How do I delete a virtualbox machine in the GURU_MEDITATION error state?

Solution 1:

Kill the VBoxHeadless process and run "vagrant destroy"

Destroying vagrant and sending the kill signal with the "killall" command looks like:

killall -9 VBoxHeadless && vagrant destroy

Solution 2:

If you can't power off the machine from VirtualBox GUI, then try from the command line using vboxmanage command (VBoxManage on OS X), e.g.:

vboxmanage controlvm NAMEOFVM poweroff

_{Change NAMEOFVM with the name from vboxmanage list vms command.}

then unregister and delete the VM:

vboxmanage unregistervm NAMEOFVM --delete

Or delete it manually:

rm -fr ~/"VirtualBox VMs/NAMEOFVM"

Solution 3:

I hit this problem. Eveything I read recommend that you should always manage the boxes via Virtual Box, not directly access files. But when I had an invalid box, the unregistervm command refused to delete it and vagrant destroy did not work. In the end the following process worked.

1. Kill all running VBox* processes
2. Delete the folder "boxname" from the folder "VirtualBox VMs"
3. Edit the file "VirtualBox.xml" and remove the tag corresponding to the invalid box.

I then ran this command the verify the box was gone.

VBoxManage list vms

After that I was able to create a new vm with the same name.