Vagrant is a SSH frontend for virtual machines which makes it really simple to VMs.
For a Vagrant template see: https://github.com/cirosantilli/vagrant-template
Vagrant is a frontend to providers like VirtualBox (default), VMware, Docker, QEMU via https://github.com/pradels/vagrant-libvirt/, so you should get those working before using Vagrant.
First create a working directory:
mkdir vagrant
cd vagrant
View available local base boxes:
vagrant box list
This does not list boxes which you have modified the state: e.g., if you start with precise64, make two Vagrantfiles, and make some operations on each, this will only list the base box precise64. There seems to be no interface way of doing that, except going into .vagrant and hacking IDs of config files based on IDs you see on your provider's interface.
Add a box from URL, name it my_precise32:
vagrant box add precise32 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box
The box name can be used to refer to the box from the command line as in:
vagrant box remove name
or on Vagrantfiles:
config.vm.box = 'name'
Adding two boxes with same name is an error, with --force overwrites.
vagrant box add my_precise32 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box
vagrant box add my_precise32 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box
The box index from the makers of Vagrant can be found at: https://vagrantcloud.com. It is in beta. They do not store the boxes themselves, only links to the boxes and metadata. Integrates with the vagrant command line utility. With it, it is possible to simply write in the Vagrantfile:
config.vm.box_url = 'cirosantilli/precise64_softcover'
or on the command line;
vagrant box add precise32 'cirosantilli/precise64_softcover'
A fine list of third-party free boxes can be found at: http://www.vagrantbox.es/
Create an init file for a vagrant project with an existing box:
vagrant init precise32
The Vagrantfile file will contain:
config.vm.box = "precise32"
But not the box URL.
Also specify the URL, and download box if it is not present:
vagrant init precise32 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box
The Vagrantfile file will contain:
config.vm.box = "precise32"
config.vm.box_url = "http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box"
so that if anyone else uses this Vagrantfile, vagrant up will automatically download the box from the URL.
For this reason you should always specify the URL in your Vagrantfile.
Boot the box configured in current dir:
vagrant up
The machine is running on the background.
Access the box configured in current dir via SSH:
vagrant ssh
You are now in a virtual shell inside the virtual machine. To exit it do a Ctrl+D.
The new machine will have:
- a regular user named vagrant, who can
sudowithout password - a
/vagrantdirectory which is the host's directory containing the Vagrantfile mounted.
Stop the machine from running to save CPU:
vagrant suspend
The machine state is unchanged.
Resume a suspend:
vagrant resume
Shutdown the virtual machine:
vagrant halt
The machine's persistent state such as hard disk remains.
halt + up:
vagrant reload
View the running status of the machine:
vagrant status
Destroy machine, including persistent state like hard disk:
vagrant destroy
Does not remove the vagrant configuration files in current directory.
Provisioning is automatically running commands on the box when it is first upped, typically to install programs.
To provision with a sh file use:
config.vm.provision :shell, :path => "bootstrap.sh"
where the path is relative to the directory containing the Vagrantfile.
Use script from a string:
config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => <<EOF
touch /tmp/shell-provision
EOF
Vagrant also supports specialized provisioners such as Ansible, Chef and Puppet.
Provision running box:
vagrant provision
Up without provisioning:
vagrant up --no-provision
Add the following to your configuration file:
config.vm.network :private_network, ip: "192.168.3.4"
config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 3000, host: 3000
Now requests on the host 192.168.3.4:3000 will be redirected to the guest at 192.168.3.4:3000. This way you can run a server on the guest, and test it on your browser from the host!
Vagrant forwards by default the host's localhost:2222 to the guest's localhost:22, and 8080 to 80. This way, from any directory in the host is is possible to connect to the guest via SSH by doing ssh -p 2222 vagrant@localhost and then entering the password for user vagrant which is vagrant by default.
Plugins are installed on the host and give extra capabilities to Vagrant.
List installed plugins:
vagrant plugin list
See synced folders.
Synced folders are simply mounted from host to guest:
config.vm.synced_folder "shared_home", "/dir"
The directory must exist on the host, but is automatically created if it does not exist on the guest.
If you share the vagrant home or its parents, you cannot ssh into the machine anymore because the .ssh will disappear.
The base boxes (added via add) are stored under ~/.vagrant.d/boxes. These are not the actual state machines, whose directory depends on which provider you use.
To actually get the box state, it seems that the only way is to do provider specific things.
Create new box
The typical workflow is to:
-
start with the officially supported box like an Ubuntu one
-
create a script / Chef Recipe / Puppet Recipe that installs everything that needs to be installed
-
once satisfied, package the box because
- other people can download it faster because it is a single file rather than multiple GET requests to different servers
- installations may fail, for example due to Internet failures.
To package the box, simply do:
vagrant package --base name --output path/to/output.box
where name is:
-
optionally set with:
config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v| v.customize [ 'modifyvm', :id, '--name', name ] endIt is a good idea to always use that.
-
found under the box GUI as shown at: http://abhishek-tiwari.com/hacking/creating-a-new-vagrant-base-box-from-an-existing-vm
And we are done!
A good place to store open source boxes for download as of 2014-03 is Source Forge, which allows fast unlimited downloads, soft 5Gb disk space, and does not mind if your source is hosted on GitHub: http://sourceforge.net/blog/github-projects-downloads-are-welcome. For large files such as VMs, you will need to use a scp upload: https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/wiki/SCP, and it takes around 20 hours to complete.
Will be much harder, as it requires you to install necessary dependencies to Vagrant.
Only do this if you really have no alternative.