[vagrant] Easiest way to copy a single file from host to Vagrant guest?

I have a use case where I occasionally want to copy a single file from my host machine to the Vagrant guest.

I don't want to do so via traditional provisioners (Puppet / Chef) because this is often a one-off -- I just want something quick to add to my Vagrantfile.

I don't want to share an entire directory, possibly because I want to overwrite an existing file without nuking an entire directory on the guest.

It also seems a bit overkill to write a shell provisioning script, and deal with potential escaping, when all I want to do is copy a file.

So, what's the easiest way to copy a single file from host to guest?

vagrant scp plugin works if you know your vagrant box name. check vagrant global-status which will provide your box name then you can run:

vagrant global-status

id       name    provider   state   directory
------------------------------------------------------------------------
13e680d  **default** virtualbox running /home/user

vagrant scp ~/foobar "name in my case default":/home/"user"/

If you are restrained from having the files in your directory, you can run this code in a script file from the Host machine.

#!/bin/sh
OPTIONS=`vagrant ssh-config | awk -v ORS=' ' '{print "-o " $1 "=" $2}'`

scp ${OPTIONS} /File/To/Copy vagrant@YourServer:/Where/To/Put/File

In this setup, you only need to change /File/To/Copy to the file or files you want to copy and then /Where/To/Put/File is the location on the VM you wish to have the files copied to.

If you create this file and call it copyToServer.sh you can then run the sh command to push those files.

sh ./copyToServer.sh

As a final note, you cannot run this code as a provisioner because that runs on the Guest server, while this code runs from the Host.

As default, the first vagrant instance use ssh port as 2222, and its ip address is 127.0.0.1 (You may need adjust the port with real virtual host)

==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)

So you can run below command to copy your local file to vagrant instance. password is the same as username which is vagrant.

scp -P 2222 your_file [email protected]:.

You can also copy the file back to your local host.

scp -P 2222 [email protected]:/PATH/filename .

What I ended up doing was to keep the file within my vagrant directory (automatically mounted as /vagrant/) and copy it over with a shell provisioner:

command = "cp #{File.join('/vagrant/', path_within_repo)} #{remote_file}"
config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => command

Since you ask for the easiest way, I suggest using vagrant-scp. It adds a scp command to vagrant, so you can copy files to your VM like you would normally do with scp.

Install via:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-scp

Use it like so:

vagrant scp <some_local_file_or_dir> [vm_name]:<somewhere_on_the_vm>

vagrant upload localfile

that will put localfile in the vagrant user's home dir

https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/cli/upload.html

Here is my approach to the problem:

Step 1 - Find the private key, ssh port and IP:

root@vivi:/opt/boxes/jessie# vagrant ssh-config
Host default
  HostName 127.0.0.1
  User vagrant
  Port 2222
  UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  PasswordAuthentication no
  IdentityFile /root/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key
  IdentitiesOnly yes
  LogLevel FATAL

Step 2 - Transfer file using the port and private key as parameters for scp:

  scp -P 2222 -i /root/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key \
  someFileName.txt [email protected]:~

I hope it helps,

Best way to copy file from local to vagrant, No need to write any code or any thing or any configuration changes. 1- First up the vagrant (vagrant up) 2- open cygwin 3- cygwin : go to your folder where is vagrantfile or from where you launch the vagrant 4- ssh vagrant 5- now it will work like a normal system.

Vagrant provides a way to execute a command over ssh instead of logging in, so for Linux host and guest you can use:

• from host to guest:

cat ~/file_on_host.txt | vagrant ssh -c 'cat - > ~/file_on_guest.txt'

• from guest to host:

vagrant ssh -c 'cat ~/file_on_guest.txt' > ~/file_on_host.txt

No need for plugins or guest reloads. Just make sure to provide vagrant box ID to 'vagrant ssh' if you are not in the same dir as the Vagrantfile. Tested on Vagrant v1.8.1.

An alternative way to do this without installing anything (vagrant-scp etc.) Note that the name default needs to be used as is, since vagrant ssh-config emits that.

vg_scp() {
  tmpfile=$(mktemp /tmp/vagrant-ssh-config.XXXX)
  vagrant ssh-config > $tmpfile
  scp -F $tmpfile "$@"
  rm $tmpfile
}

# Copy from local to remote
vg_scp somefile default:/tmp

# Copy from remote to local
vg_scp default:/tmp/somefile ./

# Copy a directory from remote to local
vg_scp -r default:/tmp ./tmp

The function would not be necessary if scp -F =(vagrant ssh-config) ... would have worked across shells. But since this is not supported by Bash, we have to resort to this workaround.

Go to the directory where you have your Vagrantfile
Then, edit your Vagrantfile and add the following:

config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", :mount_options => ['dmode=774','fmode=775']

"." means the directory you are currently in on your host machine
"/vagrant" refers to "/home/vagrant" on the guest machine(Vagrant machine).

Copy the files you need to send to guest machine to the folder where you have your Vagrantfile Then open Git Bash and cd to the directory where you have your Vagrantfile and type:

vagrant scp config.json XXXXXXX:/home/vagrant/

where XXXXXXX is your vm name. You can get your vm name by running

vagrant global-status

if for some reasons you don't have permission to use

vagrant plugin install vagrant-scp

there is an alternative way :

First vagrant up yourVagrantProject, then write in the terminal :

vagrant ssh-config

you will have informations about "HostName" and "Port" of your virtual machine.

In some case, you could have some virtual machines in your project. So just find your master-machine (in general, this VM has the port 2222 ), and don't pay attention to others machines informations.

write the command to make the copy :

scp -P xxPortxx  /Users/where/is/your/file.txt  vagrant@xxHostNamexx:/home/vagrant

At this steep you will have to put a vagrant password : by default it's "vagrant"

after that if you look at files in your virtual machine:

vagrant ssh xxVirtualMachineNamexx
pwd
ls

you will have the "file.txt" in your virtual machine directory

All the above answers might work. But Below is what worked for me. I had multiple vagrant host: host1, host2. I wanted to copy file from ~/Desktop/file.sh to host: host1 I did:

    $vagrant upload ~/Desktop/file.sh host1

This will copy ~/Desktop/file.sh under /home/xxxx where xxx is your vagrant user under host1

Try this.. vagrant ubuntu 14.04 This worked for me.

scp -r -P 2222 vagrant@localhost:/home .

There is actually a much simpler solution. See https://gist.github.com/colindean/5213685/#comment-882885:

"please note that unless you specifically want scp for some reason, the easiest way to transfer files from the host to the VM is to just put them in the same directory as the Vagrantfile - that directory is automatically mounted under /vagrant in the VM so you can copy or use them directly from the VM."

You can add entry in ~/.ssh/config:

Host vagrant
    User vagrant
    HostName localhost
    Port 2222
    IdentityFile /home/user_name/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key

and the simplescp file vagrant:/path/. You can find path to identity file using the vagrant ssh-config command.

The best ans for me is to write the file / directory(to be copied) to the vagrant file directory, now any file present there is available to vagrant in path /vagrant.

That's it, no need of scp or any other methods,

similarly you can copy any file from VM to host by pasting in /vagrant directory.

If someone wants to transfer file from windows host to vagrant, then this solution worked for me.

1. Make sure to install **winscp** on your windows system
2. run **vagrant up** command
3. run **vagrant ssh-config** command and note down below details
4. Enter Hostname, Port, Username: vagrant, Password: vagrant in winscp and select **SCP**, file protocol 
5. In most cases, hostname: 127.0.0.1, port: 2222, username: vagrant, password: vagrant.

You should be able to see directories in your vagrant machine.