title: Laravel/Homestead vagrant box disapeared from system
body: <p>I got a php project which is already done and for starters I have to put it up on a server (planning to use Heroku). I am new to PHP virtual boxes, Laravel, etc. The person who made the project recommended to use Laravel so I started to get things going that way. I am running on Windows 10 and using cmder as my terminal.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>I downloaded VirtualBox &amp; Vagrant.</li>
  <li><p>Then using commander I added the Laravel/Homestead box 
  by doing: </p>
  
  <pre><code>vagrant box add laravel/homestead
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>in the folder c:\Users\Jacky\vagrant\ubuntu (At least I think that is where I added it) </p></li>
  <li>Afterwards I believe I did 
  vagrant init
  or <code>vagrant init laravel/homestead</code></li>
  <li>whatever I did afterwards I was able to run 
  vagrant ssh
  and get into the system. There I was able to check and I  had php and composer installed.</li>
  <li>I then followed laravels instructions and created a homestead folder at c:\Jack\Homestead</li>
  <li>ran git checkout for v7.19.2</li>
  <li>ran init.bat</li>
  <li>and configured the Homestead.yaml file</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I made the following folder map </p>
  
  <pre><code>- map: C:\Jack\myapp\public
        to:  /home/vagrant/myapp
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and the following site map</p>
  
  <pre><code> - map: myapp.test
        to:  /home/vagrant/myapp/public
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am a bit confused with the directory structure of this whole thing and not sure if I was supposed to put the myapp directory inside c:\Jack\Homestead\myapp or if just doing it like i did in c:\Jack\myapp is fine.</p>
  
  <p>Anyways that still worked and I could see it in my web browser. So far all was good.</p>
  
  <p>Then the project instructions told me to do the following</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>run composer install</li>
  <li>There was an env.example file I had to change to .env and change some setting</li>
  <li>run php artisan key:generate</li>
  <li>run php artisan migrate --seed</li>
  <li>run php artisan passport:install</li>
  <li>run php artisan storage:link</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>At this point I got an error that the Symlink could not be created, so I googled and found in Stack Overflow to restart as admin. I ran cmder as admin and have been having a heart attack for the last 30 minutes since it told me I had to vagrant up and when I did so it couldnt find my box and even doing <code>vagrant box list</code></p>
  
  <p>I would get no results and it wanted to redownload which takes over 3 hours.
  I just restarted without admin and I do find that my Laravel/Homestead box is listed so I assume it was installed for my user and not admin so I guess I cant run cmder as admin.</p>
  
  <p>So now I am trying to connect again, I am not sure in which folder I should be running the vagrant commands but I only seem to have a VagrantFile in my C:\Jack\Homestead folder so if I run a vagrant command anywhere else it gives me an error that a vagrant environment is required, etc.</p>
  
  <p>So I tried the following inside my homestead folder:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p><code>vagrant ssh</code> - I get:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>VM must be running to open SSH connection. Run `vagrant up to start the virtual machine.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>(In my VirtualBox Manager i see my homestead-7 VM running though)</p></li>
  <li><p><code>vagrant up</code> - I get: </p>
  
  <pre><code>Bringing machine 'homestead-7' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
  ==&gt; homestead-7: Importing base box 'laravel/homestead'...
  ==&gt; homestead-7: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
  ==&gt; homestead-7: Checking if box 'laravel/homestead' is up to date...
  A VirtualBox machine with the name 'homestead-7' already exists.
  Please use another name or delete the machine with the existing
  name, and try again.
  </code></pre></li>
  <li><p><code>vagrant ssh 'homestead-7'</code> I also get</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>VM must be running to open SSH connection. Run <code>vagrant up</code>
    to start the virtual machine.</p>
  </blockquote></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>And the problem is once I do connect I assume I will still have the same problem running:</p>
  
  <pre><code>php artisan storage:link
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So my questions are as follows:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Where should I have my projects myapp folder, should it be where it is at <code>C:\Jack\myapp</code> or am I supposed to put it in <code>C:\Jack\Homestead\myapp</code></li>
  <li>Is the VagrantFile supposed to be only in my Homestead folder and is that where I should be running all my Vagrant commands from? Like <code>vagrant ssh</code> and <code>vagrant up</code></li>
  <li>How do I connect again now that I am getting those errors running <code>vagrant ssh</code> and <code>vagrant up</code></li>
  <li>Once I connect I assume I will get the same error running <code>php artisan storage:link</code> since to run as administrator seems to not work what do I do?</li>
  <li>I Assume that I should run <code>git init</code> and <code>heroku create</code> inside the myapp folder is this correct?</li>
  </ol>