hashicorp/vagrant · error · Vagrant::Errors::BoxChecksumInvalidType

The specified checksum type is not supported by Vagrant: %{t

Error message

The specified checksum type is not supported by Vagrant: %{type}.
Vagrant supports the following checksum types:

%{types}

What it means

Vagrant::Util::FileChecksum#load_digest looks the requested checksum type up in the frozen CHECKSUM_MAP (:md5, :sha1, :sha256, :sha384, :sha512, compared after downcasing); an unknown type raises BoxChecksumInvalidType and the message lists the supported set. It fires whenever a box download specifies a checksum algorithm Vagrant cannot compute.

Source

Thrown at lib/vagrant/util/file_checksum.rb:73

              f.readpartial(BUFFER_SIZE, buf)
              digest.update(buf)
            rescue EOFError
              # Although we check for EOF earlier, this seems to happen
              # sometimes anyways [GH-2716].
              break
            end
          end
        end

        digest.hexdigest
      end

      private

      def load_digest(type)
        digest = CHECKSUM_MAP[type.to_s.downcase.to_sym]
        if digest.nil?
          raise Vagrant::Errors::BoxChecksumInvalidType,
                type: type.to_s,
                types: CHECKSUM_MAP.keys.join(', ')
        end
        digest
      end
    end
  end
end

# NOTE: This class was not originally namespaced
# with the Util module so this is left for backwards
# compatibility.
FileChecksum = Vagrant::Util::FileChecksum

View on GitHub (pinned to 35f3160f4a)

Solutions

1. Switch to a supported algorithm — prefer sha256 — and supply its digest from the vendor's release page
2. Drop box_download_checksum and box_download_checksum_type entirely if integrity is handled out-of-band
3. If the bad type comes from box metadata you host, fix the metadata file

Example fix

# before
config.vm.box_download_checksum_type = "crc32"
config.vm.box_download_checksum = "a1b2c3d4"

# after
config.vm.box_download_checksum_type = "sha256"
config.vm.box_download_checksum = "9f2c8b...e81"

SUPPORTED = Vagrant::Util::FileChecksum::CHECKSUM_MAP.keys.map(&:to_s) # md5, sha1, sha256, sha384, sha512

unless SUPPORTED.include?(type.to_s.downcase)
  abort "checksum type must be one of: #{SUPPORTED.join(', ')}"
end

begin
  Vagrant::Util::FileChecksum.new(path, digest_klass).checksum
rescue Vagrant::Errors::BoxChecksumInvalidType => e
  warn e.message # lists the supported types
  type = 'sha256'; digest_klass = Digest::SHA256
  retry
end

When it happens

Trigger: config.vm.box_download_checksum_type set to anything outside md5/sha1/sha256/sha384/sha512 (e.g. 'crc32', 'blake2b', 'sha224', or a typo like 'sha2566'); hosted box metadata carrying an unsupported checksum type. Uppercase input is fine — the lookup downcases first.

Common situations: Copy-pasting a vendor checksum of a kind Vagrant does not implement; hand-written box metadata.json with invented types; templated Vagrantfiles with typos in the type field.

Related errors

• There are errors in the configuration of this machine. Pleas
• Network settings specified in your Vagrantfile define an inv
• The checksum of the downloaded box did not match the expecte
• cloud-init is not found. Please ensure that cloud-init is in
• The specified Vagrantfile to clone from was not found. Pleas

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/vagrant@35f3160f4a (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f636dbf75fe704f4. Report an issue: GitHub.