How do I associate a Vagrant project directory with an existing VirtualBox VM?

Question

Somehow my Vagrant project has disassociated itself from its VirtualBox VM, so that when I vagrant up Vagrant will import the base-box and create a new virtual machine.

Is there a way to re-associate the Vagrant project with the existing VM? How does Vagrant internally associate a Vagrantfile with a VirtualBox VM directory?

score 223 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 26 '14 at 23:35

223

For Vagrant 1.6.3 do the following:

1) In the directory where your Vagrantfile is located, run the command

VBoxManage list vms

You will have something like this:

"virtualMachine" {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}

2) Go to the following path:

cd .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox

3) Create a file called id with the ID of your VM xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

4) Save the file and run vagrant up

answered Aug 26 '14 at 23:35

ingmmurillo

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A good way to create the `id` file *without* a newline is `echo -n '' > id` . – Xiong Chiamiov Aug 12 '15 at 19:31
1

Works great. But why does this happen? – JohnnyQ Oct 06 '15 at 16:21
Worked for me with Vagrant 1.7.2. Thanks! – Rafen Feb 11 '16 at 19:46
1

Worked perfectly. – Casey Robinson Feb 23 '17 at 16:32
# test1 and test2 boxes... `for box in test1 test2; do virtualboxid=$(VBoxManage list vms | grep $box | cut -d' ' -f2); echo -n $virtualboxid > .vagrant/machines/$box/virtualbox/id; done` – luismartingil Jan 02 '18 at 07:44
When running `VBoxManage list vms` on Windows, if you get an error "VBoxManage: command not found", you can try this instead: `"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" list vms` – Asrar Aug 16 '18 at 15:51
Works with Vagrant 2.x also. btw, if using Vim, be sure to `:set binary` and `:set noeol` so it won't add a newline at the end. – wizonesolutions Aug 12 '19 at 12:26
Thank you, this fixed my issue too. I had a cluster so I just copied over all the machine directories in the `machines` directory. – antonkronaj Dec 21 '21 at 18:54

Mitchell · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-29T19:34:42.083

91

WARNING: The solution below works for Vagrant 1.0.x but not Vagrant 1.1+.

Vagrant uses the ".vagrant" file in the same directory as your "Vagrantfile" to track the UUID of your VM. This file will not exist if a VM does not exist. The format of the file is JSON. It looks like this if a single VM exists:

{
   "active":{
      "default":"02f8b71c-75c6-4f33-a161-0f46a0665ab6"
   }
}

default is the name of the default virtual machine (if you're not using multi-VM setups).

If your VM has somehow become disassociated, what you can do is do VBoxManage list vms which will list every VM that VirtualBox knows about by its name and UUID. Then manually create a .vagrant file in the same directory as your Vagrantfile and fill in the contents properly.

Run vagrant status to ensure that Vagrant picked up the proper changes.

Note: This is not officially supported by Vagrant and Vagrant may change the format of .vagrant at any time. But this is valid as of Vagrant 0.9.7 and will be valid for Vagrant 1.0.

edited Mar 29 '13 at 19:34

answered Feb 24 '12 at 20:47

Mitchell

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Awesome! Thank you. I had a feeling something was missing. – jrdmcgr Feb 24 '12 at 20:55
Could be 'default' changes to custom name without using multi-VM config? – Alexander V. Ilyin Nov 14 '12 at 21:02
48

For Vagrant 1.1, the UUIDs are stored in a machine-specific file at `.vagrant/machines/{name}/{provider}/id`. In fact, the only thing that file contains is the UUID. – May 10 '13 at 16:56
2

I tried this trick but vagrant status simply reports the state as not created. Vagrant up then creates a new vm and works fine. If I change the id file it then reports as not created, even if I change it back to the uuid of the box it just created. – Reece Marsland May 21 '13 at 16:47
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With Vagrant 1.1+, make sure you don't add a newline to the end of the id. See https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/1755 for details – Mads Mobæk May 23 '13 at 09:13
+1 to @JustinY - the `{provider}` specific directory structure was the key for me – Srikanth Venugopalan Dec 04 '13 at 03:06
1

I was looking for .vagrant in my profile (Mac). Note that (at least for me) it was in the same folder as the cookbooks folder and VagrantFile. (Vagrant version 1.4.3) – allicarn Mar 10 '14 at 14:58
@Mitchell, there is a popular plugin for Vagrant https://github.com/tknerr/vagrant-managed-servers which allows you to use existing virtual machine from many projects. For example, I develop on Windows/OSX, have one vagrant docker-host machine, and all my other projects just mapp some folders to docker-host, and start containers there. Unfortunately this plugin has some issues, in particular rsync/rsync-auto do not work with it. Why not to make this possibility integral part of Vagrant, so we don't have to hack .vagrant folders ? – Ross Sep 03 '15 at 13:48

score 48 · Answer 3 · answered May 10 '13 at 15:27

48

The solution with upper version is quite the same.

But first you need to launch the .vbox file by hand so that it appear in VBoxManage list vms

Then you can check the .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id to check that the uuid is the right one.

answered May 10 '13 at 15:27

Natim

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Also, it's worth noting that if you're editing the `id` file, you must keep it to a single line. For some reason it doesn't like newline at end (my text editor adds it by default, so I had problems). – Dan2552 Aug 27 '13 at 22:37
I ran into an issue with this because I had renamed the folder that it was in. Vagrant insisted on creating a new VM with the same name as the folder, instead of using the existing VM. I fixed it by creating a `.vagrant` file in the 1.0 format, and it upgraded it automatically. As soon as I did, it actually renamed the old VM to the new project directory name. – Jonah Oct 18 '13 at 21:07
2

I am not sure what caused the disconnect where my vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id pointed to the wrong VirtualBox machine id. The file which helped was $HOME/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml. It has a MachineRegistry section having the VirtualBox machine UUIDs mapped to the machine names. For instance – arntg Feb 24 '14 at 23:04

score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 18 '17 at 17:10

15

Had the issue today, my .vagrant folder was missing and found that there was a few more steps than simply setting the id:

Set the id:
```
VBoxManage list vms
```
Find the id and set in {project-folder}/.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id.

Note that default may be different if set in your Vagrantfile e.g. config.vm.define "someothername".
Stop the machine from provisioning:

Create a file named action_provision in the same dir as the id file, set it's contents to: 1.5:{id} replacing {id} with the id found in step 1.
Setup a new public/private key:

Vagrant uses a private key stored in .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key to ssh into the machine. You'll need to generate a new one.
```
ssh-keygen -t rsa
```
name it private_key.

vagrant ssh then copy the private_key.pub into /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys.

edited Dec 18 '17 at 17:10

hakatashi

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answered Sep 28 '16 at 09:10

Petecoop

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is "authorized_keys" a file or directory? – user2568374 Feb 16 '17 at 19:40
it's a file, if you search on it you'll find plenty of stuff, it's a standard ssh thing – Petecoop Feb 16 '17 at 23:31
Because I was using the same keys, I didn't have to do the last setp (third). Otherwise, really well explained and everything perfect. – Dazag Jul 12 '18 at 13:00
How to do the third step on win10？ – navono Apr 13 '19 at 12:51

score 9 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 09 '15 at 11:04

Update with same problem today with Vagrant 1.7.4:

useful thread at https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/1755 and specially with following commands:

For example, to pair box 'vip-quickstart_default_1431365185830_12124' to vagrant.

$ VBoxManage list
"vip-quickstart_default_1431365185830_12124" {50feafd3-74cd-40b5-a170-3c976348de27}
$ echo -n "50feafd3-74cd-40b5-a170-3c976348de27" > .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id

score 6 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 31 '12 at 23:45

6

For multi-VM setups, it would look like this:

{
   "active":{
        "web":"a1fc9ae4-5d43-49cb-be31-ab3c4f74745d",
        "db":"13503bc5-76b8-4c26-95c4-32435b372212"
   }
}

You can get the vm names from the Vagrantfile used to create those VMs. Look for this line:

config.vm.define :web do |web_config|

"web" is the name of the vm in this case.

answered Oct 31 '12 at 23:45

agwntr

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And **db** is a default VM ?? – Robert Jan 20 '14 at 17:14
1

I don't think there is a default here, just web and db. Depending on the Vagrantfile, there is an order of which vm gets built first. – agwntr Feb 24 '14 at 18:49

score 6 · Answer 7 · edited Sep 26 '19 at 13:42

This is modified from @Petecoop's answer.

Run vagrant halt if you haven't shut down the box yet.

Then list your virtualboxes: VBoxManage list vms

It'll list all of your virtualboxes. Identify the box you want to revert to and grab the id between the curly brackets: {}.

Then edit the project id file: sudo nano .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id (from the project directory)

Replace it with the id you copied from the list of VBs.

Try vagrant reload.

If that doesn't work and gets hung on SSH authorization (where I stumbled), copy the insecure public key from the vagrant git. Replace the content of /.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key. Backup the original of course: cp private_key private_key-bak.

Then run vagrant reload. It'll say it's identified the insecure key and create a new one.

default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace
default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security.
default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!

You should be all set.

score 5 · Answer 8 · edited Feb 27 '18 at 15:51

I'm using Vagrant 1.8.1 on OSX El Capitan

My vm was not shut correctly when my computer restarted, so when i tried vagrant up it was always creating new vm. No solutions here worked for me. But what did work was a variation of ingmmurillo's answer

So instead of creating .vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id based on the id from running VBoxManage list vms. I had to update the id in .vagrant/machines/local/virtual_box/id

I've got a one liner that essentially does this for me:

echo -n `VBoxManage list vms | head -n 1 | awk '{print substr($2, 2, length($2)-2)}'` > .vagrant/machines/local/virtualbox/id

This assumes the first box is the one i need to start from running VBoxManage list vms

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 27 '16 at 21:57

In Vagrant 1.9.1:

I had a VM in Virtual Box named 'Ubuntu 16.04.1' so I packaged it as a vagrant box with:

vagrant package --base "Ubuntu 16.04.1"

responds with...

==> Ubuntu 16.04.1: Exporting VM...
==> Ubuntu 16.04.1: Compressing package to: blah blah/package.box

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 04 '16 at 09:35

I'm on macos and found that removing the .locks on the boxes solved my problem.

For some reason

vagrant halt

did not remove these locks, and after restoring all my settings in .vagrant/machine/default/virtualbox using timemachine, removing the locks, the right machine booted up.

Only 1 minor problem remains, It booted into grub so I had to press enter once, don't know if this is staying, but I will find out soon enough.

I'm running vagrant 1.7.4 and virtualbox 5.0.2

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jan 13 '21 at 14:30

0

for me deleting the

cd yourVagrantProject/.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/
rm id

worked.

answered Jan 13 '21 at 14:30

Mohsin Younas

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How do I associate a Vagrant project directory with an existing VirtualBox VM?

11 Answers11

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