Vagrant Test VM

A disposable VirtualBox VM for trying out provisioning scripts and configuration changes before running them against the real host — mistakes here cost a vagrant destroy, not a broken production service.

What it creates

Box: bento/debian-12
Hostname: test
Network: private network, static IP 192.168.56.10 — reachable from the host but isolated from the rest of the LAN
Resources: 1 vCPU, 1024 MB RAM — enough to exercise a bootstrap script or a small playbook run, not meant to run real workloads

Usage

vagrant up          # create and provision the VM
vagrant ssh          # log in
vagrant provision    # re-run bootstrap.sh against a VM that's already up
vagrant destroy      # tear it down completely

`bootstrap.sh`

Runs automatically on vagrant up via Vagrant's shell provisioner. Currently:

apt-get update
sudo apt install -y vim iptables-persistent bash-completion

Baseline packages for a usable shell environment — iptables-persistent in particular anticipates using this VM to test firewall rule changes without risking the real host's iptables state.

Why this exists

Testing changes directly on the host (or worse, in production containers) means a bad iptables rule or a broken package install has real consequences. This VM gives a throwaway Debian environment matching the host's OS family, so provisioning changes — Ansible playbook edits, install scripts, firewall rules — get a dry run first. vagrant destroy && vagrant up resets to a clean slate in a couple of minutes.