I have tried installing latest versions of VirtualBox and Vagrant, but I keep receiving the error message below when trying to run vagrant. How can I find the problem and correct it?
No usable default provider could be found for your system.
Vagrant relies on interactions with 3rd party systems, known as
"providers", to provide Vagrant with resources to run development
environments. Examples are VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V.
The easiest solution to this message is to install VirtualBox, which
is available for free on all major platforms.
If you believe you already have a provider available, make sure it
is properly installed and configured. You can see more details about
why a particular provider isn't working by forcing usage with
`vagrant up --provider=PROVIDER`, which should give you a more specific
error message for that particular provider.
Be sure to install VirtualBox first, since Vagrant depends on it.
-Download and install VirtualBox
-Download and install Vagrant
-Adjust VirtualBox and Vagrant
The next step is to make some tweaks to VirtualBox and Vagrant. We need to do this because, by default, both tools store data in the same drive where they were installed (tipically the C drive). The thing with virtual machines is they can take up a lot of space, so they can eat up your main drive’s storage very quickly.
First we’ll change the storage path in Virtual Box, since it’s pretty straightforward. You now should have a program called Oracle VM VirtualBox installed. Open it and then go to File > Preferences. A
new dialog will open where you can change the folder next to the option that reads Default Machine Folder. Click the dropdown and choose Other…. Here you can choose the new folder for VirtualBox to store data.
Now we’ll do the same for Vagrant.
By default the path where data related to virtual machines is
stored is C:\Users\YourUser\.vagrant.d so I recommend changing it to a different drive. This can be done with environment variables. We need to create a variable called VAGRANT_HOME and point it to our desired location.
Open the control panel and search for the word environment. From the results choose the one that says edit environment variables for your account.
On the new dialog that appears, click the New… button.
Here you will create the new variable. Enter VAGRANT_HOME as the value for the field named Variable name.
For the field named Variable value enter the path of your choice. In my case I used C:\VM\Vagrant
Related
Hadoop & Vagrant: If I set up a new VM using these two packages, is the VM available for starting with VirtualBox or do I always have to use vagrant up?
When you first create the VM, you will need to use vagrant up since VirtualBox has no ability to read a Vagrantfile. Once your VM is up and running, you could stop and start it using VirtualBox. However, Vagrant can perform the same operations as VirtualBox and has a lot of advantages on top of that.
First let's discuss how Vagrant can do what VirtualBox can do. You can use vagrant suspend to put the VM in a saved state, vagrant resume to start it again, vagrant halt to power it off, and vagrant destroy to delete it. You can also use settings in Vagrant's VirtualBox provider to modify your VM's memory, CPUs, and more. You can also change the network settings and synced folders. And this gives you the advantage of defining all of these settings in code which can be checked into a revision control system such as Git.
On top of all this, Vagrant has support for provisioners. These range from something as simple as shell scripts to full blown configuration management tools such as Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt. Just like you can define your VM's VirtualBox settings in code, you can define the entire creation process including installing packages, managing services, and customizing files. And you can make changes at any time and apply them using vagrant provision.
So getting back to your question... yes, you can control your VM directly with VirtualBox, but you'd be missing out on the rich feature set of Vagrant.
I just ran vagrant provision in a futile attempt at getting my customized synced_folders directive to work and now my whole guest box is wiped out.
Is this normal? I don't see any references to Vagrant docs about this behavior.
As per the doc:
Provisioners in Vagrant allow you to automatically install software, alter configurations, and more on the machine as part of the vagrant up process.
The only thing I have in my config provision shell commands are installation commands. Nothing about wiping anything out.
I do have app.vm.provision for puppet that sets fqdn, user name and box name (along with the normal module_path, manifests_path and manifests_file). Maybe this caused things to be reset?
The Answer
Is Vagrant Provision suppose to wipe out all your data?
No. Vagrant should never harm your "data" (i.e., websites, code, etc.).
...now my whole guest box is wiped out. Is this normal?
Yes. Your Vagrant environment (in other words, the guest operating system created in a virtual environment by Vagrant) is volatile, and you should be able to destroy and recreate it at will without having any impact on your working files (because those should be kept in your local, or host, file system).
Explanation
On Vagrant's website, the very first thing they tell you is this:
Create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable development environments.
Your development environment allows you to work. You work on your data, in your development work environment. When you are done with your "development work environment," you should be able to delete it freely without affecting your data in the least.
Further, you should be able to send a collaborating developer your Vagrantfile so that they can create the exact same development environment you used to create your data (i.e., write your program, build your website, and so forth). Then, when you provide them with your code, they can use it in an environment identical to the one that your code was created in without having to reconfigure their own setup.
For more details about how your data files (code, working files, etc.) are kept safely in your computer while making them accessible to your guest system created by Vagrant, see my answer to this question.
So what appears to have happened was that when I set up a synced folder, it wiped out everything because there was nothing on my host machine in that synced folder. Unless there is a way to recover the lost data, there should be an unmistakable WARNING in their docs that this can happen.
I setup the synced_folder to be on my whole home directory. When I created a new machine, I cloned the one project I had saved and decided to just sync my individual projects instead of my whole user directory this time. When I reloaded, the project directory was empty since it was empty on my host machine.
So I guess, make sure the directories on your host machine are already setup with the data before configuring your Vagrantfile with synced_folder information.
I have a Vagrant set up with 3 virtual machines. Each machine has its own shell script for provisioning.
Now I would like to share the exact same status of my set up with somebody else. Since the provisioning procedure takes really (!!) long for each machine, I hope there is another solution.
Ideally I would be able to save each machine as it is in one file, which the other person then could import into Virtualbox. Is there a way to do that?
If I understand you correctly you would like to make a Vagrant base box from provisioned by Vagrant VMs. This is not recommended way to go. How you can approach this is:
Create new VM manually with required OS in the VBox.
Adjust it so Vagrant can connect to it as described here and here.
Provision it using your shell scripts.
Install all the things you would find useful to have on this VM.
Use Vagrant to package it as a base box as described here.
After packaging it with Vagrant you will get a Vagrant base box file with .box extension. You can then pass this to your team mates (usb, network share, ftp etc.) and they can add it to their Vagrant installation and use it. Whenever they will do Vagrant up they will get fully provisioned VM in VBox with all the stuff you have packaged to it. Vagrant also gives you versioning capabilities. If properly configured whenever you will create new version of base box everybody who is using it will be notified and would be able to download and use new version of your box.
Hope I understood your problem correctly and this will help to solve it.
I mounted a vagrant machine several time ago.I have modified some configurations to the VM since the installation and now my co-workers need to use exactly the same VM.
How can I do it ? I would like keep the database i used for my co-workers too if it's possible.
Look into VagrantCloud: https://vagrantcloud.com/
I'm using that service to host a customized box for my team. Started from a vanilla box, customized it to match our environment, then used the "vagrant package" command to create a new *.box file. You just need to host that file somewhere online, register it with the VagrantCloud service, and you can manage box releases and deployments for your co-workers. It even notifies them if you update the box. Pretty nifty.
As far as the DB, if it is in the VM it will get packaged up too. Might wat to look into providing updated DB files for later since they will get out of date fast, I would imagine.
I am trying to create an application that runs on windows. I want this application to download a "disk image" from the network (from pre-assigned server) and create a virtual machine based on it. This VM would run for a specified number of hours and then shutdown.
I want to use VirtualBox by scripting it. I found VBoxManage command and it seems to be what I am looking for. However, it seems that VirtualBox tools store their configuration as XML files in User home directory. I did learn that i can change the value of VBOX_USER_HOME environment variable to control where they are stored. However, I am not sure whether this is enough.
My problem is that the user may already have installed VirtualBox on his/her computer. I do not want my application code (and it's packaged VirtualBox binaries and conf) to mess with the existing installation.
How do I cleanly isolate my application specific VirtualBox binaries and configuration from the potentially pre-existing installed VirtualBox setup? (Even if both instances of VirtualBox binaries are being used at the same time)
I chose VirtualBox because of it's open source license and applicability of commercial use (if I compile my own binaries from the source) and because it works on Windows too (heard QEMU support for windows is still not stable). Will VirtualBox suffice for my use-case or should I look elsewhere?
Thanks for reading so far :)
If the VBoxManage command really does rely on the environment variable VBOX_USER_HOME then you could write your scripts to change the environment variable to reflect your deployment for the execution of that script and its children, staying away from user data.
Check out the VirtualBox SDK http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/SDKRef.pdf