How to Run cypress on vagrant vm using the hosts GUI (Or any other app really)

run_guest_cypress_from_host.txt

Assuming you have correctly installed cypress and can run it headless: yarn run cypress run (or whichever way you run it, npm etc)

1. You need an X-Server on the host.

On Linux, you already have and X Server running
On Mac, On Mac OSX you can install XQuartz
2. Enable X-forwarding on your Vagrant VM

Just add this to your Vagrantfile
config.ssh.forward_x11 = true

3. Ssh into the box without vagrant ssh
We need to access the guest with ssh as opposed to the normal vagrant ssh. Do do this:
run $ vagrant ssh-config on the host in your directory with the vagrant file

$ vagrant ssh-config
Host default
  HostName 127.0.0.1
  User ubuntu
  Port 2222
  UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  PasswordAuthentication no
  IdentityFile /Users/xxxx/work/.vagrant/private_key
  IdentitiesOnly yes
  LogLevel FATAL
  ForwardX11 yes
From this we have the details we need to ssh. The user, the HostName the Port and the IdentityFile.

Now we can, from the host ssh into the guest and run the cypress test runner.

We also need to add -X flag that tells ssh to use the X-forwarding.

Assuming my project runs in a directory called project in the home directory of my guest machine... Run this command from the host machine while your box in running.

ssh [email protected] -X -p 2222 -i /Users/xxxx/work/.vagrant/private_key -t "cd /home/vagrant/project; yarn run cypress open"

Voila! the Test runner will run in your box and the GUI will display on your host machine.

Credits to [Gabor](https://code-maven.com/xforwarding-from-vagrant-box) and [Martin](https://coderwall.com/p/ozhfva/run-graphical-programs-within-vagrantboxes)