Guest machine entered an invalid state Vagrant error

I used to use vagrant only at work place. But yesterday I upgraded my mountain lion to maverics and my php | ruby setting was jacked up.
I decided to use vagrant at my home as well and got this error.
It appears that I had an older version of Virtualbox and upgrading that helped the problem in no time.

Happy Vagranting

SSH without password not working: mac to ubuntu

if you are doing a lot of server activities, then you are a friend of SSH.
One thing we would do would be to make ssh password-less..
I am trying to log into ubuntu server from mac client. here is the process.

on the MAC,
1. Make sure you have ssh installed. You can check using

which ssh or
ssh -v : this will tell the version

If for some reason it is not installed or if you want to upgrade it, you can install it using mac port – this would be another discussion but the overall stuff would be

$ sudo port -d selfupdate
$ sudo port install openssh

2. Now, create public/private keys using the following command

ssh-keygen -t rsa

you will find these keys in the ~/.ssh folder
This would be much you would do on the client side

On the server (ubuntu server)
1. Create the user on the server using adduser command. Let’s create user macuser

adduser macuser

then follow the instruction to create the user.
2. Go to /etc/ssh/ and update the sshd_config file
Most of the settings of this file would be responsible for the famous problem of asking the password all the time..
3. in the sshd_config file update the following:

StrictModes no
RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
PasswordAuthentication yes

AuthorizedKeysFile      %h/.ssh/authorized_keys

After this restart the ssh using

sudo service ssh restart

Now go back to the mac client and copy the public keys to the server as follows

ssh-copy-id macuser@ubuntuServerOrIP-goes-here

here you will be asked for your password. Give the password you assigned while creating the user on the server.

Then log into the server using

ssh macuser@ubuntuServerOrIP-goes-here

if it is still asking for the password check the following

1. on the ubuntu server go to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and see if the public key of mac is registered
2. Check the folder’s permission level is 700 and that of autorized_keys is 600
3. Check the above setting of sshd_config file are saved and restart the ssh on the server

Using SSH in Ubuntu

The idea behind using SSH (secure shell) falls when one is interested in sending files over the network in secure way. There are existing methods which will accomplish the task, but SSH is a cool one when one wants real security.
Here is the step to send files securely from your machine to the other.

1. install ssh client and ssh server using
sudo apt-get install openssh-client openssh-server

2. log into the server using the command
ssh username@server
where username is the user at the server. This can be checked on local machine as ssh user@localhost

3. Now we can share files using the tool scp
to upload file use:
scp path/to/file/to/upload user@server:/path/to/host/directory
Say, to upload the file test.txt from local machine to server named someserver.com into directory /home/remote, then
scp /home/user/test.txt user@someserver.com:/home/remote

And to download file from the same server to local machine
scp user@someserver.com:/home/remote/test.txt /home/user/downloads

This one required logging every time with subsequent request of password. To setup a secure file transfer without password the way to go would be using public private combination between server and client.
Logging to SSH Server without password
Generating and using public private key
1. Creating Public Private key can be done using:
ssh-keygen -t dsa – or if you want to make rsa: ssh-keygen -t rsa
2. it will prompt you to where to put the file and the passkey for the files. take default file path. This would allow the creation of id_dsa (private key) and id_dsa.pub (public key) into the ssh directory. -> The directory would be into /home/user/.ssh/. The private key would retain with the generating server while the public key would be uploaded to the server where you would create the connection.
3. Make sure the following are available and not commented in
/etc/ssh/ssh_config
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/identity
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_dsa
and from /etc/ssh/sshd_config
RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes

4. Make sure you have id_dsa, id_dsa.pub or rsa versions on .ssh folder
5. Copy the public key to the remote server using
scp /path/to/publickey user@server:/home/user/.ssh/ – where user is the authenticated user on the remote server
6. You will be asked for one last time your password for copying the file.
7. Log to remote server using your password
8. Navigate to /home/USER/.ssh
9. having the publicKey [it is the one you scp it, like id_rsa.pub or id_dsa.pub: cat publicKey >> authorized_keys
9. The file will now be added to the remote server’s authorized_keys. This will give you an access from your machine to the remote server without password – unless you want it to.

**
Make sure the file permission for authorized_keys is 600 and
for .ssh directory it is 700
**

reference:
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Configuring_Ubuntu_Linux_Remote_Access_using_SSH
http://outhereinthefield.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/passwordless-scp-authentication-for-unattendedbatch-process/
http://www.debuntu.org/ssh-key-based-authentication