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Last active March 10, 2026 16:39
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Vagrant Cheat Sheet

Typing vagrant from the command line will display a list of all available commands.

Be sure that you are in the same directory as the Vagrantfile when running these commands!

Creating a VM

  • vagrant init -- Initialize Vagrant with a Vagrantfile and ./.vagrant directory, using no specified base image. Before you can do vagrant up, you'll need to specify a base image in the Vagrantfile.
  • vagrant init <boxpath> -- Initialize Vagrant with a specific box. To find a box, go to the public Vagrant box catalog. When you find one you like, just replace it's name with boxpath. For example, vagrant init ubuntu/trusty64.

Starting a VM

  • vagrant up -- starts vagrant environment (also provisions only on the FIRST vagrant up)
  • vagrant resume -- resume a suspended machine (vagrant up works just fine for this as well)
  • vagrant provision -- forces reprovisioning of the vagrant machine
  • vagrant reload -- restarts vagrant machine, loads new Vagrantfile configuration
  • vagrant reload --provision -- restart the virtual machine and force provisioning

Getting into a VM

  • vagrant ssh -- connects to machine via SSH
  • vagrant ssh <boxname> -- If you give your box a name in your Vagrantfile, you can ssh into it with boxname. Works from any directory.

Stopping a VM

  • vagrant halt -- stops the vagrant machine
  • vagrant suspend -- suspends a virtual machine (remembers state)

Cleaning Up a VM

  • vagrant destroy -- stops and deletes all traces of the vagrant machine
  • vagrant destroy -f -- same as above, without confirmation

Boxes

  • vagrant box list -- see a list of all installed boxes on your computer
  • vagrant box add <name> <url> -- download a box image to your computer
  • vagrant box outdated -- check for updates vagrant box update
  • vagrant box remove <name> -- deletes a box from the machine
  • vagrant package -- packages a running virtualbox env in a reusable box

Saving Progress

-vagrant snapshot save [options] [vm-name] <name> -- vm-name is often default. Allows us to save so that we can rollback at a later time

Tips

  • vagrant -v -- get the vagrant version
  • vagrant status -- outputs status of the vagrant machine
  • vagrant global-status -- outputs status of all vagrant machines
  • vagrant global-status --prune -- same as above, but prunes invalid entries
  • vagrant provision --debug -- use the debug flag to increase the verbosity of the output
  • vagrant push -- yes, vagrant can be configured to deploy code!
  • vagrant up --provision | tee provision.log -- Runs vagrant up, forces provisioning and logs all output to a file

Plugins

  • vagrant-hostsupdater : $ vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostsupdater to update your /etc/hosts file automatically each time you start/stop your vagrant box.

Notes

  • If you are using VVV, you can enable xdebug by running vagrant ssh and then xdebug_on from the virtual machine's CLI.
@wpscholar
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vagrant boxes remove ... should be: vagrant box remove ...

Updated. Thanks!

@WorldWideMusicc
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Thank you very much!!

@The-Facilitator
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Thank you very much for this.

I have been trying to clone my GitHub in command line but it keeps asking for password. I have tried using PAT and my GitHub sign in password, but both didn’t work.

Any suggestions on how I can resolve this?

@nelsonokunseri
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Useful resource.Thanks!

@phong-phan
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what does "provision" mean in Vagrant?
As i understand, provision mean that you can setup the vm you just created using vagrant, for my use case, i can run ansible playbook in those VM that i want to create, and a fun fact it vagrant allow you to declare the playbook inside the vagrantfile, i do not know it until my co-worker tell me. Hope this helps

@drayerh
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drayerh commented Mar 20, 2025

In case you want to indiscriminately destroy all of the running Vagrant VMs on your machine, you can run the following:

for i in vagrant global-status | grep virtualbox | awk '{ print $1 }' ; do vagrant destroy $i ; done

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