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https://github.com/mwbrooks/vagrant-example

Vagrant example running an Ubuntu node server.
https://github.com/mwbrooks/vagrant-example

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Vagrant example running an Ubuntu node server.

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README 

        
# Vagrant Example



> Running an Ubuntu node server with Vagrant



Before we begin, I want to make one thing clear: this project is a node connect

server and not a Vagrant project. Vagrant is sprinkled into the project similar

to how Grunt, Make, or other tools assist a project.



## Running Node Locally



First, let's start by running the node project locally. I imagine you've already

installed node on your system and are ready to rock. Oh, you'll also need

git to clone the project, but I bet you've already got that too!



    $ git clone https://github.com/mwbrooks/vagrant-example.git

    $ cd vagrant-example/

    $

    $ npm install

    $ npm start



Whew, we're done! We should now have a little node server up and running.



Open your browser to `http://localhost:3000` and verify that the server is

rocking.



Is it? Yea? Excellent. Now let's kill that server and delete the the npm-bits.



    $ CTRL+C

    $

    $ rm -rf node_modules/



Now we're back to a clean clone of the project.



Oh, I forgot to ask: are you using OS X, Linux, or Windows? If you're using

Windows, I imagine you've already figured out the analogous commands to everything

that I wrote above. Sorry about that!



## Running Node with Vagrant



Now imagine that you didn't have node or another dependency that this

project uses. Or, imagine that a dependency wasn't compatible with your

operating system.



That's a huge pain as a developer because now you need to modify your precious

dev environment.



This is where Vagrant can help make your life easier. Vagrant allows you to

download and provision a virtual machine with exactly what you need to re-create

the project's dev environment. In our case, we'll use a 200MB Ubuntu image but

there are hundreds of other images available. Best of all, the 200MB image is

reusable between multiple Vagrant projects, while each project only stores its

state in `.vagrant/`.



Let's get started by installing Vagrant and Virtual Box:



- [Install Vagrant](http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html)

- [Install VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)



All set? Good! Now let's start up the virtual machine and provision it with

node:



    $ cd vagrant-example/

    $ vagrant up



Done! We've now got a minimal dev environment for this project!



Next up, let's jump into the virtual machine box and start our web server.

A neat feature of Vagrant is that the project is shared within the virtual

machine at `/vagrant`. While connected to the virtual machine, I'm going to use

`%` to denote its terminal.



    $ vagrant ssh

    % cd /vagrant

    % npm install

    % npm start



We've now got our server up and running. I've already configured Vagrant to

port forward `3000` to your local machine. So once again, open up your browser

to `http://localhost:3000`.



Pretty cool, eh?



When we're done, we can exit the ssh tunnel:



    % exit



Then we can pause, shutdown, or completely delete the virtual machine

state:



    $ vagrant suspend  # pause the vm

    $ vagrant halt     # shutdown the vm

    $ vagrant destroy  # delete the vm files in ./vagrant



If you destroy the vm, you can always re-create it on the next vagrant up.



Now that you know Vagrant, what do you think?