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)
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.
Examples
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.
A web server
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2" Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config| config.vm.define "web", primary: true do |web| web.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64" web.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest:80, host:8888 web.vm.provision "shell", inline: "apt-get install -y nginx" end end
Start the machine with the vagrant up command. Open a web browser on your host machine at http://localhost:8888. This will present the nginx Welcome page.
See my gist for the output.
A GUI example
Go to
- https://atlas.hashicorp.com/boxes/search. Type 'GUI' to search
- https://atlas.hashicorp.com/chad-thompson/boxes/ubuntu-trusty64-gui
Run vagrant init chad-thompson/ubuntu-trusty64-gui. Edit Vagrantfile.
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config| config.vm.box = "chad-thompson/ubuntu-trusty64-gui" config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vbox| vbox.gui = true end end
Then run vagrant up (1.5GB download).
Note that when I run df -h in the VM, it shows
Filesystem Size Used Avail Mounted on /dev/sda1 21G 3.1G 17G / /vagrant 1.8T 445G 1.4T /vagrant
The /vagrant partition contains the Vagrantfile.
We can also make the Vagrantfile a bit more general by including multiple providers in the same Vagrantfile.
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config| config.vm.box = "chad-thompson/ubuntu-trusty64-gui" config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vbox| vbox.gui = true end config.vm.provider "vmware_fusion" do |fusion| fusion.gui = true end end
Customizing virtual machine settings in VirtualBox
The primary example is changing the settings of the virtual machine to use more (or less) system memory (2GB in the following example) and virtual processors (2 cpus).
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config| config.vm.define "web", primary: true do |web| web.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64" web.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest:80, host:8888 web.vm.provision "shell", inline: "apt-get install -y nginx" web.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vbox| vbox.memory = 2048 vbox.cpus = 2 end end end
Start the vm with the vagrant up command. Verify the system has the amount of memory allocated by issuing the command head /proc/meminfo.
If we like to start a GUI on the vm, just add vbox.gui = true in the vbox block.
web.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vbox| vbox.memory = 2048 vbox.cpus = 2 vbox.gui = true vbox.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--bioslogofadein", "off"] end
The last line use the VBoxManage command to fade the VirtualBox startup logo immediately.
A full listing of available options to modify the runtime is available in the VirtualBox documentation http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html.
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
config.ssh
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/Package 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. (verified!)
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.