without vt-x, vagrant boots vms and then hangs on ssh

[dradetsky]

NOTE: I have solved this problem, this just is just about making developer experience better.

Vagrant version

Vagrant 1.9.5

Host operating system

arch linux
Linux alap 4.11.3-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun May 28 10:40:17 CEST 2017 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Guest operating system

hashicorp/precise64 (ubanto)
tantegerda1/archlinux (arch)

Vagrantfile

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "#{box}"
end

Expected behavior

When vagrant up-ing without full requirements enabled (eg vt-x/vt-d enabled in bios), vagrant should immediately fail with the usual Stderr: VBoxManage.exe: error: VT-x is disabled in the BIOS for all CPU modes message, or similar.

Actual behavior

On some boxes, such as the above arch linux box (not the precise64 box tho), in spite of not having vt-x/vt-d enabled, vagrant boots the box and gets all the way to default: SSH auth method: private key before hanging indefinitely and finally failing due to timeout. Subsequently, vagrant status reports the box as booted (I think also "running"; i can double-check if it's important).

This is really confusing because if you don't know a ton about the details of virtualization (like me), you'd assume that if the box boots, virtualization is okay. Thus the failure to ssh in must be some kind of network issue, and you start checking firewall rules and whatnot.

Steps to reproduce

0. run arch linux, setup vagrant (see below)
1. have vt-x/vt-d off in bios
2. try to boot above vm with box=tantegerda1/archlinux

my (ansible-local) vagrant setup:

- name: vagrant
  pacman:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: present
  with_items:
    - vagrant
    - virtualbox-host-modules-arch
  become: yes

- name: load virtualbox modules
  modprobe:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: present
  with_items:
    - vboxnetadp
    - vboxnetflt
    - vboxpci
    - vboxdrv
  become: yes

References

appears related to #7217

[dradetsky]

To clarify, once you enable vt-x/vt-d in bios (maybe only vt-x is reqd, but i did both), both boxes boot and ssh without issue.

[chrisroberts]

This sounds like a reasonable idea, but this has low chance of being a priority for us anytime soon, so we'd rather close this issue than have it stagnate into the foreseeable future. The best way to get this implemented would be to submit a PR. If you do so, we'd welcome this work. If you want to discuss how to go about doing this, I'd be happy to help with that.

Again, thank you for suggesting this and it is a reasonable idea. But, since this is a feature request, it requires some work to add it to the project and we don't plan on doing that soon. But as this is also an open source project we welcome contributions. Thanks!

[dradetsky]

@chrisroberts i'd contribute, but i dont know anything about the organization of vagrant's code, so it would take me forever. i might be able to do something useful with guidance, but only you/HC know whether that's worth your time.

fyi, dunno if you noticed the linked issue, but im not the only person being bitten by this.

[dradetsky]

not that linked issue; that was to point an arch user with libvirt issues to my virtualbox cfg

[ghost]

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for 30 days ⏳. This helps our maintainers find and focus on the active issues.

If you have found a problem that seems similar to this, please open a new issue and complete the issue template so we can capture all the details necessary to investigate further.