Local by Flywheel was running without a hitch for the 30 minutes after i initially installed it, setup a local site, and tried out various settings. I was working on a new post regarding local WordPress development using the app. It’s part of a series i’m writing on local development environments and workflows.

While documenting the steps and time it takes to close and restart Local with a site running, i ran into an issue with the program getting stuck at “Checking System…”, which led to me write this post.

I googled and StackOverflowed and scoured the localbyflywheel.com forums. Doing a hodge-podge of recommendations from various users, here’s what eventually worked for me.

Run these from the command line (Terminal.app):

• First, close Local by Flywheel
• Check the Local log and see what it says towards the bottom; may elicit some cryptic yet useful information

open ~/Library/Logs/local-by-flywheel.log

• Power off the VirtualBox that’s running

VBoxManage controlvm local-by-flywheel poweroff

• May get an error, so run this next command to fully stop VirtualBox

VBoxManage startvm local-by-flywheel --type emergencystop

• Start the Docker instance

"/Applications/Local by Flywheel.app/Contents/Resources/extraResources/virtual-machine/vendor/docker/osx/docker-machine" start local-by-flywheel

•  Finally, attempt to open the Local by Flywheel app again. Hopefully you’ll get the “Loading…” then “Checking System…” but it’ll only last for a handful of seconds.

Below is the full output i had after running each command.

Wed Aug 21 19:22:09 [mjames@localMBP blog]$ VBoxManage startvm local-by-flywheel --type emergencystop
VBoxManage: error: The machine 'local-by-flywheel' is not locked by a session
VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_INVALID_OBJECT_STATE (0x80bb0007), component MachineWrap, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "LaunchVMProcess(a->session, sessionType.raw(), Bstr(strEnv).raw(), progress.asOutParam())" at line 600 of file VBoxManageMisc.cpp
Wed Aug 21 19:22:19 [mjames@localMBP blog]$ "/Applications/Local by Flywheel.app/Contents/Resources/extraResources/virtual-machine/vendor/docker/osx/docker-machine" start local-by-flywheel
Docker machine "local-by-flywheel/Applications/Local by Flywheel.app/Contents/Resources/extraResources/virtual-machine/vendor/docker/osx/docker-machine" does not exist. Use "docker-machine ls" to list machines. Use "docker-machine create" to add a new one.
Docker machine "start" does not exist. Use "docker-machine ls" to list machines. Use "docker-machine create" to add a new one.

And that’s that. I’ve had to run these commands everytime i close and reopen Local, which is annoying. I’ll dig deeper into why this issue is reocurring and report back on this post.

Hope this helps someone. Cheers and peace.

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