DevOps for the Desperate:

Table of Contents

Chapter One
- What I Learned

Chapter One

What I Learned

Not everything works out-of-the-box the first time. There is a ton of troubleshooting that goes into working with automation. This can require you to spin up and destroy boxes what seems like almost a thousand times before you make any real progress.

I also found an issue with the Vagrant plugin. There is a typo in the gem file for Vagrant that causes problems when provisioning. At the time of this writing, it’s related to the following known issue: vagrant-vbguest/hosts/virtualbox.rb typo error — #13404.

Read more about it here: https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/13404

Additionally, I learned the basics of Ansible. Ansible is primarily used for configuration management — maintaining consistent settings for configurations, users, groups, and system states across multiple machines. It automates repetitive administrative tasks and ensures systems remain in a desired configuration through idempotent playbooks.

# navigate to the location in a terminal for your vagrant file - once you have your settings configured for the vm.provider chosen you'll use a simple command

$ vagrant up

Before we go that deep. Take a look at this basic Vagrant file.

Details

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

# All Vagrant configuration is done below. The "2" in Vagrant.configure
# configures the configuration version (we support older styles for
# backwards compatibility). Please don't change it unless you know what
# you're doing.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # The most common configuration options are documented and commented below.
  # For a complete reference, please see the online documentation at
  # https://docs.vagrantup.com.

  # Every Vagrant development environment requires a box. You can search for
  # boxes at https://vagrantcloud.com/search.
  config.vm.box = "cloud-image/ubuntu-24.04"
  config.vm.hostname = "book-VM"

  # Disable automatic box update checking. If you disable this, then
  # boxes will only be checked for updates when the user runs
  # `vagrant box outdated`. This is not recommended.
  # config.vm.box_check_update = false

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine. In the example below,
  # accessing "localhost:8080" will access port 80 on the guest machine.
  # NOTE: This will enable public access to the opened port
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 8888, host: 8080

  # Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
  # within the machine from a port on the host machine and only allow access
  # via 127.0.0.1 to disable public access
  # config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"

  # Create a private network, which allows host-only access to the machine
  # using a specific IP.
  config.vm.network "private_network", type: "dhcp"

  # Create a public network, which generally matched to bridged network.
  # Bridged networks make the machine appear as another physical device on
  # your network.
  # config.vm.network "public_network"

  # Share an additional folder to the guest VM. The first argument is
  # the path on the host to the actual folder. The second argument is
  # the path on the guest to mount the folder. And the optional third
  # argument is a set of non-required options.
  # config.vm.synced_folder "../data", "/vagrant_data"

  # Provider-specific configuration so you can fine-tune various
  # backing providers for Vagrant. These expose provider-specific options.
  # Example for VirtualBox:
  #
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.memory = "2048"
    vb.name = "BookVM"
    vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--uart1", "0x3F8", "4"]
    vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--uartmode1", "file", File::NULL]
  end

  #
  # View the documentation for the provider you are using for more
  # information on available options.

  # Enable provisioning with a shell script. Additional provisioners such as
  # Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt, and Docker are also available. Please see the
  # documentation for more information about their specific syntax and use.
  #  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
  #   apt-get update
  #   apt-get install -y apache2
  #  SHELL
  config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
    ansible.playbook = "../ansible/site.yml"
    ansible.compatibility_mode = "2.0"
  end
end