»Installing Vagrant

Installing Vagrant is extremely easy. Head over to the Vagrant downloads page and get the appropriate installer or package for your platform. Install the package using standard procedures for your operating system.

The installer will automatically add vagrant to your system path so that it is available in terminals. If it is not found, please try logging out and logging back in to your system (this is particularly necessary sometimes for Windows).

Looking for the gem install? Vagrant 1.0.x had the option to be installed as a RubyGem. This installation method is no longer supported. If you have an old version of Vagrant installed via Rubygems, please remove it prior to installing newer versions of Vagrant.

Beware of system package managers! Some operating system distributions include a vagrant package in their upstream package repos. Please do not install Vagrant in this manner. Typically these packages are missing dependencies or include very outdated versions of Vagrant. If you install via your system's package manager, it is very likely that you will experience issues. Please use the official installers on the downloads page.

»Running Multiple Hypervisors

Sometimes, certain hypervisors do not allow you to bring up virtual machines if more than one hypervisor is in use. If you are lucky, you might see the following error message come up when trying to bring up a virtual machine with Vagrant and VirtualBox:

There was an error while executing `VBoxManage`, a CLI used by Vagrant for controlling VirtualBox. The command and stderr is shown below.

Command: ["startvm", <ID of the VM>, "--type", "headless"]

Stderr: VBoxManage: error: VT-x is being used by another hypervisor (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE).
VBoxManage: error: VirtualBox can't operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot
(VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component ConsoleWrap, interface IConsole

There was an error while executing `VBoxManage`, a CLI used by Vagrant for controlling VirtualBox. The command and stderr is shown below.

Command: ["startvm", <ID of the VM>, "--type", "headless"]

Stderr: VBoxManage: error: VT-x is being used by another hypervisor (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE).
VBoxManage: error: VirtualBox can't operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot
(VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component ConsoleWrap, interface IConsole

Other operating systems like Windows will blue screen if you attempt to bring up a VirtualBox VM with Hyper-V enabled. Below are a couple of ways to ensure you can use Vagrant and VirtualBox if another hypervisor is present.

»Linux, VirtualBox, and KVM

The above error message is because another hypervisor (like KVM) is in use. We must blacklist these in order for VirtualBox to run correctly.

First find out the name of the hypervisor:

$ lsmod | grep kvm
kvm_intel             204800  6
kvm                   593920  1 kvm_intel
irqbypass              16384  1 kvm

$ lsmod | grep kvm
kvm_intel             204800  6
kvm                   593920  1 kvm_intel
irqbypass              16384  1 kvm

The one we're interested in is kvm_intel. You might have another.

Blacklist the hypervisor (run the following as root):

$ echo 'blacklist kvm-intel' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

$ echo 'blacklist kvm-intel' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Restart your machine and try running vagrant again.

»Windows, VirtualBox, and Hyper-V

If you wish to use VirtualBox on Windows, you must ensure that Hyper-V is not enabled on Windows. You can turn off the feature by running this Powershell command for Windows 10:

Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

For Windows 11, you can run on an elevated Powershell:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

You can also disable it by going through the Windows system settings:

Right click on the Windows button and select ‘Apps and Features’.
Select Turn Windows Features on or off.
Unselect Hyper-V and click OK.

You might have to reboot your machine for the changes to take effect. More information about Hyper-V can be read here.