How to export a Vagrant virtual machine to transfe

Question

I have a vagrant box up and running (configured with a LAMP stack). I need to transfer it to another PC. How can I export it? I guess that I can get a file (or files) that can be copied to another PC, so there I can run some command to import the vagrant box.

Answer 1

This is actually pretty simple

1. Install virtual box and vagrant on the remote machine

2. Wrap up your vagrant machine

   vagrant package --base [machine name as it shows in virtual box] --output /Users/myuser/Documents/Workspace/my.box

3. copy the box to your remote

4. init the box on your remote machine by running

   vagrant init [machine name as it shows in virtual box] /Users/myuser/Documents/Workspace/my.box

5. Run vagrant up

Answer 2

The easiest way would be to package the Vagrant box and then copy (e.g. scp or rsync) it over to the other PC, add it and vagrant up ;-)

For detailed steps, check this out => Is there any way to clone a vagrant box that is already installed

Answer 3

My hard drive in my Mac was making beeping noises in the middle of a project so I decided to install a SSD. I needed to move my project from one disk to another. A few things to consider:

• I'm vagrant w/ virtualbox on a Mac
• I'm using git

This is what worked for me:

1.) Copy your ~/.vagrant.d directory to your new machine.
2.) Copy your ~/VirtualBox\ VMs directory to your new machine. 
3.) In VirtualBox add the machines one by one using **Machine** >> **Add**
4.) Run `vagrant box list` to see if vagrant acknowledges your machines. 
5.) `git clone my_project`
6.) `vagrant up`

I had a few problems with VB Guest additions.

I fixed them with this solution.

Answer 4

As of 2019 there is a subcommand: vagrant box repackage

vagrant box repackage --help 
Usage: vagrant box repackage <name> <provider> <version>
    -h, --help                       Print this help

You can find name provider and version by running vagrant box list

vagrant box list
macinbox (virtualbox, 10.14.5)

The ouput of vagrant box repackage is a file called package.box which is basically a tgz file which the content can be listed as below:

tar tzf package.box
./metadata.json
./box.ovf
./Vagrantfile
./box-disk001.vmdk

Answer 5

As stated in

How can I change where Vagrant looks for its virtual hard drive?

the virtual-machine state is stored in a predefined VirtualBox folder. Copying the corresponding machine (folder) besides your vagrant-project to your other host should preserve your virtual machine state.

Answer 6

You have two ways to do this, I'll call it dirty way and clean way:

1. The dirty way

Create a box from your current virtual environment, using vagrant package command:

http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/cli/package.html

Then copy the box to the other pc, add it using vagrant box add and run it using vagrant up as usual.

Keep in mind that files in your working directory (the one with the Vagrantfile) are shared when the virtual machine boots, so you need to copy it to the other pc as well.

2. The clean way

Theoretically it should never be necessary to do export/import with Vagrant. If you have the foresight to use provisioning for configuring the virtual environment (chef, puppet, ansible), and a version control system like git for your working directory, copying an environment would be at this point simple as running:

git clone <your_repo>
vagrant up