page_title: “Basic Usage - Synced Folders”

sidebar_current: “syncedfolder-basic”

Basic Usage

Configuration

Synced folders are configured within your Vagrantfile using the config.vm.synced_folder method. Usage of the configuration directive is very simple:

  1. Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  2.   # other config here
  4.   config.vm.synced_folder "src/", "/srv/website"
  5. end

The first parameter is a path to a directory on the host machine. If the path is relative, it is relative to the project root. The second parameter must be an absolute path of where to share the folder within the guest machine. This folder will be created (recursively, if it must) if it doesn’t exist.

Options

You may also specify additional optional parameters when configuring synced folders. These options are listed below. More detailed examples of using some of these options are shown below this section, note the owner/group example supplies two additional options separated by commas.

In addition to these options, the specific synced folder type might allow more options. See the documentation for your specific synced folder type for more details. The built-in synced folder types are documented in other pages available in the navigation for these docs.

  • create (boolean) - If true, the host path will be created if it does not exist. Defaults to false.

  • disabled (boolean) - If true, this synced folder will be disabled and won’t be setup. This can be used to disable a previously defined synced folder or to conditionally disable a definition based on some external factor.

  • group (string) - The group that will own the synced folder. By default this will be the SSH user. Some synced folder types don’t support modifying the group.

  • mount_options (array) - A list of additional mount options to pass to the mount command.

  • owner (string) - The user who should be the owner of this synced folder. By default this will be the SSH user. Some synced folder types don’t support modifying the owner.

  • type (string) - The type of synced folder. If this is not specified, Vagrant will automatically choose the best synced folder option for your environment. Otherwise, you can specify a specific type such as “nfs”.

Enabling

Synced folders are automatically setup during vagrant up and vagrant reload.

Disabling

Synced folders can be disabled by adding the disabled option to any definition:

  1. Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  2.   config.vm.synced_folder "src/", "/srv/website", disabled: true
  3. end

Disabling the default /vagrant share can be done as follows:

  1. config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", disabled: true

Modifying the Owner/Group

By default, Vagrant mounts the synced folders with the owner/group set to the SSH user. Sometimes it is preferable to mount folders with a different owner and group. It is possible to set these options:

  1. config.vm.synced_folder "src/", "/srv/website",
  2.   owner: "root", group: "root"

Symbolic Links

Support for symbolic links across synced folder implementations and host/guest combinations is not consistent. Vagrant does its best to make sure symbolic links work by configuring various hypervisors (such as VirtualBox), but some host/guest combinations still do not work properly. This can affect some development environments that rely on symbolic links.

The recommendation is to make sure to test symbolic links on all the host/guest combinations you sync folders on if this is important to you.