Add scp and snapshot (ie. shorthand for vboxmanage snapshot) to vagrant command

.bash_aliases

#!/bin/bash

function vagrant() {
    if [ -x /usr/bin/vagrant ] ; then
	if [ "$1" = 'scp' ]; then
	    # Inspired by https://gist.github.com/colindean/5213685
           TMPFILE=$(mktemp)
           HOST=$( echo "${@: -1}" | cut -d: -f1)
	   /usr/bin/vagrant ssh-config $HOST > $TMPFILE
	   if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
 	       scp -F $TMPFILE ${*:2}
	         if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
		     echo "Transfer failed. Available vagrant hosts: "
		     grep -E "^Host " $TMPFILE | awk '{print $2}'
		 fi
	    fi
	    rm $TMPFILE
        elif [ "$1" = 'snapshot' ]; then
        # Usage: vagrant snapshot [vagrant-machine] command [commandargs]
        # for command and command args see "vboxmanage snapshot help"
        machine=default
        args=${*:2}
        if ! [[ "$2" =~ ^(take|delete|restore(current)?|edit|list|showvminfo)$ ]] ; then
            machine=${*:2:1}
            args=${*:3}
        fi
	    virtualbox_id=`cat .vagrant/machines/${machine}/virtualbox/id`
	    vboxmanage snapshot $virtualbox_id $args
	else
	    /usr/bin/vagrant $@
	fi
    else
	echo "Vagrant appears to be missing?"
    fi
}

Working with vagrant I always miss a vagrant scp command.

Sure you can just copy the files to the directory holding the vagrant image on the host machine and access them through /vagrant folder in the virtual machine, but when you work alot with unix shell it just often feels like "vagrant scp" is missing.

So above is a way to expand the vagrant command to expand the vagrant command with scp functionality.

vagrant scp /path/to/file/on/host default:/path/on/virtualmachine/

Also I work a lot with snapshots, which is a little cumbersome, so I also added a vagrant snapshot command alias to ease the pain.

Normally to take a snapshot you would use a command like:

vboxmanage snapshot `cat .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id` take initial-snapshot

To restore the initial-snapshot you could do:

vboxmanage snapshot `cat .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id` restore initial-snapshot

But who can remember this command anyway?

The shorthand makes it easier:

vagrant snapshot [vagrant-machine] take name-of-snapshot
vagrant snapshot [vagrant-machine] restore name-of-snapshot

My use case for this is testing puppet manifests. When I create a new vagrant vm I make sure it is updated (using mainly Ubuntu I run apt-get update and apt-get upgrade) and provisioned the way I like a new vm to be. This is somewhat time consuming if you have to do it often.

A snapshot of the machine ensures that I can quickly restore it to the initial provisioned state and then do the puppet runs again until they succeed.