Interacting with a vagrant box

SSH

The most common way of interacting with a vagrant box is through ssh. Once the box is up you can connect to it from your local terminal. Remember to be in the directory of you virtual box before doing anything. In my case it's ~/vagrant/centos65i686. Just type:
vagrant ssh

Synced Folders

The folder you used to launch your vagrant session, the one which contains Vagrantfile, can be accessed from you box after you have begun your ssh session as /vagrant. E.g.
vagrant ssh
ls /vagrant
would return Vagrantfile
During the next section titled 'Provisioning' we'll add a line to the Vagrant file to sync folders which enable the process of developing web content.

Provisioning

Vagrant can automatically install software when you vagrant up so that the guest machine can be repeatably created and ready-to-use. E.g.
Create bootstrap.sh in the same directory as your Vagrantfile with these contents.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
apt-get update
apt-get install -y apache2
Next, add these line to your Vagrantfile:
config.vm.synced_folder '.', "/var/www"
config.vm.provision :shell, path: "bootstrap.sh"
Once this is done, you'll need to reload the vagrant session and make sure that the provisioning is used thus:
vagrant reload --provision
If you're starting a session from scratch:
vagrant up --provision
will do.

Port Forwarding

During the provisioning stage we installed an Apache server. We also set up a synced folder so that whatever we had in our /vagrant folder could be served.
Port forwarding allows you to access a port on your own machine, but actually have all the network traffic forwarded to a specific port on the guest machine.
To achieve this add the following line to your Vagrantfile:
config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 4567
Then reload your session:
vagrant reload --provision
Now you should be able to access your box directory through your browser using the following URL
http://localhost:4567

When you want to finish your ssh session, just type
logout
If I mess up
If you make a bunch of changes which mess things up, don't worry. You can return the box to its original state by typing
vagrant destroy

Vagrant Virtual boxes (machines) on my old laptop

So, I've been playing around with Vagrant. It's been good, but I had a little pain early on because I have an old laptop. If you're a GNU/Linux user like me, you can get away with having an old laptop. I do most Vagrant things on the command-line, so the instructions below assume you're on GNU/Linux command and using the CLI.

How to install Vagrant

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install virtualbox
sudo apt install vagrant -y

How to test the install has worked

vagrant --version

Create a sub-directory

I create a directory into which I will put all my boxes (virtual machines)
mkdir ~/vagrant
cd ~/vagrant

i686 example

Installing the box

As mentioned, I have an old laptop and therefore I can only run i686 boxes on it. You can find lots of boxes at https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search It was here that I searched for the term 'i686' and came up with the box 'herroffizier/centos-6.5-i686' which will be used in the example below. Still in the '~/vagrant' directory, create another sub-directory and change to it.
mkdir centos65i686
cd centos65i686
Now let's install the box.
vagrant init herroffizier/centos-6.5-i686
The installation takes place and a file called Vagrantfile is created. I like to make a few changes to this file for my own purposes. Here is my example Vagrant file below.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.boot_timeout = 600
  config.vm.box = "herroffizier/centos-6.5-i686"
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.gui = true
    vb.memory = "1024"
  end
end
I extended the timeout because I have an old laptop. I also load the GUI and give it a decent amount of memory.
Running the box
Now I'm ready to run my box. Still in the 'centos65i686' directory type the following.
vagrant up
A new window starts up and the box loads within it.
Once the loading process has completed you are presented with a login screen. Use the following credentials:
username : vagrant
password : vagrant
Now you should be in.

Tidying up

If you've finished with your box, you can close it down with the following command.
vagrant halt

Cross browser box shadows (yet again)

A client recently asked me to make their site a 'copy' (don't ask) of another website. The site needing to be copied had employed one of those shadows using a very long image with a drop shadow at either end and repeated on the Y axis as a background. Plus, top and bottom shadow images to give the 360 degree effect.  This wasn't going to be possible to use with the site which I had developed, since my site was responsive. So I had to return to the old chestnut of drop shadows in IE. If my client was asking for a 'copy' of another site, there was a good chance they were IE users and I couldn't assume I'd get away with providing standard solutions (I can say this, we have a good relationship) .
See below.

.container
{
  margin-top:20px;
  box-shadow:3px 3px 10px 5px #666666;
  -moz-box-shadow:3px 3px 10px 5px #666666;
  -webkit-box-shadow:3px 3px 10px 5px #666666;
  filter:
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=0,strength=5),
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=45,strength=2),
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=90,strength=5),
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=135,strength=5),
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=180,strength=10),
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=225,strength=5),
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=270,strength=5),
  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#666666,direction=315,strength=2);
}

Using css3pie with on HTML5 for cross browser effects

I have been using css3pie from http://css3pie.com/ for some time now. In order to run the test below, you will have to download it. You could put it in a scripts folder as I have but it doesn't matter. The example below contains a few elements which will make it work cross browser.
Firstly, I have added the html5.js reference at the top.
Secondly, I have reset the * and body values.
Thirdly, I have use em insted of px.
Finally, I switched the gradient around on the -pie-background call.
Enjoy!

See demo.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>CSS3pie test</title>
<!--[if IE]><script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script><![endif]-->
<style>
*
{
margin:0;
padding:0;
border:0;
}
body
{
font-family:Sans-serif;
color:#FFFFFF;
font-size:1em;
line-height:140%;
}
section#borderRadiusExample
{
background:#6BC2E8;
width:10em;
padding:0.62em;

/* rounded corners */
border-radius:0.62em;
-moz-border-radius:0.62em;
-webkit-border-radius:0.62em;

/* Shadow */
box-shadow:0.3em 0.3em 0.3em #CCCCCC;
-moz-box-shadow:0.3em 0.3em 0.3em #CCCCCC;
-webkit-box-shadow:0.3em 0.3em 0.3em #CCCCCC;

/* Linear gradient */
background-image:-moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6BC2E8, #ABDEF3);
background-image:-webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#6BC2E8), to(#ABDEF3));
-pie-background:linear-gradient(90deg, #ABDEF3, #6BC2E8);

behavior:url('scripts/PIE.htc');
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<section id="borderRadiusExample">
<p>Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.</p>
</section>
</body>
</html>

CSS Box gradient - cross browser

Here is a nice small example of how to get box gradients (using CSS) working across most browsers. Don't be put off by the silly stuff you need for IE. Just replace the colour values.

See demo.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>box gradient</title>
<style type="text/css">
body
{
font-family:Sans-serif;
}
#container
{
min-height:100px;
width:400px;
background-color: #444444;
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #444444, #999999); /* FF3.6 */
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear,left top,left bottom,color-stop(0, #444444),color-stop(1, #999999)); /* Saf4+, Chrome */
filter:  progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorStr='#444444', EndColorStr='#999999'); /* IE6,IE7 */
-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorStr='#444444', EndColorStr='#999999')"; /* IE8 */
color:#FFFFFF;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
<h1>Box gradient</h1>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Rotating boxes without images

Most rotating box CSS examples do not work cross browser. I like to try and avoid simulating this with, for example, pictures created at an angle in a good graphics package (like GIMP). Today however, I found this web page http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2010/03/09/cross-browser-css-transforms-even-in-ie/. Not all the functionality works at this stage, but enough to get going. You'll need to get hold of the JavaScript libraries first. You can also take off the backgrounds and just use the technique for rotating text. My example below is a simple one.

See demo.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="ene">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Rotate text</title>
<style>
body
{
font-family:Sans-serif;
}
#box1
{
position: absolute;
top: 45px;
left: 45px;
border: solid 1px #CCCCCC;
position: absolute;
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
padding: 10px;
-sand-transform:rotate(45deg);
}
#box2
{
position: absolute;
top: 45px;
left: 160px;
border: solid 1px #CCCCCC;
background:#a3a3a3;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
padding: 10px;
-sand-transform:rotate(-25deg);
}
</style>
<script src="scripts/EventHelpers.js"></script>
<script src="scripts/cssQuery-p.js"></script>
<script src="scripts/sylvester.js"></script>
<script src="scripts/cssSandpaper.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="box1" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(45deg); ">
-sand-transform: rotate(45deg);
</div>
<div id="box2" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(-45deg); ">
-sand-transform: rotate(-45deg);
</div>
</body>
</html>