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Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

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Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#2
Vagrant is absolutely fantastic. But I have an issue with the default precise64 box.

If the vm is shut down abnormally (manual power off from virtualbox, unexpected power outage, etc), next time I run `vagrant up`, the vm would be stuck on grub. It appear to be a problem with ubuntu and I need to start the vm in gui mode (as opposed to vagrant's default headless mode) to resolve this (changed timeout=-1 to timeout=0 in /etc/grub.d/00_header and run update-grub).

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#3

Vagrant is absolutely fantastic. But I have an issue with the default precise64 box. If the vm is shut down abnormally (manual power off from virtualbox, unexpected power outage, etc), next time I run `vagrant up`, the vm would be stuck on grub. It appear to be a problem with ubuntu and I need to start the vm in gui mode (as opposed to vagrant's default headless mode) to resolve this (changed timeout=-1 to timeout=0…

Yes, this is a known problem with precise.

The discussion on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/669481 indicates that a fix has been released, although one wasn't - a 12.04 default server install will STILL happily hang after a boot problem until you press "enter" on your keyboard. Additional reboots will not help.

And given that 12.04 is still the LTS version, it makes Ubuntu unusable for long term remote servers unless you have an IPKVM.

Of course, after 12.04.03 you can update your /etc/default/grub to include:

    GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=0
 
and then do

    grub-update
(and some people say you should also do:

    DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
Although I can't figure out why that would be needed)

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#4
Its a great little tool. I have been using it for a over a year now and it simplifies the dev environment issues by sandboxing it. In general, it allows you to isolate your development servers and other such programs and libraries in a sandbox. You can use the editors, browsers etc on your local machine however the servers and other heavy lifting can be done by the vm in the sandbox env. I think this is still bleeding edge stuff as I dont see very many developers using this. Would love to hear experiences of fellow hackers.

One question - I use vagrant with VirtualBox as the provider. Has any body used vagrant with the VMware provider. Wondering if one sees better performance on vmware than virtualbox. Specially when you are running everything (host and guest) on the same hdd.

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#5
Vagrant looks interesting but I am not sure why I would use it. Almost all of my work involves using Clojure and I default to using Postgres except in exceptional circumstances. It is so easy to have the same setup on my OS X and Linux laptops as my servers. I have never run into any compatibility problems, at least that I am aware of.

Vagrant looks more useful for systems with lots of moving parts.

I am starting a new project with Node.js, Meteor and MongoDB - also an easy to set up stack. I will keep Vagrant in mind, but I hope I don't need it.

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#6
post #4

Its a great little tool. I have been using it for a over a year now and it simplifies the dev environment issues by sandboxing it. In general, it allows you to isolate your development servers and other such programs and libraries in a sandbox. You can use the editors, browsers etc on your local machine however the servers and other heavy lifting can be done by the vm in the sandbox env. I think this is still bleedin…

I've used both. Honestly, I don't have any hard stats to back this up but in a Unix environment, VirtualBox is the way to go. I've done a bit of dev on a Windows machine, for training purposes, and I've found that VMware has better performance.

Again, this is based solely on subjective, empirical data.

And yes, Vagrant is awesome.

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#7
I was first introduced to Vagrant at my current company - where my manager had prepared a VM + set of Chef recipes for setting up and managing VM hosting our app.

I had spent few days later setting up few VM's for my personal projects - I must say that having easily deployable VM's, each one serving specific purposes, all on my laptop, using just one base box (CentOS in my case) is a really a time saver - especially when dealing with projects utilising multiple technologies. But what is most important is the fact, that all those technologies are not polluting the main machine and creating misc combinations of them is as easy as branching / cloning my Chef + Librarian + Knife repo.

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#8

Vagrant looks interesting but I am not sure why I would use it. Almost all of my work involves using Clojure and I default to using Postgres except in exceptional circumstances. It is so easy to have the same setup on my OS X and Linux laptops as my servers. I have never run into any compatibility problems, at least that I am aware of. Vagrant looks more useful for systems with lots of moving parts. I am starting a n…

Vagrant is nice because your environment becomes disposable and version controlled.

If you mess up your db config while performance tuning, for example, just call vagrant destroy and vagrant up.

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#9
Vagrant creator here. What a pleasant surprise to see this pop up on HN this morning (it was unexpected, to be sure). I just want to shamelessly say that if you're more of a book person, the Vagrant O'Reilly book I wrote was just released this week, and it is a great way to get started:

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026358.do

Thanks!

(And, hopefully as you know, as an author I make barely any royalties on any book sold, so I'm not posting this for financial reasons. I just know some people really prefer books to online docs.)

Re: Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments

#10

Vagrant creator here. What a pleasant surprise to see this pop up on HN this morning (it was unexpected, to be sure). I just want to shamelessly say that if you're more of a book person, the Vagrant O'Reilly book I wrote was just released this week, and it is a great way to get started: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026358.do Thanks! (And, hopefully as you know, as an author I make barely any royalties on an…

That's interesting. Have you ever considered Leanpub before you went with Oreilly?
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