Vagrant can't use the requested machine because it is locked

Question

I have tried to access my projects sites that I have set up on homestead, they were working all fine before, and I haven't been working on them for few weeks, but today when I have tried to access them I couldn't open the sites. I have tried to run vagrant ssh but I get this error:

  VM must be running to open SSH connection. Run `vagrant up`
  to start the virtual machine.

And when I try to do vagrant up, I get:

  Vagrant can't use the requested machine because it is locked! This
  means that another Vagrant process is currently reading or modifying
  the machine. Please wait for that Vagrant process to end and try
  again. Details about the machine are shown below:

  Name: default
  Provider: virtualbox

When I do:

 vagrant status 'idOfTheMachine'

I get:

vagrant status 'idOfTheMachine'
/Users/myName/Homestead/Vagrantfile:4: warning: already initialized constant VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION
/Users/myName/Homestead/Vagrantfile:4: warning: previous definition of VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION was here
Current machine states:

default                   poweroff (virtualbox)

The VM is powered off. To restart the VM, simply run `vagrant up`

When I have opened virtualbox, and tried to see the shared folders, I could see the shared folders in the terminal but not the projects inside of them. I have googled around about this issue, but can't find any solution to it. Should I destroy the homestead machine on the virtual box and make a new one, and if so, how to make that properly, so that I have the same projects on the new machine?

What does `vagrant status` say? – Dave L. Apr 16 '16 at 18:46 — Dave L., Apr 16 '16 at 18:46
I have edited the question with vagrant status response – Ludwig Apr 16 '16 at 18:54 — Ludwig, Apr 16 '16 at 18:54

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 27 '16 at 12:09

20

I have this problem as well, and while I don't understand how/why it happens, I did find that running

vagrant reload {boxid}

will usually bring up the box and allow me to connect to it.

You're probably like me and 'vagrant halt' your box when you're done coding to free up resources and expect to just be able to turn it back on effortlessly with 'vagrant up', but it would seem that's not the case. Hopefully this gets you back on your feet and someone else who knows whats happening can explain why this happens.

answered Apr 27 '16 at 12:09

Tyler H

471
7
17

My box ended up locked because my computer froze while vagrant was running (under-powered laptop) and I had to manually shut it down. `vagrant reload` got the vm running again. – streetcornerlurker Sep 21 '16 at 19:39
Sadly, this solution didn't work for me. To fix it, I had to restart my computer. If you are using windows and fast startup is enabled, you may want to **restart** rather than turning the computer off and on again. – mmttato Jan 27 '17 at 13:40

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 05 '16 at 19:56

9

Just lost an hour to this problem. My final solution:

Delete the machine from Virtualbox
Delete the .vagrant folder (if present) in the directory containing your Vagrantfile
If you still get the error (as I did), run vagrant global-status to check for any still-recognized machines
If the machine is still listed, run vagrant global-status --prune to remove it
vagrant up should work again

answered Aug 05 '16 at 19:56

Paul Pullen

116
2
3

1

This worked for me, but steps 4 and 5 gave me errors until I restarted Windows. – Bampfer Jul 12 '17 at 19:22

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 09 '18 at 19:22

9

On Windows, I killed my Ruby processes and then was able to successfully run 'vagrant halt' and then 'vagrant up'.

answered Jul 09 '18 at 19:22

Paul Munsey

109
1
2

this helped me as well :) – automationleg Mar 19 '19 at 09:14
This helped... even `vagrant status` complained about the lock until I did this. – jfklein Jan 20 '20 at 22:46
Yup..this works. – Steven Yip Jul 16 '22 at 04:09

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 21 '22 at 01:39

2

On windows, with "tasklist" find the process id of your "vagrant.exe" and "ruby.exe".

Now kill both the processes with "taskkill /PID <PID> /F" command. You are ready to go.

Run "vagrant up".

That should do.

answered Jul 21 '22 at 01:39

Ajeet Singh

41
2

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 03 '18 at 22:02

1

On MacOSX, I went to Activity Monitor and just killed the vagrant process that was running. That solved it for me.

answered Mar 03 '18 at 22:02

vick

476
6
18

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 25 '22 at 09:30

0

Restarting my PC fixed the error

answered Aug 25 '22 at 09:30

Tobimadehin

34
2

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – Community Aug 30 '22 at 20:06

Vagrant can't use the requested machine because it is locked

6 Answers6