Troubleshooting Drush error : "Command XXXXX needs a higher bootstrap level to run"

Issue

When I run a Drush command it gives me an error with the message "needs a higher bootstrap level to run - you will need to invoke drush from a more functional Drupal environment to run this command".

An example of the full message is:

Command updatedb-status needs a higher bootstrap level to run - you will need to invoke drush from a more functional Drupal environment to run this command.      [error]
The drush command 'updatedb:status' could not be executed.                                                                                                        [error]

Resolution

There are a number of ways that can be used to resolve this:

1. Run the command under the docroot directory of the application.

Normally drush assumes that the directory that you are running the command from is at the root directory or a sub directory below of your application. By running the drush command under the docroot, drush will run the command correctly.

An example of this is running the drush updatedb:status command:

example@staging-2924:/var/www/html/example.dev/docroot$ drush updatedb:status
 [success] No database updates required.

2. Use the --root option for Drush.

You can pa the --root or -r parameter to drush to tell it which docroot you want to run the command against.

 An example of this is running the drush updatedb:status command:

example@staging-2924:~$ drush --root=/var/www/html/example.dev/docroot updatedb:status
 [success] No database updates required.

example@staging-2924:~$ drush -r /var/www/html/example.dev/docroot updatedb:status
 [success] No database updates required.

3. Use the drush alias

You can use the alias for the drush command which will have the docroot details configured. You can even use the --root option as part of the alias to be sure.

 An example of this is running the drush updatedb:status command:

example@staging-2924:~$ drush @example.dev updatedb:status
 [success] No database updates required.

example@staging-2924:~$ drush @example.dev --root=/var/www/html/example.dev/docroot updatedb:status
 [success] No database updates required.