Today I wanted to dive back into my research on Ansible, so I fired up one of my Debian VMs under Vagrant/Virtualbox. The VM was an older image (8.5.3) so I updated to the latest (8.6.0), and then found myself troubleshooting weird connectivity issues for hours.
Eventually I got myself to this point, where the VirtualBox Manager wouldn’t even start up the VM:
This error leads to the following article:
The AppCompatFlags entry doesn’t exist, but as for another user, even though VirtualBox Manager reports it’s running the latest version (5.0.26), looking at the Downloads page tells a different story (5.1.6). Installed that, then of course Vagrant howled loudly:
C:\Users\Mike\VirtualBox VMs\BaseDebianServer>vagrant destroy The provider 'virtualbox' that was requested to back the machine 'default' is reporting that it isn't usable on this system. The reason is shown below: Vagrant has detected that you have a version of VirtualBox installed that is not supported by this version of Vagrant. Please install one of the supported versions listed below to use Vagrant: 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.0 A Vagrant update may also be available that adds support for the version you specified. Please check www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html to download the latest version. C:\Users\Mike\VirtualBox VMs\BaseDebianServer>vagrant -v Vagrant 1.8.1
There’s a 1.8.5 Vagrant version available, so I installed that too.
There, once again the master and the servant are back in sync:
C:\Users\Mike\VirtualBox VMs\BaseDebianServer>vagrant up Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider... ==> default: Importing base box 'debian/jessie64'... ==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking... ==> default: Checking if box 'debian/jessie64' is up to date... ==> default: Setting the name of the VM: BaseDebianServer_default_1474924390887_22621 ==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces... ==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration... default: Adapter 1: nat ==> default: Forwarding ports... default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (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: default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security. default: default: Inserting generated public key within guest... default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present... default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key... ==> default: Machine booted and ready! ==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM... default: No guest additions were detected on the base box for this VM! Guest default: additions are required for forwarded ports, shared folders, host only default: networking, and more. If SSH fails on this machine, please install default: the guest additions and repackage the box to continue. default: default: This is not an error message; everything may continue to work properly, default: in which case you may ignore this message.
<editorial understatement=”on”>Based on the SuperUser question above, I’m guessing this isn’t an uncommon problem as Vagrant and Virtualbox rev their engines.</editorial>
The rattled cough of a Hyper-Empathetic PM 
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