How to install Vagrant in easy steps

Details



Vagrant is a great and popular tool for building virtual machines in any computer.

It is widely used for building a virtual machine for development purposes with the exact same environment as in the production server.

This virtual machine can be replicated to as many other computers as you want, ensuring all developers will be working in the same environment, providing great consistency to the project.

Prerequisites: Have installed Oracle VirtualBox.

 

Download Vagrant from here.

You need to choose based on the OS of the host computer. Most popular installations are:

macOS

brew install vagrant

MS Windows x64

https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.3.4/vagrant_2.3.4_windows_amd64.msi

Ubuntu / Debian

wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /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

 

 

Once installed, open and ssh console (power shell in Windows and verify the installation):

$ vagrant
Usage: vagrant [options] <command> [<args>]

    -v, --version                    Print the version and exit.
    -h, --help                       Print this help.

 ...

 

If you get and error, try log out and login you user.

 

Once done you are ready to install a Virtual Machine.

create a project directory:

mkdir cool_vagrant_project

 cd into it, then execute:

vagrant init

 this will place a Vagrantfile in this directory with basic conf for up and running your virtual machine

If you open with a text editor the Vagrantfile

you will see something like this:

 

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

# All Vagrant configuration is done below. The "2" in Vagrant.configure
# configures the configuration version (we support older styles for
# backwards compatibility). Please don't change it unless you know what
# you're doing.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # The most common configuration options are documented and commented below.
  # For a complete reference, please see the online documentation at
  # https://docs.vagrantup.com.

  # Every Vagrant development environment requires a box. You can search for
  # boxes at https://vagrantcloud.com/search.
  config.vm.box = "base"

  # Disable automatic box update checking. If you disable this, then
  # boxes will only be checked for updates when the user runs
  # `vagrant box outdated`. This is not recommended.
  # config.vm.box_check_update = false

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine. In the example below,
  # accessing "localhost:8080" will access port 80 on the guest machine.
  # NOTE: This will enable public access to the opened port
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine and only allow access
  # via 127.0.0.1 to disable public access
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"

  # Create a private network, which allows host-only access to the machine
  # using a specific IP.
  # config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.33.10"

  # Create a public network, which generally matched to bridged network.
  # Bridged networks make the machine appear as another physical device on
  # your network.
  # config.vm.network "public_network"

  # Share an additional folder to the guest VM. The first argument is
  # the path on the host to the actual folder. The second argument is
  # the path on the guest to mount the folder. And the optional third
  # argument is a set of non-required options.
  # config.vm.synced_folder "../data", "/vagrant_data"

  # Provider-specific configuration so you can fine-tune various
  # backing providers for Vagrant. These expose provider-specific options.
  # Example for VirtualBox:
  #
  # config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
  #   # Display the VirtualBox GUI when booting the machine
  #   vb.gui = true
  #
  #   # Customize the amount of memory on the VM:
  #   vb.memory = "1024"
  # end
  #
  # View the documentation for the provider you are using for more
  # information on available options.

  # Enable provisioning with a shell script. Additional provisioners such as
  # Ansible, Chef, Docker, Puppet and Salt are also available. Please see the
  # documentation for more information about their specific syntax and use.
  # config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
  #   apt-get update
  #   apt-get install -y apache2
  # SHELL
end

 

To run a virtual machine you need to execute

vagrant up

 but before doing this you need to change this config file a little bit so you can have the virtual machine provisioned, running in private network and sync'ing a project

You can find online many places where you can download a Vagrant file to get up and running your project in no time.

All of them install an Operating System in the virtual machine, most common are Ubuntu or CentOS and then provision it with all the dependencies required by an specific environment.

For the projects presented in this website you may want to check this post: Vagrant Virtual Machine with CentOS 7, Nginx, MariaDb, NodeJs and PHP 8