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Vagrant Tutorial – Getting Started With Vagrant In Linux

By sk
Published: Last Updated on 8.1K views

In this Vagrant tutorial, we will learn about Vagrant, vagrant boxes, vagrantfile, provisioning tools, how to install vagrant on Linux operating systems and finally learn a few basic vagrant commands to create and manage virtual machines from command line.

1. Introduction to Vagrant

Vagrant is an open source software for building and maintaining virtual software development environments. It provides a clean, easy to configure, reproducible, and portable development environment. In other words, Vagrant allows us to easily and quickly deploy an universal software development environment that can be used anywhere. Vagrant simply eliminates the "works on my machine" excuse. Because, everyone is working on the same environment with same set of configuration. It doesn't matter what OS they are using.

Vagrant is often used to setup an identical and collaborative working environment for developers to work on a common project. It isolates all required dependencies and their configuration settings in a single, disposable environment. When the other developers create a development environment with the same configuration file, they will get the same environment with same settings.

Vagrant is a cross-platform application written in Ruby language. It supports GNU/Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. It is developed by Hashicorp and released under MIT license.

1.1. Vagrant boxes

The "box" is a format and an extension for Vagrant environments. The vagrant boxes are just the base images. They can be a Virtualbox image or VMware image or a cloud provider's image like Amazon Machine Image (AMI). We can copy the vagrant boxes to any other systems and setup an exact replica of the current development.

There are many pre-configured Vagrant boxes available for download in Vagrant Cloud public repository. If you don't want to use an pre-configured boxes, just create one as per your liking and distribute it to all via this repository.

1.2. Vagrantfile

The operating system and software requirements are defined in a configuration file named "vagrantfile". This file is distributed along with the Vagrant boxes. When you initialize a VM with Vagrant, it will read this file and setup your development environment accordingly. So, the actual purpose of a vagrantfile is to describe the type of the virtual machine and how to configure and provision the VMs.

The following details are defined in a typical vagrantfile:

  • Operating system version E.g. Ubuntu bionic.
  • Enable/disable automatic box update checking.
  • Network configuration;
    • port forwarding,
    • configure a private network (host-only access to the machine),
    • configure public network (bridged-network).
  • Share folders to guest VM.
  • Set preferred provider E.g. virtualbox, kvm.
  • Define total amount of memory to VM.
  • Enable provisioning withe shell script or configuration management tools like Ansible.

1.3. Provisioning tools

Vagrant is not a standalone virtualization platform like KVM or Virtualbox. It is just a wrapper and front-end that sits between a virtualization software and a virtual machine. Vagrant uses various service providers and provisioning tools to create and manage the development environments.

The virtual machines are built on top of popular virtualization applications such as VirtualBox, KVM, Docker, VMware etc., and cloud service providers such as AWS, Azure, GCE and a lot more. You can view the complete list of supported providers here. Vagrant ships out of the box with support for VirtualBox, Hyper-V, and Docker. VirtualBox is the default provider for Vagrant.

Once the Virtual machine is built, we can install the software on it using simple shell scripts and industry-standard configuration management tools such as Ansible, CFEngine, Chef, Docker, Podman, Puppet and Salt etc. The users can also customize the configuration of virtual environments as per their requirement using the provisioning tools.

In a nutshell, the providers (E.g. VirtualBox, AWS) are used to create a virtual environment and the provisioners (E.g. Ansible, Puppet) are used to customize the virtual environments.

2. Install Vagrant On Linux

Vagrant installation is incredibility easy and straight forward. Just download the latest version from the Vagrant download page and install using the standard procedure for your operating systems. To know how to install Vagrant on various Linux platforms, refer the following link.

3. Vagrant Tutorial - Basic Vagrant commands to create and manage virtual machines

Here, I have given examples for only the basic Vagrant commands which we require to setup and manage a virtualized development. To learn the complete Vagrant usage, refer the official documentation given at the end.

3.1. Create Vagrant project directory

First, we need to create a project directory.

I am going to create a directory called myvagrants for my virtual environment:

$ mkdir myvagrants

Cd into that directory to build and store virtual machines:

$ cd myvagrants

3.2. Initialize Vagrant environment

Initialize the Vagrant environment using the following command:

$ vagrant init hashicorp/bionic64

Sample output:

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.

The above command intializes the current directory as default Vagrant environment and create base Vagrantfile.

You can view the content of the newly created vagrantfile using cat command and know the details of the virtual machine that you are going to build:

$ cat Vagrantfile | less

When you start the VM in the subsequent steps, it will download the Ubuntu bionic box published by HashiCorp. The Vagrant team also recommends to use the Bento boxes. They are open source and built for popular providers such as Virtualbox, VMWare, and Parallels. HashiCorp and Bento are the only two officially-recommended box sets.

3.3. Start Virtual machine

Now, create and start the virtual machine according to the vagrantfile (which we created in the earlier step) using command:

$ vagrant up

Sample output:

Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Box 'hashicorp/bionic64' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
    default: Box Provider: virtualbox
    default: Box Version: >= 0
==> default: Loading metadata for box 'hashicorp/bionic64'
    default: URL: https://vagrantcloud.com/hashicorp/bionic64
==> default: Adding box 'hashicorp/bionic64' (v1.0.282) for provider: virtualbox
    default: Downloading: https://vagrantcloud.com/hashicorp/boxes/bionic64/versions/1.0.282/providers/virtualbox.box
Download redirected to host: vagrantcloud-files-production.s3.amazonaws.com
==> default: Successfully added box 'hashicorp/bionic64' (v1.0.282) for 'virtualbox'!
==> default: Importing base box 'hashicorp/bionic64'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Checking if box 'hashicorp/bionic64' version '1.0.282' is up to date...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: myvagrants_default_1597837509450_67666
Vagrant is currently configured to create VirtualBox synced folders with
the `SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate` option enabled. If the Vagrant
guest is not trusted, you may want to disable this option. For more
information on this option, please refer to the VirtualBox manual:

  https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#sharedfolders

This option can be disabled globally with an environment variable:

  VAGRANT_DISABLE_VBOXSYMLINKCREATE=1

or on a per folder basis within the Vagrantfile:

  config.vm.synced_folder '/host/path', '/guest/path', SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate: false
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: Warning: Connection reset. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default: 
    default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace
    default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security.
    default: 
    default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
    default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
    default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
    default: The guest additions on this VM do not match the installed version of
    default: VirtualBox! In most cases this is fine, but in rare cases it can
    default: prevent things such as shared folders from working properly. If you see
    default: shared folder errors, please make sure the guest additions within the
    default: virtual machine match the version of VirtualBox you have installed on
    default: your host and reload your VM.
    default: 
    default: Guest Additions Version: 6.0.10
    default: VirtualBox Version: 6.1
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /home/sk/myvagrants

The above command will download the Ubuntu bionic box from Vagrant cloud, create a new virtual machine named "myvagrants_default_1597837509450_67666", add it to the Virtualbox and start the VM automatically.

You will not see any notifications even though the VM is running. To verify if the VM is running, open the virtualization application (E.g. VirtualBox or Virt-manager) and check if the VM is running or not.

Since Vagrant uses Virtualbox as its default provider, I can see the running VM from the virtualbox manager.

Ubuntu vagrant box running in Virtualbox
Ubuntu vagrant box running in Virtualbox

As you can see, Ubuntu bionic VM is running in Virtualbox.

If you use other provider, for example Virt-manager, open it and check if the Vagrant machine is running.

Debian vagrant box running in Virt-manager
Debian vagrant box running in Virt-manager

3.4. Access Virtual machines

You can connect and access the running VMs using SSH.

To SSH into the running Vagrant box using command, run:

$ vagrant ssh

Sample output:

Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-58-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Wed Aug 24 11:56:42 UTC 2020

  System load:  0.08              Processes:           88
  Usage of /:   2.5% of 61.80GB   Users logged in:     0
  Memory usage: 11%               IP address for eth0: 10.0.2.15
  Swap usage:   0%

 * Are you ready for Kubernetes 1.19? It's nearly here! Try RC3 with
   sudo snap install microk8s --channel=1.19/candidate --classic

   https://microk8s.io/ has docs and details.

0 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.


vagrant@vagrant:~$ 

3.5. Synchronize local and guest Files

Vagrant support file synchronization out of the box. By default, Vagrant shares your project directory (the one containing the Vagrantfile. In my case, it is ~/myvagrants.) to the /vagrant directory in your guest virtual machine.

You can verify it by listing the contents of /vagrant directory in your virtual machine:

vagrant@vagrant:~$ ls /vagrant/
Vagrantfile

Please note that the Vagrantfile that you see inside the virtual machine is actually the same Vagrantfile that is on your actual host machine.

To test if synchronize actually works, create a sample file in /vagrant directory in your guest machine:

vagrant@vagrant:~$ touch /vagrant/test.txt

Exit from your VM's SSH session:

vagrant@vagrant:~$ logout

Now, check your local project directory in your host system. You will see the same file is created on host machine as well.

sk@ostechnix:~/myvagrants$ ls
test.txt Vagrantfile

3.6. Display the status of Virtual machines

To display the state of a virtual machine in a virtual environment, run:

$ vagrant status

Sample output:

Current machine states:

default                   running (virtualbox)

The VM is running. To stop this VM, you can run `vagrant halt` to
shut it down forcefully, or you can run `vagrant suspend` to simply
suspend the virtual machine. In either case, to restart it again,
simply run `vagrant up`.

As you see above, I have only one VM and it is running now.

If the VM is powered off, you will the following output:

Current machine states:

default                   poweroff (virtualbox)

The VM is powered off. To restart the VM, simply run `vagrant up`

3.7. Display status of all Virtual environments

We can display the information about all known virtual environments on our system using the following command:

$ vagrant global-status

Sample output:

id       name    provider   state    directory                           
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2086482  default virtualbox poweroff /home/sk/myvagrants                 
 
The above shows information about all known Vagrant environments
on this machine. This data is cached and may not be completely
up-to-date (use "vagrant global-status --prune" to prune invalid
entries). To interact with any of the machines, you can go to that
directory and run Vagrant, or you can use the ID directly with
Vagrant commands from any directory. For example:
"vagrant destroy 1a2b3c4d"

The above command will list the VM id, name, provider, state of the VM, and the virtual environment directory.

Sometimes the output might be cached and it may not be correct. So, run the following command to remove the invalid entries and get the up-to-date status of the virtual environment:

$ vagrant global-status --prune

3.8. Suspend Virtual machines

To suspend a running VM, run:

$ vagrant suspend

Sample output:

==> default: Saving VM state and suspending execution…

3.9. Resume Virtual machines

To resume a suspended VM in the current virtual environment, run:

$ vagrant resume

Sample output:

==> default: Resuming suspended VM...
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Machine already provisioned. Run `vagrant provision` or use the `--provision`
==> default: flag to force provisioning. Provisioners marked to run always will still run.

3.10. Restart Virtual machines

To restart a running VM, do:

$ vagrant reload

This command will gracefully shutdown the VM and start it again.

3.11. Stop/Shutdown Virtual machines

To stop or shutdown a running VM, do:

$ vagrant halt

3.12. Delete Virtual machines

To stop and delete all traces of a VM, run:

$ vagrant destroy

Type y and hit ENTER to delete the virtual machine.

If you want to delete the VM without any confirmation, run:

$ vagrant destroy -f

3.13. Reset Virtual machines

Sometimes, you might want to reset your virtual machine to its original state, without actually deleting the box. This can be helpful to deploy a clean virtual environment without having to download a vagrant box over and over.

To reset a virtual machine to its original state, simply do:

$ vagrant destroy
$ vagrant up

The first command will shutdown the running virtual machine and delete all the resources associated to it. And the second command will re-create a new fresh Virtual machine using the existing vagrant box.

For more details, refer the following link:

3.14. Run Vagrant commands from any directory

Usually, we start, stop, reload and delete a Vagrant machine from its project's directory, right? Yes! However, we can run Vagrant commands from any directory using the Vagrant machine's ID.

To find the Vagrant machine's ID, run the following command:

$ vagrant global-status

Sample output:

id       name    provider state   directory                           
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ddc1a10  default libvirt shutoff /home/sk/Vagrant/Ubuntu2004         
f4904ad  default libvirt shutoff /home/sk/Vagrant/Archlinux          
831f9c0  default libvirt shutoff /home/sk/Vagrant/Gentoo             
3587422  default libvirt shutoff /home/sk/Vagrant/Rhel8              
b2279ad  default libvirt shutoff /home/sk/Vagrant/Almalinux8         
 
The above shows information about all known Vagrant environments
on this machine. This data is cached and may not be completely
up-to-date (use "vagrant global-status --prune" to prune invalid
entries). To interact with any of the machines, you can go to that
directory and run Vagrant, or you can use the ID directly with
Vagrant commands from any directory. For example:
"vagrant destroy 1a2b3c4d"

As you see in the above output, vagrant global-status command shows the details of all known virtual environments in my system. The first column in the above output shows the ID of each Vagrant machine.

You can use the ID directly with Vagrant commands from any directory. For example, to start a Vagrant machine from any directory, we can simply use:

$ vagrant up b2279ad

This will start the vagrant machine that ID b2279ad.

Run Vagrant commands from any directory
Run Vagrant commands from any directory

Similarly, we can use other Vagrant commands as well.

$ vagrant status b2279ad
$ vagrant ssh b2279ad
$ vagrant halt b2279ad
$ vagrant destroy b2279ad

3.15. List Vagrant boxes

To list all available boxes that are installed with Vagrant, run:

$ vagrant box list

Sample output:

hashicorp/bionic64 (virtualbox, 1.0.282)

If you want to display some additional box details such as author name, website, repository, description etc., use -i flag:

$ vagrant box list -i

Sample output:

generic/alpine38    (virtualbox, 3.1.16)
  - Author: Ladar Levison
  - Website: https://roboxes.org/
  - Artifacts: https://vagrantcloud.com/generic/
  - Repository: https://github.com/lavabit/robox/
  - Description: Basic virtual machine images, for a variety of operating systems/hypervisors, and ready to serve as base bxoes.

3.16. Check if a Vagrant box is outdated

To check if the box you are using on your vagrant environment is outdated, go to the Vagrant environment i.e. project's directory,

$ cd myvagrants/

and run:

$ vagrant box outdated
Checking if box 'hashicorp/bionic64' version '1.0.282' is up to date…

3.17. Update Vagrant boxes

If there are any outdated boxes, you can update them like below:

$ vagrant box update

Sample output:

==> default: Checking for updates to 'hashicorp/bionic64'
default: Latest installed version: 1.0.282
default: Version constraints:
default: Provider: virtualbox
==> default: Box 'hashicorp/bionic64' (v1.0.282) is running the latest version.

3.18. Download Vagrant boxes

The vagrant init command initializes and starts the Vagrant environment by downloading the respective Vagrant box defined in the Vagrantfile.

You can also manually download the Vagrant box and edit its vagrantfile and then start it.

To download a Vagrant box, run:

$ vagrant box add bento/debian-10.5

The above command will download Debian 10.5 version box published by Bento. You will be asked to choose the provider (E.g. virtualbox or vmware) you are currently using now. Just choose one and hit ENTER to download the box.

Sample output:

==> box: Loading metadata for box 'bento/debian-10.5'
    box: URL: https://vagrantcloud.com/bento/debian-10.5
This box can work with multiple providers! The providers that it
can work with are listed below. Please review the list and choose
the provider you will be working with.

1) parallels
2) virtualbox
3) vmware_desktop

Enter your choice: 2
==> box: Adding box 'bento/debian-10.5' (v202008.16.0) for provider: virtualbox
    box: Downloading: https://vagrantcloud.com/bento/boxes/debian-10.5/versions/202008.16.0/providers/virtualbox.box
Download redirected to host: vagrantcloud-files-production.s3.amazonaws.com
==> box: Successfully added box 'bento/debian-10.5' (v202008.16.0) for 'virtualbox'

You can verify it by listing the available boxes:

$ vagrant box list

Sample output:

bento/debian-10.5 (virtualbox, 202008.16.0)
hashicorp/bionic64 (virtualbox, 1.0.282)

All downloaded Vagrant boxes will be available in ~/.vagrant.d/boxes directory in your host system.

3.19. View the size of Vagrant boxes

As stated in the previous section, the downloaded Vagrant boxes are stored in in ~/.vagrant.d/boxes directory.

You can view the list of all downloaded boxes in this directory using command:

$ ls ~/.vagrant.d/boxes
almalinux-VAGRANTSLASH-8          generic-VAGRANTSLASH-debian10
archlinux-VAGRANTSLASH-archlinux  generic-VAGRANTSLASH-gentoo
centos-VAGRANTSLASH-8             generic-VAGRANTSLASH-rhel8

To find the size of individual Vagrant boxes, use du command with -h flag like below:

589M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/archlinux-VAGRANTSLASH-archlinux/20210601.24453/libvirt
589M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/archlinux-VAGRANTSLASH-archlinux/20210601.24453
589M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/archlinux-VAGRANTSLASH-archlinux
1.1G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-rhel8/3.3.2/libvirt
1.1G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-rhel8/3.3.2
1.1G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-rhel8
1.6G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-gentoo/3.2.24/libvirt
1.6G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-gentoo/3.2.24
1.6G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-gentoo
1.6G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/centos-VAGRANTSLASH-8/2011.0/libvirt
1.6G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/centos-VAGRANTSLASH-8/2011.0
1.6G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/centos-VAGRANTSLASH-8
998M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-debian10/3.3.4/libvirt
998M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-debian10/3.3.4
998M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/generic-VAGRANTSLASH-debian10
628M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/almalinux-VAGRANTSLASH-8/8.4.20210724/libvirt
628M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/almalinux-VAGRANTSLASH-8/8.4.20210724
629M	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes/almalinux-VAGRANTSLASH-8
6.4G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes

To view the total summary usage, run:

$ du -sh ~/.vagrant.d/boxes
6.4G	/home/sk/.vagrant.d/boxes

3.20. Add downloaded .box file to vagrant

Many Linux distributions are distributed via pre-configured Vagrant boxes. So you can quickly grab the vagrant box and run it using the respective virtualization application. For more details, refer the following guide:

3.21. Create a Virtual machine using Vagrant box

To create a new VM with the newly downloaded box, go to your project's directory and intialize the vagrant environment with command:

$ vagrant init

Heads Up: Delete existing Vagrantfile before initializing a new vagrant environment.

This will create a new Vagrantfile in the current directory.

Edit the Vagrant file and update the VM details and replace the following line:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
[...]
config.vm.box = "base"
[...]

with the following:

config.vm.box = "bento/debian-10.5"
Edit Vagrant file
Edit Vagrant file

You can explicitly specify the version for the new VM by adding the following lines:

config.vm.box = "bento/debian-10.5"
config.vm.box_version = "1.0"

You can even specify the download URL as well:

config.vm.box = "bento/debian-10.5"
config.vm.box_version = "1.0"
config.vm.box_url = "https://app.vagrantup.com/bento/boxes/debian-10.5/"

Now, create and start the VM based on the this Vagrantfile with command:

$ vagrant up

Alternatively, you can directly mention the box name while initializing the Vagrant environment. This can be useful if you have more than one vagrant boxes.

First, list the available vagrant boxes using command:

$ vagrant box list 

Sample output:

Fedora33            (libvirt, 0)
archlinux/archlinux (virtualbox, 20201201.10292)
fedora33            (virtualbox, 0)
generic/alpine38    (virtualbox, 3.1.16)
oraclelinux/7       (virtualbox, 7.9.184)
oraclelinux/8       (libvirt, 8.3.183)

Let us you want to create a virtual machine from a box named "generic/alpine38". To do so, simply run:

$ vagrant init generic/alpine38

This command will create a new Vagrantfile and initialize the vagrant environment with given box configuration. No need to manually edit Vagrantfile and update the box details.

Next, start the virtual machine using command:

$ vagrant up

3.22. Use Vagrant with Libvirt KVM provider

Like I already stated, Vagrant uses Virtualbox to run Virtual machines by default. It is also possible to tell Vagrant to use another provider, for example, Libvirt KVM, to run VMs using vagrant-libvirt plugin. This plugin adds the Libvirt provider to Vagrant and allows Vagrant to control and provision machines via Libvirt. To learn how to use libvirt as Vagrant provider, refer the following guide:

3.23. Configure Networking in Vagrant

In order to provide network access between guest machines and host system, Vagrant offers the following three options:

  1. Port forwarding
  2. Private network (host-only network)
  3. Public network (bridged network)

Each option has its own ups and downs. You can configure any one or all of the Vagrant network options as described in the following guide:

3.24. Find Vagrant machine IP address from host system

In order to find IP address of a Vagrant machine, we usually ssh into it and find its IP address using ip or ifconfig commands. We can also directly get the IP address of a running Vagrant machine from the host as described in the following link:

3.25. Increase Memory and CPU on Vagrant machine

Having performance issues with your Vagrant machine? It is probably because of insufficient Memory or CPU. Simply add more RAM and CPU core to Vagrant machine to improve its performance as shown in the following link. 

3.26. Remove outdated Vagrant boxes

You might have downloaded several versions of Vagrant boxes and some of them might be pretty outdated! If they are no longer required, you can safely delete the old versions of installed Vagrant boxes as described in the following link.

3.27. Delete Vagrant boxes permanently

To remove a vagrant box, for example hashicorp/bionic64, run:

$ vagrant box remove hashicorp/bionic64

Type y and hit ENTER to confirm deletion:

Box 'hashicorp/bionic64' (v1.0.282) with provider 'virtualbox' appears
to still be in use by at least one Vagrant environment. Removing
the box could corrupt the environment. We recommend destroying
these environments first:

default (ID: 20864823c72f45568d251070b5ce2661)

Are you sure you want to remove this box? [y/N] y
Removing box 'hashicorp/bionic64' (v1.0.282) with provider 'virtualbox'…

If you don't know the name of the box, just run the following command to list all installed boxes:

$ vagrant box list

At this stage, you should have learned basics of Vagrant usage. Vagrant is a vast topic and I will try to cover as much as I can in our upcoming articles. Stay tuned!

4. Vagrant troubleshooting

This section addresses some common Vagrant issues.

4.1. Vagrant failed to initialize at a very early stage

Is your Vagrant machine failed to start? No worries! This is one of the common vagrant problem. This could be due to outdated plugins or the Vagrant HOME directory may have moved to different location. To fix this issue, refer the following guide:

4.2. Cannot access storage file, Permission denied Error in KVM Libvirt

Some times, you may not start a Vagrant machine and end up with an error seomthing like this - Failed to start domain 'Archlinux_default' error: Cannot access storage file '/home/sk/.local/share/libvirt/images/Archlinux_default.img' (as uid:107, gid:107): Permission denied.

This error usually occurs when the qemu user does not have read permission to the Libvirt storage directory. To fix this issue, refer the following guide:

5. Conclusion

In this comprehensive guide, we learned what is Vagrant and the vagrant terminologies such as vagrant boxes, vagrantfile, and provisioning tools. We also learned how to install vagrant on Linux operating systems and finally we discussed a few basic vagrant commands to create and manage virtual machines from command line in Linux.

If you're a DevOps engineer, knowing how to use Vagrant will be very useful. Vagrant is one of the important tool that you should have on your system.

Resources:

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