How to debug "Vagrant cannot forward the specified ports on this VM" message

I'm trying to start a Vagrant instance and getting the following message:

Vagrant cannot forward the specified ports on this VM, since they
would collide with another VirtualBox virtual machine's forwarded
ports! The forwarded port to 4567 is already in use on the host
machine.

To fix this, modify your current projects Vagrantfile to use another
port. Example, where '1234' would be replaced by a unique host port:

  config.vm.forward_port 80, 1234

I opened VirtualBox, but I don't have any running boxes at the moment, so I'm stumped. How can I figure out which process is listening on 4567? Is there a way to list all Vagrant boxes running on my machine?

Thanks, Kevin

Solution 1:

You can see what vagrant instances are running on your machine by running

$ vagrant global-status
id       name    provider   state   directory
----------------------------------------------------------------------
a20a0aa  default virtualbox saved   /Users/dude/Downloads/inst-MacOSX
64bc939  default virtualbox saved   /Users/dude/svn/dev-vms/ubuntu14
a94fb0a  default virtualbox running /Users/dude/svn/dev-vms/centos5

If you don't see any VMs running, your conflict is not a vagrant box (that vagrant knows about). The next thing to do is to fire up the VirtualBox UI, and check to see if it has any instances running. If you don't want to run the UI, you can:

ps -ef |grep VBox

If you have VirtualBox instances running, they should be included in that output. You should be able to just kill processes that have VirtualBox in their output. One problem is that one of those processes seems to exist to do keep-alives. Just kill off the highest VirtualBox process. If you have a VirtualBox image running but vagrant doesn't know about it, some Vagrant directories may have been deleted manually, which means Vagrant loses track of the instance.

Solution 2:

Watch out, your Vagrantfile is not the only one being used when bringing up a Vagrant box/instance.

When you get this:

~/dev/vagrant user$ vagrant reload
Vagrant cannot forward the specified ports on this VM, since they
would collide with some other application that is already listening
on these ports. The forwarded port to 8001 is already in use
on the host machine.

To fix this, modify your current projects Vagrantfile to use another
port. Example, where '1234' would be replaced by a unique host port:

  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8001, host: 1234

Sometimes, Vagrant will attempt to auto-correct this for you. In this
case, Vagrant was unable to. This is usually because the guest machine
is in a state which doesn't allow modifying port forwarding.
~/dev/vagrant user$ 

You are actually not only using the Vagrantfile from ~/dev/vagrant but also the one from your "box" distribution .box file which is typically located here:

~/.vagrant.d/boxes/trusty/0/virtualbox/Vagrantfile

And if you have a look at it you'll see it has plenty of default port mappings:

$ cat ~/.vagrant.d/boxes//trusty/0/virtualbox/Vagrantfile
$script = <<SCRIPT
bzr branch lp:jujuredirector/quickstart /tmp/jujuredir
bash /tmp/jujuredir/setup-juju.sh
SCRIPT

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # This Vagrantfile is auto-generated by 'vagrant package' to contain
  # the MAC address of the box. Custom configuration should be placed in
  # the actual 'Vagrantfile' in this box.

  config.vm.base_mac = "080027DFD2C4"
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 22, host: 2122, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 6080, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8001, host: 8001, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"
  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "172.16.250.15"
  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: $script

end

# Load include vagrant file if it exists after the auto-generated
# so it can override any of the settings
include_vagrantfile = File.expand_path("../include/_Vagrantfile", __FILE__)
load include_vagrantfile if File.exist?(include_vagrantfile)

So, go ahead and edit this file to remove the offending colliding forwarding port(s):

  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 22, host: 2122, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 6080, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"
  # config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8001, host: 8001, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"

By:

~/dev/vagrant user$ cp ~/.vagrant.d/boxes//trusty/0/virtualbox/Vagrantfile ~/.vagrant.d/boxes//trusty/0/virtualbox/Vagrantfile.old
~/dev/vagrant user$ vi ~/.vagrant.d/boxes//trusty/0/virtualbox/Vagrantfile

and watch out for other Vagrantfiles inclusion i.e.:

include_vagrantfile = File.expand_path("../include/_Vagrantfile", __FILE__)

And now it works:

$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Importing base box 'trusty'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: vagrant_default_1401234565101_12345
==> default: Clearing any previously set forwarded ports...
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
    default: Adapter 2: hostonly
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 => 2122 (adapter 1)
    default: 80 => 6080 (adapter 1)
    default: 22 => 2222 (adapter 1)
==> default: Running 'pre-boot' VM customizations...
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: Warning: Connection timeout. Retrying...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
==> default: Configuring and enabling network interfaces...
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /Home/user/dev/vagrant/vagrant-docker
==> default: Running provisioner: shell...
    default: Running: inline script
...

Hope this helps.

Solution 3:

As message says, the port collides with the host box. I would simply change the port to some other value on the host machine. So if I am getting error for

config.vm.forward_port 80, 1234

then I would change it to

config.vm.forward_port 80, 5656

As 1234 might be used on my host machine.

For actually inspecting ports on any machine, I use the tcpview utility for that OS and get to know which port is used where.

Solution 4:

I ran into this problem and it turned out RubyMine was still holding on to a port. I found out which application was holding on to the port (31337 in my case) by running this command:

lsof -i | grep LISTEN 

Output

node       1396 richard.nienaber    7u  IPv4 0xffffff802808b320      0t0  TCP *:20559 (LISTEN)
Dropbox    1404 richard.nienaber   19u  IPv4 0xffffff8029736c20      0t0  TCP *:17500 (LISTEN)
Dropbox    1404 richard.nienaber   25u  IPv4 0xffffff8027870160      0t0  TCP localhost:26165 (LISTEN)
rubymine  11668 richard.nienaber   39u  IPv6 0xffffff8024d8e700      0t0  TCP *:26162 (LISTEN)
rubymine  11668 richard.nienaber   65u  IPv6 0xffffff8020c6e440      0t0  TCP *:31337 (LISTEN)
rubymine  11668 richard.nienaber  109u  IPv6 0xffffff8024d8df80      0t0  TCP localhost:6942 (LISTEN)
rubymine  11668 richard.nienaber  216u  IPv6 0xffffff8020c6ef80      0t0  TCP localhost:63342 (LISTEN)