Slate installation problem: VirtualBox not responsive (Error:"Timed out")

[josmperez1]

Hi, I'm trying to install Slate on Windows 10 and have installed both Vagrant and VirtualBox. However, "vagrant up" fails with this error message:

==> 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
Timed out while waiting for the machine to boot. This means that
Vagrant was unable to communicate with the guest machine within
the configured ("config.vm.boot_timeout" value) time period.

There are no more specific error messages.

I have never used VirtualBox before and don't know what else I might have to do to get it working properly with Vagrant.

I have checked VirtualBox for any obvious installation problems, but it installed and created a virtual machine. However, it created a machine (it happens to require a user name and password which I had no opportunity to set up, so I'm confused as to what I need to do to get into the machine). So, I created a second machine and put it in the slate directory. This machine has a fatal error because VirtualBox couldn't find an optical drive on my system. Weird. Do I try a making a third machine?

Does someone have more knowledge of VirtualBox or Slate installation have any suggestions for me at this point? Appreciation in advance.

[josmperez1]

Let me expand on my previous comment. Upon looking at the documentation for VirtualBox, it looks like starting the VM for the first time requires an installation medium to be supplied, one with a bootable OS or by mounting an ISO image file.

So, is installing an optical drive or ISO file a requirement of using VirtualBox and therefore Vagrant and therefore Slate? If this is so, perhaps someone could have mentioned this in the documentation? If not, please explain how to use Slate with Vagrant without mounting a new optical drive?

[MikeRalphson]

Slate on Windows is only semi-supported. If you have or are willing to install Node.js, then you might find ReSlate easier to set up. It is a preview of what a potential rewrite of Slate (i.e. Slate v3) might look like.

[josmperez1]

Just to close up this topic, the problem went away on its own. I figure that multiple reboots of the OS might have done something. Or gremlins went to live somewhere else.

[MasterOdin]

Sorry for not responding sooner, I've seen the timeout happen because Hyper-V is activated and it messes with VirtualBox working (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/application-management/virtualization-apps-not-work-with-hyper-v). Though, not totally sure, and I do not use Windows 10 so hard for me to test.

I have checked VirtualBox for any obvious installation problems, but it installed and created a virtual machine. However, it created a machine (it happens to require a user name and password which I had no opportunity to set up, so I'm confused as to what I need to do to get into the machine). So, I created a second machine and put it in the slate directory. This machine has a fatal error because VirtualBox couldn't find an optical drive on my system. Weird. Do I try a making a third machine?

So this goes into how vagrant itself works. When you run vagrant up, it takes a box image (in our case ubuntu/bionic64) and then creates the virtual machine in VirtualBox, configures it with the necessary dependencies, mounts the directory the Vagrantfile is in to /vagrant, etc. The username / password is automatically set-up for you in the idea that you would just do vagrant ssh to get into the machine and the username/password combo is irrelevant to you (though in the case of this box, I believe it's just vagrant/vagrant). You should not have to manually create a virtual machine, download an ISO, etc. for slate as that's the whole purpose of Vagrant. As such, you never really want to look at VirtualBox specific documentation for the most part, rather you're better off searching for either stuff around Vagrant or Vagrant + VirtualBox.