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How to create a sandbox with a specific duration

Use --duration with whzbox create aws or whzbox create azure to request a sandbox lifetime.

Prerequisites

  • A valid Whizlabs session or an interactive terminal for re-login
  • The whzbox binary on your PATH

Steps

1. Run create with a duration

whzbox create aws --duration 2h

whzbox accepts Go duration syntax. The current implementation allows values that round into the range 1h through 9h.

2. Verify the expiration time

whzbox list

The EXPIRES column should reflect the requested lifetime.

Verification

For a machine-readable check, use:

whzbox create aws --duration 90m --json | jq -r '.expires_at'

90m is rounded up before the upstream API call, so the requested lifetime becomes 2h.

Azure uses the same whole-hour rounding but has a smaller range:

whzbox create azure --duration 2h

Azure accepts 1h through 3h. GCP accepts only 1h.

Troubleshooting

Problem: the command rejects the duration

AWS rejects values that round below 1h or above 9h. Azure rejects values below 1h or above 3h. GCP rejects every value except 1h.

Problem: a new sandbox was not created

create can reuse an unexpired cached sandbox for the same provider. Check the current cache with:

whzbox list

If you need a fresh sandbox, destroy the current one first.