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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

1. 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".

2. 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.

3. 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

for me deleting the

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

worked.