Vagrant

What is Vagrant?

CLI tool for managing the life-cycle of VMs

• Reproducible local dev environments
• Vagrantfile, akin to Dockerfile for VMs

Installation

See the official Vagrant downloads page
Ubuntu/Debian:

wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install vagrant

You also need VirtualBox, VMware or Hyper-V on your machine.

Important Commands

Initialize a new Vagrant environment by creating a Vagrantfile:
vagrant init
Starts and provisions the Vagrant environment:
vagrant up
Connects to machine via ssh:
vagrant ssh
Outputs status of the machine:
vagrant status
Suspends the machine:
vagrant suspend
Stops the machine:
vagrant halt
Stops and deletes all traces of the machine:
vagrant destroy

Boxes

Vagrant base images are called boxes.
See the official Vagrant boxes page

Synced Folders

By default, Vagrant will share your project directory (the directory with the Vagrantfile) to /vagrant.

Vagrantfile

Example Vagrantfiles:

Vagrantfile for Jenkins

This Vagrantfile installs Jenkins, AWS CLI, unzip and zip tools.

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/focal64"

  # Port forwarding
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 8080, host: 8080

  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    # Update repositories
    sudo apt-get update

    # Install CA certificates (optional but recommended)
    sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates

    # Install Java (a requirement for Jenkins)
    sudo apt-get install -y openjdk-11-jdk

    # Add Jenkins repository
    wget -q -O - https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian/jenkins.io.key | sudo apt-key add -
    sudo sh -c 'echo deb http://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable binary/ > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list'

    sudo apt-get update

    # Install Jenkins
    sudo apt-get install -y jenkins

    # Start Jenkins
    sudo systemctl start jenkins

    # Install necessary utilities
    sudo apt-get install -y unzip
    sudo apt-get install -y zip

    # Install AWS CLI version 2
    curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
    unzip awscliv2.zip
    sudo ./aws/install
  SHELL
end

Vagrantfile using Ansible for provisioning

This Vagrantfile uses an Ansible playbook for provisioning.

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/bionic64"
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 8080
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 443, host: 8081
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8080, host: 8082
  config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
    ansible.playbook = "main.yml"
  end

end

Vagrantfile with advanced networking

This Vagrantfile brings up 2 VMs, assigns them static hostnames and IPs, allows root login and password authentication, and installs Ansible on one of the VMs.

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  # Define VMs
  (1..2).each do |i|
    config.vm.define "vm#{i}" do |vmconfig|

      # Use CentOS 8
      vmconfig.vm.box = "generic/centos8"

      # Set hostname
      vmconfig.vm.hostname = "vm#{i}"

      # Set private network
      vmconfig.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.1#{i}"

      # Sync project directory to /vagrant
      vmconfig.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", type: "virtualbox"

      # Enable provisioning with a shell script
      vmconfig.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
        echo 'vagrant:vagrant' | chpasswd
        sed -i 's/#PermitRootLogin prohibit-password/PermitRootLogin yes/g' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
        sed -i 's/PasswordAuthentication no/PasswordAuthentication yes/g' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
        systemctl restart sshd
      SHELL

      if i == 1
        vmconfig.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
          sudo yum update -y
          sudo yum install -y epel-release
          sudo yum install -y python3-pip gcc openssl-devel libffi-devel python3-devel
          sudo pip3 install --upgrade pip
          sudo pip3 install setuptools_rust
          pip3 install ansible
        SHELL
      end
    end
  end

  # Enable ssh agent forwarding
  config.ssh.forward_agent = true

end