Vagrant

Vagrant is a multi-provider tool for building and managing virtual machines by HashiCorp. For more information, you can check out the Vagrant documentation.

Boxes

Vagrant boxes are tar files containing an image or container specific to the provider, Vagrant metadata, and a base Vagrantfile. They are essentially OVA files with extra metadata and preinstalled packages.

What are they for

The Vagrant boxes provided by Canonical are meant for local development use. They are not meant to be used in a production environment.

When are they published

Boxes are published daily.

Despite their publication date, all boxes published to Vagrant Cloud point to the latest published version hosted on cloud-images.ubuntu.com.

How are they built

The VirtualBox Vagrant box is produced as part of a “Base” build with the code living in livecd-roofs. The build generates a box.ovf config file, a config drive vmdk, the base server vmdk, Vagrantfile, and Vagrant metadata. These build components are then combined in the .box tarball.

See How-to guides for more on building and running Vagrant boxes.

Support

Vagrant has been dropped by Ubuntu due to the adoption of the Business Source License (BSL). Following this change, Canonical will no longer publish Vagrant images directly starting with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat).

Support Matrix

  • Support is provided for images utilizing vagrant and virtualbox packages from the archive.

  • Best support will be given for matching guest and host Ubuntu.

  • Best efforts will be made when the guest and host differ.

  • There is no support for extra plugins.

  • There is no support for images starting with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and beyond.

  • Support for matching Guest Additions.