Vagrant stuck connection timeout retrying

Question

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.

Answer 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

Answer 2

I had the same issue, but none of other answers fully solved my problem. Answer by @Kiee was helpful, although all I could see in the GUI was a black screen (with underscore in top-left, this issue in Virtual Box also has been raised separately in stack overflow, again nothing helped).

Eventually, a solution proved to be very simple: check version of your virtual machine.

More precisely, I had a box from someone else with 64-bit Debian, but Virtual Box insisted to treat it as 32-bit, what I didn't notice. To change it, open Virtual Box, then open terminal and run

vagrant up

wait for the line

default: SSH auth method: private key

now you can hit ctrl+C (or wait for timeout) and run

vagrant halt

your virtual machine won't be destroyed, so you can see it in the menu of Virtual Box, but will be powered off, so you can change settings. Chose your machine in the menu, click 'Settings'->'General' and chose proper 'Version', for me it was 'Debian (64-bit)'. After this type vagrant up again.

If this is a case for you (or different changes in 'Settings' solved your issue), you can create new box from the repaired one typing

vagrant package --output mynew.box

Some more details: host 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04, guest 64-bit Debian 8.1, Virtual Box 5.0.14, Vagrant 1.8.1

Answer 3

I was testing a mounted folder in my vagrant VM by adding a new entry into /etc/fstab. Later on I logged out, ran vagrant halt, but when I ran vagrant up I got:

SSH auth method: private key
Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...

I read all these posts and tried all the ones that seemed relevant for my case (except for vagrant destroy, which would have certainly fixed my problem, but was a last resort in my case). The post by @Kiee gave me the idea to try to boot my VM directly from the VirtualBox GUI. During the boot process the VM halted itself and was asking me if I wanted to skip mounting the test folder that I had added earlier to /etc/fstab. (That's why vagrant couldn't boot the VM.) After answering 'NO' the VM booted no problem. I logged in, removed the naughty line from my fstab, and shutdown the VM.

After that vagrant was able to boot just fine.

Takeaway? If all of a sudden vagrant cannot boot back into your VM, try to boot directly from the provider (VirtualBox in my case). Chances are your boot is hanging for something totally unrelated to SSH.

Answer 4

I had the same issue after I deleted this line from my Vagrantfile:

config.vm.network "private_network", type: "dhcp"

VM loaded fine after I put this line back.

Answer 5

The SSH connection timeout during initial booting may be related to variety of reasons such as:

• check whether virtualization is enabled in BIOS (as per comment),
• system awaits for user interaction (e.g. share partition is not ready),
• mismatch of your private key (check the config via vagrant ssh-config),
• the booting process takes much longer time (try increasing config.vm.boot_timeout),
• it's booting from the wrong drive (e.g. from the installer ISO),
• VM firewall misconfiguration (e.g. iptables configuration),
• local firewall rules, port conflict or conflict with a VPN software,
• sshd misconfiguration.

To debug the problem, please run it a --debug option or like:

VAGRANT_LOG=debug vagrant up

If there is nothing obvious, then try to connect to it from another terminal, by vagrant ssh or by:

vagrant ssh-config > vagrant-ssh; ssh -F vagrant-ssh default

If the SSH still fails, try to run it with a GUI (e.g. config.gui = true).

If it's not, check the running processes (e.g. by: vagrant ssh -c 'pstree -a') or verify your sshd_config.

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If it is disposable VM, you can always try to destroy it and up it again.

You should also consider upgrading your Vagrant and Virtualbox.

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For more information, check the Debugging and Troubleshooting page.

Answer 6

I got this when running vagrant/VirtualBox inside VirtualBox. I resolved this by running the vagrant machine in the host machine.