56 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
56 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-boxes"
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---
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# Boxes
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Instead of building a virtual machine from scratch, which would be a
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slow and tedious process, Vagrant uses a base image to quickly clone
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a virtual machine. These base images are known as _boxes_ in Vagrant,
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and specifying the box to use for your Vagrant environment is always
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the first step after creating a new Vagrantfile.
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## Installing a Box
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If you ran the commands on the [getting started overview page](/v2/getting-started/index.html),
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then you've already installed a box before, and you don't need to run
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the commands below again. However, it is still worth reading this section
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to learn more about how boxes are managed.
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Boxes are added to Vagrant with `vagrant box add`. This stores the box
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under a specific name so that multiple Vagrant environments can re-use it.
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If you haven't added a box yet, you can do so now:
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```
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$ vagrant box add precise32 \
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http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box
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```
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This will download the box from an HTTP source and save it as "precise32"
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in a directory that Vagrant manages (away from your project). You can also
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add boxes from a local file path.
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Added boxes can be re-used by multiple projects. Each project uses a box
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as an initial image to clone from, and never modifies the actual base
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image. This means that if you have two projects both using the `precise32`
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box we just added, adding files in one guest machine will have no effect
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on the other machine.
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## Using a Box
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Now that the box has been added to Vagrant, we need to configure our
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project to use it as a base. Open the `Vagrantfile` and change the
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contents to the following:
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```ruby
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Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
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config.vm.box = "precise32"
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end
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```
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The "precise32" in this case must match the name you used to add
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the box above. This is how Vagrant knows what box to use.
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In the next section, we'll bring up the guest machine and interact
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with it a little bit.
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