Most vagrant boxes comes without the gui desktop interface. This tutorial will show you how install and access to that gui interface. Let’s use the standard CentOS 7 vm:
$ vagrant init centos/7
The above command will create a Vagrantfile.
Next open up the vagrant file and ensure the following virtualbox setting section exists:
config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v| v.gui = true v.memory = 2048 v.cpus = 2 end
Log into your vm:
$ vagrant ssh
Then switch to root:
$ sudo -i
Then install the gui desktop collection of packages:
$ yum groupinstall -y 'gnome desktop' $ yum install -y 'xorg*'
Next uninstall the following packages:
yum remove -y initial-setup initial-setup-gui
These packages are to do with agreeing to EULA agreements, which means it requires user interaction, which can prevent automated startups via vagrant.
Next switch to the gui target:
$ systemctl isolate graphical.target $ systemctl set-default graphical.target # to make this persistant
You should now see the gui desktop in your virtualbox window. If not, then try restarting the box:
$ vagrant halt ; vagrant up
I’ve also created the vagrant enable gui shell script that you can copy into your vagrant projects.