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A working solution for using W11 and WSL to provision VirtualBox + Vagrant VMs with Ansible #606

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A working solution for using W11 and WSL to provision VirtualBox + Vagrant VMs with Ansible#606
@mberthault

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@mberthault
mberthault
opened on Apr 30, 2025

Hi,

1st of all I wanted to thank you for your amazing book. I just started it, but paired with your Youtube channel, it is fantastic.

I don't own a linux machine, and while I originally intended to work with "normal" VMs for this course, Vagrant seemed more interresting. But sadly, I don't own a mac or a Linux box.

So I embarked on a journey to make this work despite it being quite a complicated thing. And document it.

These below are my personal notes, you are 100% free to use them as is, modify and/or distribute them, even without my knowledge.

I would be grateful if you or anyone coming here, could improve on it, detect my mistakes, and add to my documentation.

I have also documented some of the pitfalls I ran into, like the one I encountered with mounted win drives...

Oh, and it is in french. You are free to help me translate it :)

Documentation sur les points complexes du cours Ansible For Devops

Installer Vagrant sur un système WSL, avec prise en charge du provisioning via Ansible

N'ayant pas de homelab Linux à la maison, je passe par un WSL sur mon Windows 11.

En plus d'être nécessaire dans mon cas, le challenge est stimulant et intéressant.

Étonnament, il est difficile de trouver de l'information sur ce sujet.

Le site officiel de Hashicorp indique d'ailleurs :

Warning: Advanced Topic! Using Vagrant within the Windows Subsystem for Linux is an advanced topic that only experienced Vagrant users who are reasonably comfortable with Windows, WSL, and Linux should approach.

Sources d'information utilisées

Liste des prérequis

  • 🪟 Windows 11

  • 🪟 Oracle Virtualbox installé sur la partie HÔTE WINDOWS : Version 7.0.12 r159484 (Qt5.15.2)

    ⚠️ PAS DANS LA PARTIE WSL !!!

  • 🪟 Un répertoire dédié (avec assez d'espace disque) dans la partie HÔTE WINDOWS

    Ici : E:\Work ; on y créera les sous-répertoires dédiés : .\Devops\Vagrant\

  • 🐧 WSL 2 à jour (Installation non détaillée ici)

     wsl -v
     Version WSL : 2.4.13.0
 Version du noyau : 5.15.167.4-1
 Version WSLg : 1.0.65
 Version MSRDC : 1.2.5716
 Version direct3D : 1.611.1-81528511
 Version de DXCore : 10.0.26100.1-240331-1435.ge-release
 Version de Windows : 10.0.26100.3775

    Le user:group utilisé dans cette documentation est homelab:homelab

  • 🐧 Packages à jour dans la partie WSL

    Faire tous les updates / upgrades dans apt

  • 🐧 Vagrant installé dans la partie WSL

    ⚠️ PAS DANS LA PARTIE HÔTE WINDOWS

  • 🐧 Ansible installé dans la partie WSL

    ⚠️ PAS DANS LA PARTIE HÔTE WINDOWS

Installation des prérequis

🪟 Virtualbox

🐧 Dépendances diverses

Je ne suis pas 100% sur qu'elles soient toutes 100% utiles

sudo apt install qemu qemu-kvm libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon-system virtinst bridge-utils
sudo systemctl enable libvirtd
sudo systemctl start libvirtd
sudo apt install -y ebtables

🐧 Vagrant

  • Suivre les instructions à cette adresse : https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/install

     wget -O - https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg
 echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list
 sudo apt update && sudo apt install vagrant

  • Installer le plugin WSL2

     vagrant plugin install virtualbox_WSL2

🐧 Ansible

  • Installer Ansible 
     sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:ansible/ansible
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install -y ansible

Configuration

  • 🐧 Mettre à jour la configuration par défaut de WSL

     sudo vim /etc/wsl.conf
     [boot]
 systemd=true
 [automount]
 enabled = true
 mountFsTab = true

  • 🐧 Ajouter un point de montage dans la fstab, pour le répertoire de travail

     sudo vim /etc/fstab
     E:\Work /home/homelab/work drvfs metadata,rw,noatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=22,fmask=111 0 0

  • 🐧 Ajouter à la fin du ~/.bashrc :

     ## For Vagrant
 export VAGRANT_WSL_ENABLE_WINDOWS_ACCESS="1"
 export PATH="$PATH:/mnt/c/Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox"
 export VAGRANT_USER_DIR_E="/home/homelab/work/Devops/Vagrant/"
 export VAGRANT_WSL_WINDOWS_ACCESS_USER_HOME_PATH=${VAGRANT_USER_DIR_E}

 if [[ "$(umask)" = "0000" ]]; then
   umask 0022
 fi

  • 🪟 Arrêter puis relancer WSL (depuis Powershell)

     wsl.exe --shutdown
 wsl.exe

🐧 Création d'une VM de test avec un playbook minimal

  • Création du playbook

     cd ~/work/Devops/Vagrant
 vim playbook.yml
     ---
 - hosts: all
   become: yes

   tasks:
   - name: Ensure chrony (for time synchronization) is installed.
 	dnf:
 	  name: chrony
 	  state: present

   - name: Ensure chrony is running.
 	service:
 	  name: chronyd
 	  state: started
 	  enabled: yes

  • Création de la VM

     vagrant init geerlingguy/rockylinux8
     A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now
 ready to `vagrant up` your first virtual environment! Please read
 the comments in the Vagrantfile as well as documentation on
 `vagrantup.com` for more information on using Vagrant.

  • Redéfinition du Vagrantfile pour y inclure le provisioning

     vim Vagrantfile
     # -*- mode: ruby -*-
 # vi: set ft=ruby :
 Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
   config.vm.box = "geerlingguy/rockylinux8"
   # Provisioning configuration for Ansible.
   config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
 	ansible.playbook = "playbook.yml"
   end
 end

  • Lancement et provisioning de la VM (elle se récupère automatiquement)

     vagrant up
     Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
 ==> default: Importing base box 'geerlingguy/rockylinux8'...
 ==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
 ==> default: Checking if box 'geerlingguy/rockylinux8' version '1.0.1' is up to date...
 ==> default: Setting the name of the VM: Vagrant_default_1745974859003_86420
 ==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
 ==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
 	default: Adapter 1: nat
 ==> default: Forwarding ports...
 	default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)
 	default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)
 ==> default: Booting VM...
 ==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
 	default: SSH address: xxx.xxx.xxx.1:2222
 	default: SSH username: vagrant
 	default: SSH auth method: private key
 	default:
 	default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace
 	default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security.
 	default:
 	default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
 	default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
 	default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
 ==> default: Machine booted and ready!
 ==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
 	default: The guest additions on this VM do not match the installed version of
 	default: VirtualBox! In most cases this is fine, but in rare cases it can
 	default: prevent things such as shared folders from working properly. If you see
 	default: shared folder errors, please make sure the guest additions within the
 	default: virtual machine match the version of VirtualBox you have installed on
 	default: your host and reload your VM.
 	default:
 	default: Guest Additions Version: 6.1.32
 	default: VirtualBox Version: 7.0
 ==> default: Mounting shared folders...
 	default: /home/homelab/work/Devops/Vagrant => /vagrant
 ==> default: Running provisioner: ansible...
 Vagrant gathered an unknown Ansible version:


 and falls back on the compatibility mode '1.8'.

 Alternatively, the compatibility mode can be specified in your Vagrantfile:
 https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/provisioning/ansible_common.html#compatibility_mode

 	default: Running ansible-playbook...

 PLAY [all] *********************************************************************

 TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
 [DEPRECATION WARNING]: Distribution centos 8.7 on host default should use
 /usr/libexec/platform-python, but is using /usr/bin/python for backward
 compatibility with prior Ansible releases. A future Ansible release will
 default to using the discovered platform python for this host. See https://docs
 .ansible.com/ansible/2.10/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html for
 more information. This feature will be removed in version 2.12. Deprecation
 warnings can be disabled by setting deprecation_warnings=False in ansible.cfg.
 ok: [default]

 TASK [Ensure chrony (for time synchronization) is installed.] ******************
 ok: [default]

 TASK [Ensure chrony is running.] ***********************************************
 ok: [default]

 PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
 default                    : ok=3    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

  • Vérification des répertoires

     ls -l
     drwxr-xr-x 1 homelab homelab 4096 Apr 30 03:11 .vagrant/
 drwxr-xr-x 1 homelab homelab 4096 Apr 30 03:11 .vagrant.d/
 -rw-r--r-- 1 homelab homelab 3397 Apr 30 03:11 Vagrantfile
 -rw------- 1 homelab homelab  266 Apr 30 00:56 playbook.yml

     ls -l .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key
 -rw------- 1 homelab homelab 400 Apr 30 03:13 .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key

Erreurs rencontrées pendant la création de cette documentation

The private key to connect to this box via SSH has invalid permissions
set on it. The permissions of the private key should be set to 0600, otherwise SSH will
ignore the key. Vagrant tried to do this automatically for you but failed. Please set the
permissions on the following file to 0600 and then try running this command again:

/mnt/e/Work/Devops/Vagrant/.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key

Cause initiale : impossible de modifier les permissions des fichiers dans le répertoire de travail (et masque 0000 par défaut)

Cause réelle : répertoire de travail appartenant à un FS monté sans metadata et sans umask/fmask => permissions Windows réelles appliquées

Solution (erronée) : définition des options metadata et umask/fmask dans les paramètres de l'automount (config globale WSL)

Solution réelle : voir erreur suivante

Permission denied - /mnt/c/Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox/VBoxManage.exe

Cause : disques Windows montés dans WSL avec metadata et umask/fmask

Solution : Montage d'un répertoire spécifique via fstab pour le répertoire de travail

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