Hello, folks! 👋
I'm excited to share a tool I recently discovered that's been a game-changer for setting up Linux study labs: Vagrant.
At its core, Vagrant automates the creation and management of virtual machines. But here's a crucial point: it doesn't create the VM on its own. It needs a provider to do that (like VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V, Docker, etc.).
For this example, I'll be using VirtualBox, and all commands were executed in PowerShell on Windows.
Installing the Tools
First things first, download and install these two:
Preparing Your Environment
Once everything's installed, open PowerShell. You can use the Win + S shortcut, type "powershell," and run it as an administrator.
Choose where you want to create your virtual machine. In my case, I'm using my second drive (D:), so I navigated to the folder with:
cd D:\labs
Creating Your Machine
You have two paths here. If you want to get straight to it, you can use:
vagrant init centos/7
This command will automatically create the configuration file (Vagrantfile) with the CentOS 7 box pre-configured. However, if you prefer to set things up manually (define memory, CPU, static IP, etc.), you can run:
vagrant init
This will generate an empty Vagrantfile that you can then customize to your liking.
I won't delve into
Vagrantfileconfiguration in this post, as the goal is practicality. But if you're looking for something more tailored, a quick search will definitely help!
Bringing Up Your VM
Now, simply run:
vagrant up
And to access your machine:
vagrant ssh
And just like that, you're inside your VM! 😎
Some Distros You Can Try
vagrant init ubuntu/jammy64
vagrant init debian/bookworm64
vagrant init generic/rocky9
You can find many more options here: https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search
Managing Your VM
Beyond vagrant up and vagrant ssh, here are some other useful commands for managing your machine:
vagrant halt # gracefully shuts down the machine
vagrant suspend # suspends the VM and saves its current state
vagrant resume # resumes the VM from where it was suspended
vagrant reload # restarts the VM, applying changes from the Vagrantfile
vagrant destroy # completely destroys the VM, removing everything
Final Tips
While vagrant ssh works fine, I personally prefer using PuTTY or MobaXterm to access the VM via SSH. I find them more stable and convenient than PowerShell.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments!
Happy studying and happy testing!
Top comments (1)
cool!