Vagrant

Official website https://www.vagrantup.com/

Resources

Download

The version available now is 1.8.1.

Use vagrant -v to see the vagrant version currently installed in your machine.

Documentation

https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/

Books

• Vagrant Virtual Development Environment Cookbook (2015)
• Creating Development Environments with Vagrant (2015, 2nd Ed)
• Pro Vagrant (2015)
• Vagrant: Up and Running (2013)

A simple example

$ mkdir precise32
$ cd precise32
$ vagrant init hashcorp/precise32
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.
$ cat Vagrant
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "hashcorp/precise32"
end
$ vagrant up
vm
* The box 'hashcorp/precise32' could not be found.

The solution from stackoverflow works.

If we open VirtualBox GUI, we will see a new guest machine called precise32_default_XXXXXXXX is created and running though we do not see Ubuntu precise 32 desktop application in a new window.

Some commands

vagrant up
vagrant halt # gracefully shut down

vagrant suspend 
vagrant resume

vagrant destroy # stops the running machine Vagrant is managing and destroys all resources

vagrant box SUBCOMMANDS
vagrant box remove ubuntu/trusty32

vagrant ssh

vagrant package # This packages a currently running VirtualBox environment into a re-usable box.

Where is vagrant saving boxes files

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10155708/where-does-vagrant-download-its-box-files-to

• Windows: C:/Users/USERNAME/.vagrant.d/boxes
• Linux and Mac: ~/.vagrant.d/boxes/

We can change the default directory by modifying the VAGRANT_HOME variable. See https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/other/environmental-variables.html.

Vagrantfile

Vagrantfile is just Ruby.

Vagrantfile template

If we run vagrant init, we will get the following vagrantfile.

VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  # ...
end

Precise32

VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "hashcorp/precise32"
end

config.vm

Config namespace: config.vm

The settings within config.vm modify the configuration of the machine that Vagrant manages.

• config.vm.boot_timeout
• config.vm.box
• config.vm.box_url
• config.vm.communicator
• config.vm.hostname
• config.vm.provider
• config.vm.synced_folder

Boxes

Download a box w/ initializing an env

vagrant box add ubuntu/trusty64

You can also quickly initialize a Vagrant environment with vagrant init ubuntu/trusty64.

We can also specify an URL to add/download a box.

vagrant box add http://servername/boxes/environment.box

Remove a box

Something like

vagrant box remove ubuntu/trusty32

List downloaded boxes

vagrant box list

Create a new box/Packaging a VirtualBox machine

Suppose we use vagrant to create a new box based on ubuntu/trusty64. We ssh to the box and install some software (eg r-base-core). We use vagrant halt to shut down the box. Now we can package this new box.

$ VBoxManage list vms # find out the vm name (vm is created by Vagrant)
$ vagrant package --base=trusty64_default_1451665747284_29528 --output=mytest.box

To test the new box, we can copy the box to your local Vagrant cache.

$ vagrant box add mytest.box --name=mytestbox
$ vagrant box list
mytestbox       (virtualbox, 0)
ubuntu/trusty64 (virtualbox, 20151217.0.0)

Create a new directory so we can test the new box.

cd ..
mkdir mytestbox
cd mytestbox
vagrant init mytestbox  # create Vagrantfile

Note that we can not use vagrant up to start the box now. If we try to run it, we will get the following error about the SSH authentication.

    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Authentication failure. Retrying...

I have to use Ctrl+C to stop the process and then use vagrant destroy to destroy the (unsuccessfully) running virtual machine.

Go ahead to modify the Vagrantfile created by vagrant init mytestbox command to use the correct SSH username/password. By default, Vagrant relies on a common public key that is used by most box publishers that allows access to an account called vagrant. After the first login, Vagrant will place a key in the appropriate account; so, if desired, the password can be removed from the Vagrantfile after the first boot.

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "mytestbox"
  config.ssh.username="ubuntu"
  config.ssh.password="ubuntu"
end

Strangely, though I can run vagrant up, I cannot use the password I created when I try the vagrant ssh command. I found the solution is to make sure the username and password used in the Vagrantfile the same as the virtual machine; in this case since I am using the ubuntu/trusty64 box, I should use the vagrant/vagrant as the username/password in the Vagrantfile. That is the correct Vagrantfile should be

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "mytestbox"
  config.ssh.username="vagrant"
  config.ssh.password="vagrant"
end

Now we can run vagrant up and vagrant ssh commands. We could check R should be available in the virtual machine.