Creating a Vagrant Box

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Creating a Vagrant Box

Although a number of base Vagrant boxes are available on the Vagrant box repository, there may be times where we need to create our own virtual machine image that Vagrant can use to provision new environments. And while some of this configuration is provider-specific, there are still a number of tasks that all base boxes require in order to work with Vagrant out of the box.

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Lab Info

Level

Beginner

Last updated

Sep 10, 2025

Duration

15m

Challenge

Install Needed Packages
1. Switch to root:
  
  sudo -i
2. Install the linux-headers package for the appropriate release, build-essential and dkms. Note: Please wait several minutes for the dpkg lock to release if you have trouble installing the software.:
  
  apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential dkms -y
Challenge

Configure Vagrant Users
1. Create a new vagrant user:
  
  useradd vagrant -m -G sudo -s /bin/bash
2. Set the default password for both vagrant and root users to vagrant:
  
  passwd vagrant passwd root
3. Ensure the vagrant user can use passwordless sudo:
  
  visudo vagrant ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
  
  Save and exit visudo.

Challenge

Add the Vagrant Public Key

Switch to the vagrant user:
```
su - vagrant
```
Create an .ssh directory:
```
mkdir .ssh
```

Pull down the public key and add it to the authorized_keys file:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hashicorp/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub
mv vagrant.pub .ssh/authorized_keys

Set the permissions for the new directory and file:

sudo chmod 700 .ssh
sudo chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

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