Vagrant: Bridged Networking with Password SSH (No NAT)

Quick one-liner: Replace Vagrant's default NAT networking with bridged networking and enable standard SSH with password auth — so your VMs behave like real servers.

🤔 Why This Matters

By default, Vagrant creates VMs behind NAT with port forwarding and key-based SSH. That's fine for quick testing, but if you need VMs to communicate with each other directly, or you want to SSH in with a standard username and password, the defaults get in the way.

This setup bridges the VMs to your physical network, gives them real IP addresses, and enables password-based SSH so you can connect with any SSH client — not just vagrant ssh.

🔧 The Vagrantfile

Create a directory for your VM:

mkdir node01 && cd node01

Create a Vagrantfile:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # Use openSUSE Leap 15
  config.vm.box = "opensuse/openSUSE-15.0-x86_64"

  # Hostname and bridged IP
  config.vm.hostname = "node01"
  config.vm.network "public_network", bridge: "eth0", ip: "192.168.100.51"

  # VM resources
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.memory = "4096"
    vb.cpus    = "2"
  end

  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    # Set default route (adjust to your router)
    echo "default 192.168.100.254 - eth1" > /etc/sysconfig/network/routes

    # Disable the default NAT interface — this disables vagrant ssh too
    sed -i "s/STARTMODE=.*/STARTMODE=off/" /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0

    # Set DNS
    echo "search fosstech.biz" > /etc/resolv.conf
    echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" >> /etc/resolv.conf
    echo "nameserver 8.8.4.4" >> /etc/resolv.conf

    # Enable password-based SSH
    sed -i 's/PasswordAuthentication no/PasswordAuthentication yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    systemctl restart sshd
    systemctl restart network &
  SHELL
end

🔧 Bring It Up

vagrant up

Once the VM is ready, SSH in with standard credentials:

ssh [email protected]
# Password: vagrant

✅ What Changed