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jpw
jpw

Reputation: 19257

why doesn't vagrant provisioner modify ~/.bashrc?

How can I make the Vagrantfile append the contents of a file to the ~/.bashrc file ?

In my Vagrantfile, I am trying to append the contents of a file /vagrant/dev_env_config to the ~/.bashrc file.

When I run vagrant up it outputs the echo statement AND it outputs the expected contents of the ~/.bashrc file.... so I know it's reading the file dev_env_config and APPEARS to be appending it.

However, when I then run vagrant ssh and then cat ~/.bashrc the ~/.bashrc file is unmodified, it's the default ~/.bashrc file

In other words the mods to ~/.bashrc file are lost somewhere between when the vagrant provison runs and when I run vagrant ssh 

# Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  ... various cmds to set box and network...
  $install_user_vars = <<SCRIPT
      sudo cat /vagrant/dev_env_config  >> ~/.bashrc
      echo "*** here is the .bashrc file:"
      cat ~/.bashrc
SCRIPT
  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: $install_user_vars
end

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1087

Answers (2)

BrianC
BrianC

Reputation: 10721

I think what's happening is the provisioning script is run as root (or sudo), so the "~" home location is actually /root rather than the default user home location /home/vagrant.

I can think of a couple ways to solve this:

First (and probably easiest) is to be explicit about the .bashrc path, like:

# Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  ... various cmds to set box and network...
  $install_user_vars = <<SCRIPT
      sudo cat /vagrant/dev_env_config  >> /home/vagrant/.bashrc
      echo "*** here is the .bashrc file:"
      cat /home/vagrant/.bashrc
SCRIPT
  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: $install_user_vars
end

The second option could be to run this part of the provisioning script as a non-privileged user. See the 'privileged' option on the Shell Scripts docs page.

Upvotes: 6

Uladzimir Pasvistselik
Uladzimir Pasvistselik

Reputation: 3921

A primitive solution is to set the path to .bashrc explicitly. As a rule default username of a SSH user (which will be used for vagrant ssh action) is vagrant so:

$install_user_vars = <<SCRIPT
      sudo cat /vagrant/dev_env_config  >> /home/vagrant/.bashrc
      echo "*** here is the .bashrc file:"
      cat /home/vagrant/.bashrc
SCRIPT

Also I'm not sure that it's a necessary to use a sudo command (in sudo cat ...). Probably you don't need it, but it depends on which user is used to run a provision script. I guess it's also vagrant.

So if it's really a vagrant you could leave the path to .bashrc unmodified (~/.bashrc), but have to remove sudo cat ... command and use simple cat ... instead. And it's a more clean solution in my opinion. Because actually we shouldn't use sudo (root) permissions without need.

Upvotes: 2

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