GETTING STARTED WITH

VAGRANT

Vagrant is a tool that manages virtual machines for you, using a simplified

command line interface. It reads from a configuration file, named “Vagrantfile”, to

build the virtual machine initially. It handles networking and port forwarding,

setting up shared folders, and has commands to SSH into the box, suspend and

resume your VM, etc. Vagrant’s big selling point is that it can create identical

virtual machines every time, based off of a simple config file. These VMs are

disposable, you can destroy and recreate them as needed.

Since Vagrant’s inception in early 2010, it has grown to be used by thousands of

companies worldwide, including Puppet Labs, BBC, Mozilla, Nokia, and many

others.

1. Installing Vagrant
The first step for getting started with Vagrant is to install Vagrant and it’s

dependency, VirtualBox. Vagrant can work with other providers, such as VMWare

Workstation, but it requires additional work and sometimes paid plugins. It’s

easiest to get started with VirtualBox, which is free, and has versions for Windows,

Mac and Linux.

2. Download the extension pack (Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack) for all

supported platforms, and install it by double clicking on the downloaded file

once VirtualBox has been installed.

3. Navigate to the Vagrant website, and click Download. Download the newest

version for your operating system.

4. Install Vagrant using the installer you downloaded

5. You should now have access to the vagrant command from your command

line

2. Create your first VM

1. Open up the command prompt

2. Run vagrant init precise32 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box

3. Now you can run vagrant up

If you’re working with a project that contains a Vagrantfile:

1. Clone the repository to your local computer using your Git client of choice

(assuming the project is in Git or a similar VCS)

Cygwin.

3. Type vagrant up , and wait for Vagrant to provision the virtual machine. This

may take a while, depending on the provisioning scripts

4. Navigate to http://localhost:XXXX in your web browser, where XXXX is the

port you have setup to forward to Apache/Nginx/Whatever. Projects should

document this, and Vagrant should also tell you which ports it is forwarding.

With Vagrant, vagrant up is all you need to work on any project, to install every

dependency that project needs, and to setup any networking and synced folders so

you can continue working from the comfort of your own machine.

SSH Access
If you require SSH access to your virtual machine, it’s as simple as

running vagrant ssh . You can switch to the root user via sudo su . No password is

required.

The project source code will be mounted in /var/www/html .

You may later resume your VM using vagrant resume .

Cleaning Up Your VM
If you wish to destroy your VM to free up disk space, simply run vagrant destroy .

This will not delete any files in your repository folder.

You can later run vagrant up to create a new virtual machine.

Vagrantfiles
As mentioned previously, Vagrant reads a configuration file from the directory you

run vagrant from, called “Vagrantfile”. This file should be commited with your

project into version control. Each project should have it’s own Vagrantfile. This

may seem like a pain, but Vagrant sets up port forwarding for you, so it’s quite

easy to use. Run vagrant up , then navigate to localhost:5050 to get to Project

XYZ.

The Vagrantfile is defined using a Ruby DSL. You can find in depth

documentation over atVagrantUp.com. Here’s a sample file from one of my starter

templates, which you can feel free to experiment with or use in your own projects.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

# We use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) as our box. This was the only

# stable box that worked in all our environments. We use 13.04 (Raring

# Ringtail) repository sources in Puppet though.

config.vm.box = "precise32"

config.vm.box_url = "http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box"

# Map port 5000 on the host machine to port 80 on the guest (WordPress)

config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 5000

# Map port 5001 on the host machine to port 8000 on the guest (phpMyAdmin)

config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8000, host: 5001

# Map the repository folder to /var/www/html/wordpress as well as /vagrant

config.vm.synced_folder "./", "/var/www/html/wordpress"

# Use Puppet to provision our virtual machine

config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|

puppet.manifests_path = "vagrant/manifests"

puppet.manifest_file = "init.pp"

end

end

You can see that the syntax is very straight forward. Here, we are setting up a

Ubuntu VM, forwarding port 5000 on the host machine to port 80 on the VM.

We’re also going to map the folder with the Vagrantfile in it (our project folder) to

/var/www/html/wordpress.
Finally, we’re going to run a Puppet manifest, vagrant/manifests/init.pp to

“provision'” the vm. Provisioning just means installing and configuring software as

needed. Puppet is an automated way of doing this. Vagrant supports plain bash

scripts, Puppet, or Chef.

If you’d like to see the accompanying Puppet manifest, check it out on GitHub.

Vagrant Commands
For a full list of commands, please refer to the documentation.

Important commands:

vagrant up

Run this from your project directory to bring up a new virtual machine based on

the Vagrantfile in the current directory.

vagrant suspend

Suspend the virtual machine so it’s no longer using memory. The VM’s state is

saved.

vagrant resume

Resume a suspended virtual machine, restoring it’s state.

vagrant destroy
Shutdown and destroy a virtual machine. This won’t affect your project at all.

vagrant provision

Re-run the provisioning scripts.

vagrant reload

Shutdown and restart the VM to apply any chances made to your Vagrantfile such

as new port forwarding configurations. Will also re-run the provisioning scripts.

vagrant ssh

SSH into your VM. No credentials needed. You’ll be SSH’d in as

the vagrant user, but you can switch to root by running sudo su .

Source: http://brandonwamboldt.ca/getting-started-with-vagrant-1284/