Vagrant Connect

Vagrant can share any or every port to your Vagrant environment, not just SSH and HTTP. The vagrant connect command gives the connecting person a static IP they can use to communicate to the shared Vagrant environment. Any TCP traffic sent to this IP is sent to the shared Vagrant environment.

Usage

Just call vagrant share --full. This will automatically share as many ports as possible for remote connections. Please see the Vagrant share security page for more information.

Note the share name at the end of calling vagrant share --full, and give this to the person who wants to connect to your machine. They simply have to call vagrant connect NAME. This will give them a static IP they can use to access your Vagrant environment.

How does it work?

vagrant connect works by doing what Vagrant does best: managing virtual machines. vagrant connect creates a tiny virtual machine that takes up only around 20 MB in RAM, using VirtualBox or VMware (more provider support is coming soon).

Any traffic sent to this tiny virtual machine is then proxied through to the shared Vagrant environment as if it were directed at it.

Beware: Vagrant Insecure Key

If the Vagrant environment or box you are using is protected with the Vagrant insecure keypair (most public boxes are), then SSH will be easily available to anyone who connects.

While hopefully you are sharing with someone you trust, in certain environments you might be sharing with a class, or a conference, and you do not want them to be able to SSH in.

In this case, we recommend changing or removing the insecure key from the Vagrant machine.

Finally, we want to note that we are working on making it so that when Vagrant share is used, the Vagrant private key is actively rejected unless explicitly allowed. This feature is not yet done, however.