Creating virtual machines with Vagrant

 Posted on June 1, 2017  |  4 minutes  |  Felipe Juarez

It’s been awhile since I wrote a post, but in compensation I would make a series of post talking about deploying applications with edeliver. But for this, we need to prepare the path. So, in this first post I will talk about Vagrant and how to use to setup an environment.

First of all, we’re going to install Vagrant and Virtual Box. We’ll download Vagrant from this link and follow the instructions(i.e. next, next, next, agree, install) When that is complete, we can verify the correct installation using the command vagrant -v

❯ vagrant -v
Vagrant 1.9.3

We can download Virtual Box from this link. This step is required because Vagrant use images for running in a virtual machine. You can configure Vagrant to be used with other providers, but that is out of this scope.

After that is finished, we can start with our first command which is vagrant init. Once that you run the command you will see a message like this

❯ vagrant init
A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now
ready to `vagrant up` your first virtual environment! Please read
the comments in the Vagrantfile as well as documentation on
`vagrantup.com` for more information on using Vagrant.

And a file called Vagrant is created with the following content (without comments)

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "base"
end

Change the config.vm.box = "base" for config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64" and then run vagrant up you will see something like this:

❯ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Box 'ubuntu/trusty64' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
    default: Box Provider: virtualbox
    default: Box Version: >= 0
==> default: Loading metadata for box 'ubuntu/trusty64'
    default: URL: https://atlas.hashicorp.com/ubuntu/trusty64
==> default: Adding box 'ubuntu/trusty64' (v20170526.4.0) for provider: virtualbox
    default: Downloading: https://atlas.hashicorp.com/ubuntu/boxes/trusty64/versions/20170526.4.0/providers/virtualbox.box
==> default: Successfully added box 'ubuntu/trusty64' (v20170526.4.0) for 'virtualbox'!
==> default: Importing base box 'ubuntu/trusty64'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Checking if box 'ubuntu/trusty64' is up to date...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: vagrant_default_1496339776983_29558
==> default: Clearing any previously set forwarded ports...
==> default: Fixed port collision for 22 => 2222. Now on port 2200.
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 (guest) => 2200 (host) (adapter 1)
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2200
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default:
    default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace
    default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security.
    default:
    default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
    default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
    default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
    default: The guest additions on this VM do not match the installed version of
    default: VirtualBox! In most cases this is fine, but in rare cases it can
    default: prevent things such as shared folders from working properly. If you see
    default: shared folder errors, please make sure the guest additions within the
    default: virtual machine match the version of VirtualBox you have installed on
    default: your host and reload your VM.
    default:
    default: Guest Additions Version: 4.3.36
    default: VirtualBox Version: 5.1
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /Users/makingdevs/Documents/vagrant

This shows you the basic setup for an ubuntu image. If you open your Virtual Box, you will see a new image created and ready to use. You can enter to that machine via SSH with vagrant ssh

❯ vagrant ssh
Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-119-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

 System information disabled due to load higher than 1.0

  Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest:
    http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud

New release '16.04.2 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:~$

In order to stop the machine you will use vagrant halt

❯ vagrant halt
==> default: Attempting graceful shutdown of VM...

In case that you won’t need it anymore you can destroy it with vagrant destroy

❯ vagrant destroy
    default: Are you sure you want to destroy the 'default' VM? [y/N] y
==> default: Destroying VM and associated drives...

As complementary note, if you want to know which images you have downloaded you can always use vagrant box list to show them.

❯ vagrant box list
centos/7        (virtualbox, 1702.01)
ubuntu/trusty64 (virtualbox, 20170526.4.0)
operations  vagrant  virtual box  developer tools 
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