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Virtualization New Added 15 October 2026

Vagrant: The IP address configured for the host-only network is not within

VirtualBox 6.1.28 started restricting host-only networks to 192.168.56.0/21 on Linux and macOS. Vagrantfiles that have used addresses like 10.0.0.10 or 192.168.33.10 for years stop working after a VirtualBox update, and Vagrant passes on the refusal. The address is fine as an address; VirtualBox simply will not create the adapter outside the allowed list.

Quick fix

Read the commands before running them. Anything that restarts a service, deletes data or changes permissions should be tried on a non-production system first.

Quick fix
# Which VirtualBox are you on?
VBoxManage --version

# Option 1: move the VM into the default range in the Vagrantfile
# config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.56.10"

# Option 2: allow the ranges you already use
sudo mkdir -p /etc/vbox
echo '* 10.0.0.0/8 192.168.0.0/16' | sudo tee /etc/vbox/networks.conf

# Recreate the adapter
vagrant reload
VBoxManage list hostonlyifs

How to diagnose Virtualization errors

Virtualisation errors are usually about hardware virtualisation access: either it is disabled in firmware, or another hypervisor already holds it. On Windows, Hyper-V, WSL 2, Docker Desktop, Credential Guard and memory integrity all claim the virtualisation extensions, and VirtualBox or VMware then fails with a message that mentions VT-x but not the actual conflict.

If the quick fix above does not resolve it, work through these steps. They apply to this whole class of error, not just to this one message, which is usually what saves the time.

  1. Confirm virtualisation is enabled at the CPU level: grep -E 'vmx|svm' /proc/cpuinfo on Linux, or the Performance tab of Task Manager on Windows.
  2. On Windows, check what else is using the hypervisor: bcdedit /enum | findstr hypervisorlaunchtype and whether Hyper-V, WSL 2 or Core Isolation are enabled.
  3. On Linux, check /dev/kvm exists and that your user is in the kvm group; nested virtualisation must be enabled explicitly on cloud VMs.
  4. Match guest additions and tools versions to the hypervisor version: mismatches cause shared folders, clipboard and display problems that look like guest OS bugs.
  5. For WSL, run wsl --status and wsl --update; most WSL 2 errors are a stale kernel or a disabled Virtual Machine Platform feature.

Tools worth reaching for

  • grep -E 'vmx|svm' /proc/cpuinfo
  • wsl --status
  • bcdedit /enum
  • ls -l /dev/kvm
  • systemctl status libvirtd

Authoritative references

Primary documentation for this error, worth reading before applying any fix in production.

virtualbox.org

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