Vagrant stuck connection timeout retrying

My vagrant was working perfectly fine last night. I've just turned the PC on, hit vagrant up, and this is what I get:

==> 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 => 2222 (adapter 1)
==> 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: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...

Has anyone had this before? vagrant isn't widely covered on the web yet and I can't find a reason why this is occurring.

Solution 1:

I solved this problem, and will answer in case anyone else has a similar issue.

What I did was: I enabled the GUI of Virtual box to see that it was waiting for input on startup to select whether I wanted to boot directly to ubuntu or safemode etc.

To turn on the GUI you have to put this in your vagrant config Vagrantfile:

config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb|
  vb.gui = true
end

Solution 2:

When you are stuck with your vagrant machine the way described above there is no need to boot in gui mode (and is impossible without an X server).

While your VM is booting, in a separate terminal window, just find out the id of the running machine.

vboxmanage list runningvms

This will result in something like this:

"projects_1234567890" {5cxxxx-cxxx-4xxx-8xxx-5xxxxxxxxxx}

Quite often, the VM is simply waiting for you to select an option in the bootloader. You can send the appropriate keycode (in the case, Enter) to the vm with controlvm:

vboxmanage controlvm projects_1234567890 keyboardputscancode 1c

That's it. Your virtual machine will continue the boot process.

Solution 3:

One thing to double check is if Hardware Virtualisation is enabled in your machine's BIOS.

My problem is the same string of timeouts but I could only see a black screen in the GUI.

A laptop which I was just setting up kept showing the same problem. After hours of searching I finally found a tip to see if the BIOS had Hardware Virtualisation was enabled.

Here's the content of the post I found:

I see there are still some users who are experiencing this issue. So, I will attempt to summarise a list below of some possible solutions to the SSH timeout problem:

Make sure your firewall or antivirus is not blocking the program (which I doubt will happen often)
Give your vagrant machine some time for timeouts to happen. If you dont have a very fast PC / Mac, the VM will take while to boot into an SSH ready state, so timeouts will happen.
Therefore, first try to let vagrant timeout COMPLETELY before concluding that there is a fault.
If vagrant times out completely then increase the timeout limit in the vagrant file to a few min and try again.
If that still doesnt work, then try to clean boot your vagrant machine through the VirtualBox interface and enable the GUI of the machine beforehand. If the GUI doesn't show anything happening (ie. just blackscreen, no text) while it is booting, then your vagrant machine has got problems.
Destroy the entire machine through the VB interface and reinstall.
Delete the ubuntu image files in the Vagrant Images folder in the user folder and redownload and install.
Do you even have an intel processor that supports 64bit hardware virtualisation? Google it. If you do, make sure there is no setting in your Bios disabling this feature.
Disable hyper-v feature if you are running windows 7 or 8. Google how to disable.
Make sure you are running through an SSH enabled client. Use Git bash. Download: http://git-scm.com/downloads
Install a 32bit version of ubuntu like trusty32 or precise32. Just change the version in the vagrant file and reinstall vagrant in new directory.
Make sure you are using the latest vagrant and virtualbox versions. Last resorts: Format your computer, reinstall windows and buy an intel core isomething processor.

Hope that helps.

Solution 4:

The solution I've found is to check the cable connection option in the adapter 1 which is attached to NAT. I really don't know, this is my 4th vagrant box but this is the only one with cable connection option not checked, and upon checking it, it works. NAT cable connection

Solution 5:

I had exact the same problem. I thought the problem might be with SSH keys (wrong localization of file or something else but I checked it many times) but you may always add in configure section username and password (without using ssh keys) and running gui so the code in Vagrantfile should look like more or less as below:

Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|

  config.ssh.username = "vagrant"
  config.ssh.password = "vagrant"

   config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
     vb.gui = true
   end
end

In my case even if GUI was displayed I got black screen (no errors or possibility to login or anything else) and in console I got the Error: Connection timeout. Retrying... many times. I made sure I had VT-x (virtualization) enabled in BIOS, I checked many combinations of versions of both Virtual Box and Vagrant together and many Vagrant boxes (for some of them I didn't have black screen in GUI but still have connection problems). Finally I've updated VirtualBox and Vagrant again to the last versions and the problem still occurred.

The crucial thing was looking at icons in VirtualBox after running vagrantup (with GUI in Vagrantfile as I showed above) as on the below image

enter image description here

Although I had no errors in VirtualPC (no warnings that VT-x is not enabled) my V icon was earlier gray so it means the VT-x was disabled. As I said I had it enabled in my BIOS all the time.

Finally I realized the problem might by HYPER-V which I also installed and enabled to test sites on older Internet Explorer. I went to Windows Control Panel -> Programs and functions / Software and choose from the menu on left Turn on or Turn off Windows functions (hope you will find those, I use Polish Windows so don't know exact English names). I turned off Hyper-V, restarted PC and after running Virtual Box and vagrant up I finally had no errors, in GUI I have login screen and my V icon stopped to be gray.

I wasted a lot of time solving this issue (and many PC restarts) so I hope this might be helpful to anyone that have problem on Windows - make sure you have Hyper-V turned off in your Control Panel.