major Objective:
Student Self-Check Tasks:
Rationale: I'd love a MySQL snapshot on quitting so that I could destroy my Vagrant box and not have to worry about stuff being stuck "inside" the machine. Possibly: http://askubuntu.com/questions/48746/how-to-configure-shutdown-tasks