How To Install Vagrant on Debian 9 Stretch

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Vagrant on Debian 9 Stretch. For those of you who didn’t know, a Vagrant is an open-source tool for building an entire virtual development environment. Frequently, a test environment is needed for analyzing the latest release and new tools. Also, it reduces the time spent on re-building your OS. By default, the vagrant uses VirtualBox for managing the Virtualization. Vagrant acts as the fundamental configuration for managing/deploying multiple reproducible virtual environments with the same configuration.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Vagrant on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 9 (Stretch).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo useror access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Vagrant on Debian 9 Stretch

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing VirtualBox.

First, Add the VirtualBox repository:

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian stretch contrib'

Next, we need to download and import the Oracle GPG public key to Debian 9 system with the following command:

curl -O https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc
sudo apt-key add oracle_vbox_2016.asc

Install the VirtualBox 5, command as follows:

apt-get update
apt-get install virtualbox-5.1

Step 3. Installing Vagrant on Debian 9.

This is an unofficial Debian repository for Vagrant, hosted by Wolfgang Faust. Add the repository to your system using the command:

sudo bash -c 'echo deb https://vagrant-deb.linestarve.com/ any main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wolfgang42-vagrant.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-key AD319E0F7CFFA38B4D9F6E55CE3F3DE92099F7A4
sudo apt-get update

Once the repo is added, use the following command to install vagrant:

sudo apt-get install vagrant

To verify that the installation was successful, run the following command which will print the Vagrant version:

vagrant --version

Step 4. Deploy your development environment.

Vagrant can quickly deploy the development environment. The following command to download Ubuntu 18.04 Vagrant image, use:

vagrant box add generic/ubuntu1804

To launch a VM using Vagrant, you’ll need to create a Vagrantfile:

mkdir ubuntu-18.04
cd ubuntu-18.04
touch Vagrantfile

Bring up the VM by running:

vagrant up

Then ssh to the instance with

vagrant ssh

To shutdown VM, use:

vagrant halt

Hibernate VM

vagrant suspend

Set VM to initial state by cleaning all data

vagrant destroy

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Vagrant. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Vagrant in Debian 9 Stretch systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Vagrant website.