---
title: Useful Vagrant Commands
date: 2013-11-27
excerpt:
  Here are the basic commands that you need to adminster a virtual machine using
  <a href="http://vagrantup.com" title="The Vagrant Home page">Vagrant</a>.
tags:
  - vagrant
---

[Vagrant](http://www.vagrantup.com 'About Vagrant') is a tool for managing
virtual machines within [VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org) from the
command line. Here are some useful commands to know when using Vagrant.

| Command                      | Description                                                                                                  |
| :--------------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| vagrant init {box}           | Initialise a new VM in the current working directory. Specify a box name, or "base" will be used by default. |
| vagrant status               | Shows the status of the Vagrant box(es) within the current working directory tree.                           |
| vagrant up (--provision)     | Boots the Vagrant box. Including "–provision" also runs the "vagrant provision" command.                     |
| vagrant reload (--provision) | Reloads the Vagrant box. Including "--provision" also runs the "vagrant provision" command.                  |
| vagrant provision            | Provision the Vagrant box using Puppet.                                                                      |
| vagrant suspend              | Suspend the Vagrant box. Use "vagrant up" to start the box again.                                            |
| vagrant halt (-f)            | Halt the Vagrant box. Use -f to forcefully shut down the box without prompting for confirmation.             |
| vagrant destroy (-f)         | Destroys a Vagrant box. Use -f to forcefully shut down the box without prompting for confirmation.           |

The full Vagrant documentation can be found at <http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/>.