Vagrant 1.6.x with windows guest and virtualbox

[Nick Anderson]

I am trying to build a Windows Server 2012 vm that I can use with Vagrant and Virtualbox.

It's not clear to me what I need to do. Here are the things I have done on the Windows vm that I am preparing as a basebox.

Disable password complexity requirements

Set minimum password age to 0

Set Administrator password to 'vagrant'

Create vagrant user

Set vagrant users password to 'vagrant'

Enable remote desktop

Add the vagrant user to the allowed list of remote desktop users

Allow all connections from computers running any version of RDP (or my linux client cant rdp successfully)

Install ruby 1.9.3 from rubyinstall.org

Install winrm with geminstall -rwinrm

Configure winrm with winrm quickconfig

Disable UAC

Disable Server Manager on login

Disable Shutdown Tracker

Ensure that network is set to "Private"

Install Virtualbox guest tools

I export the vm as a box, import it to vagrant 

I think generate a vagrant config using vagrant init <name of windows box>

And then I added config.cm.communicator = "winrm"

Finally I vagrant up my env.

The VM comes up without issue, but Vagrant just sits waiting for the machine to boot until it times out.

vagrant rdp does nothing

I am able to manually log in with rdesktop if I specifically forward a port

config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 3389, host: 53389

Then rdesktop localhost:53389 will give me the windows login screen.

I have tried with and without the vagrant-windows plugin.

I am running vagrant 1.6.3 on Ubuntu.

It seems like I am missing some basic thing. Have I missed some documentation somewhere?

[Alvaro Miranda Aguilera]

I think a bit more information can be useful

can you do:

vagrant halt

VAGRANT_LOG=debug vagrant up

and provide a link to pastebin or gist?

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[Shawn Neal]

Did you fully configure winrm as per https://github.com/winrb/vagrant-windows#winrm-configuration?

Setting the network to private, not sure about that one. Usually work is used.

Firewall?

IMO the easiest way to create a Vagrant base box is to use Packer with packer-windows (https://github.com/joefitzgerald/packer-windows)

[Nick Anderson]

On Wednesday, June 11, 2014 4:49:31 AM UTC-5, Alvaro Miranda Aguilera wrote:

can you do:

VAGRANT_LOG=debug vagrant up

Sure, here is a gist of the debug level output.

https://gist.github.com/nickanderson/01690da50aff4e2bd14b 

I find the "DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout:" line interesting. The timeout never really seems to count down past 31999.

A slice from 'grep "DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout:"'

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 32000

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 31999

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 32000

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 32000

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 32000

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 31999

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 32000

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 31999

DEBUG subprocess: Waiting for process to exit. Remaining to timeout: 32000

[Nick Anderson]

On Wednesday, June 11, 2014 8:09:50 AM UTC-5, Shawn Neal wrote:

Did you fully configure winrm as per https://github.com/winrb/vagrant-windows#winrm-configuration?

I did try those at one point. I am not sure I have done that on this attempt. It's not clear if any of those instructions are relevant if I am using Vagrant 1.6+. The top of the page says "This plugin is deprecated, please use Vagrant 1.6+ which natively supports Windows guests over WinRM." and the only info in the vagrant documentation I could find was the reference to config.vm.communicator = "winrm".

 

Setting the network to private, not sure about that one. Usually work is used.

It was something I found from other threads. The only options are "Not configured", "Private", and "Public". I also saw something about having to have network discovery enabled ( I tried that as well)

 

Firewall?

It's enabled. RDP and Windows Remote Management are allowed.

IMO the easiest way to create a Vagrant base box is to use Packer with packer-windows (https://github.com/joefitzgerald/packer-windows)

Thanks, I will take a look at that. 

[Shawn Neal]

The base box instructions on the plugin page will work with Vagrant 1.6+, which you should be using. Basically Vagrant 1.6 has the plugin merged into Vagrant core with some additional functionality.

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[Denny Pichardo]

Hi Nick,

I recently wrote an article about this on my blog (although mine was based on Windows 2008, but should be the same process)

http://dennypc.wordpress.com/

I ran into a similar issues as you and ran a few additional configuration for winrm on the guest.  I also used Chef's knife windows plugin to verify that winrm was working fine.  Detailed steps are covered on my blog.  Also packer-windows templates are based on SSH at the moment, so if you're trying to use WinRM you might have to roll your own box any ways.

[Golden]

I don't understand how vagrant can announce that windows guests are natively supported in v1.6+ and there is zero formal documentation on how to create a windows guest properly? I have been fumbling with this for over a day...frustrating..

[Golden]

NIck,

Did you ever find a solution to your timeout issue? I have the same things going on where vagrant can't communicate/control my self-created win2012 base box. I am more Linux-oriented and this windows issue is a bit irritating. I have followed several blogs mentioned to no avail.

[Michael Zhou]

Understanding this topic is a couple of months old, but I hope this can benefit anyone who is searching for the answer. I fixed the same issue in my case by having these two lines added to my Vagrantfile.

  config.winrm.username = "Administrator"

  config.winrm.password = "supply your administrator password here"

That should allow Vagrant to WinRM into the Windows guest using the supplied credentials. You can use other users created on the base box, but make sure that user is added to administrators group and it has the privilege to remotely execute programs.

Here is my environment:

Vagrant: 1.6.5

Host OS: Windows 7

Guest OS: Windows 2008 R2

[Shawn Neal]

Thanks Michael. I'm in the progress of fixing this. Now that the upstream winrm gem properly throws an auth error, we can fail fast in Vagrant instead of retrying to connect without any obvious error to indicate you have the wrong user/pwd.

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