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Posted by Unsubscribed User
Unsubscribed User
14,547 Points

Ubuntu Virtual Box Shared Folder Best Practice Question

I'm working on the Sass course right now. From what I understand, Windows isn't optimal to set up Ruby on.

What I've done is set up a Virtual Box machine running Ubuntu (my first time using Ubuntu)

I have everything configured, but I was annoyed at how Brackets text editor running within Ubuntu was not minimizing properly, and also not scaling properly to my monitor.

I created a Virtual Box shared folder to a folder on my Windows machine. I set Sass to monitor it, and then edit the files on Windows Brackets. I also have the live preview open on Windows and it works and looks a lot nicer.

Since I don't know a lot about Ubuntu/Linux yet I'm just wanting to make sure this is an acceptable practice that isn't highly prone to data loss. I haven't encountered any problems so far and it works wonderfully. I plan on backing up the shared files regularly.

Thanks

3 Answers

Nathan Williams
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.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Nathan Williams
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 6,851 Points
Nathan Williams
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Nathan Williams
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 6,851 Points

To answer your question, you've basically recreated the Vagrant workflow, a highly regarded and popular way for developers to work :) I'd recommend switching over the rest of the way, since you're already most of the way there, and it should help make your setup more repeatable, and have a look through the docs and some blogs about developing with vagrant, there's lots of tips out there for getting the most out of it. Good luck!

Unsubscribed User
Unsubscribed User
14,547 Points

Awesome, thanks for the response. I'll check it out right now!

Michael Novac-Yu
Michael Novac-Yu
4,775 Points
Michael Novac-Yu
Michael Novac-Yu
4,775 Points

+1 what Nathan said. Nice job on coming up with this solution!

Like Nathan said, Vagrant is an awesome tool that developers love. We use it here at Treehouse all the time!

Here's a link to a quick crash course: https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/42-crash-course-on-vagrant-revised

Unsubscribed User
Unsubscribed User
14,547 Points

Thanks, I'll check out that link too! I think I've gotten it almost up and running. I used https://blog.engineyard.com/2014/building-a-vagrant-box to help with the instructions of creating my own box file. I'm waiting for the VM to export right now. I'll have to learn about setting a custom SSH key, as using a universal one is not good practice I assume.

Thanks again to both of you for the help!

Edit: I see vagrant replaces the SSH key on startup. My machine is up and running, now I just need to figure out why SSH isn't working.

Unsubscribed User
Unsubscribed User
14,547 Points
Unsubscribed User
Unsubscribed User
14,547 Points

When I run sass --watch . over ssh, it will updated the changed in the synced folder, but any further changes I do are not recognized till I ctrl-c and run the command again. So it's syncing but not watching properly. With the version I had set up without Vagrant it worked perfectly, so I'm clearly still missing something in the sync settings.

Nathan Williams
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Nathan Williams
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 6,851 Points
Nathan Williams
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Nathan Williams
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 6,851 Points

interesting. i can't say i do much with sass (i use vagrant more for sys-ops than dev), but a quick google search makes me think you might want to also use --poll? https://github.com/sass/sass/issues/504. g'luck!

Unsubscribed User
Unsubscribed User
14,547 Points

Thanks the --poll seems to work. I checked on my original virtual machine and now --watch isn't working either. --watch was working on shared folders before on my non-vagrant VM. So I must have messed something up when I was preparing it for vagrant. I'll try and figure it out later what I messed up for my own learning, but for now your suggestion works fine!