Lab: My first virtual machine with Vagrant

What you will learn in this TP

• Create a VM from a Vagrantfile
• Use the shared folder and port forwarding
• Destroy cleanly

Creating the machine #

What you will learn in this section

• Create a VM from a Vagrantfile
• Use the shared folder and port forwarding
• Destroy cleanly

Context. You join a project whose dev environment is installed from a 40-line wiki page nobody can follow. Vagrant describes the machine in a file and recreates it identically with one command: you start with the simplest machine.

Prerequisites: VirtualBox (or libvirt) and Vagrant installed  ·  Estimated time: 25 min

From Vagrantfile to a running machine.

1. 1. Initialise the project

   Why? The Vagrantfile is the single source of truth: the whole team gets the same machine from the same versioned file.

   Create a working folder and generate a Vagrantfile based on the bento/ubuntu-24.04 box.

2. 2. Start and connect

   Why? Starting then connecting checks the box, provider and network work before investing time in configuration.

   Start the machine, open an SSH session and check the system.

3. 3. Shared folder and network

   Why? The shared folder avoids copying code into the VM, and port forwarding lets you test from your browser like a real application.

   Serve a file from the project folder inside the VM and expose port 8080 on the host.

4. 4. Clean up

   Why? Destroying the machine is normal: reproducibility means you can recreate it anytime, the downloaded box staying cached.

   Stop then remove the machine. What remains on disk?

Difficulty level : ●○○○○ (1/5)