[Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

fortyseven · 2012-04-12 06:41:33

Gentlemen (and any ladies). I'm currently facing the strangest problem with Virtualbox. I've installed Virtualbox hundreds of times in other distro's but it's my first time using #! and I'm battling. Allow me to explain.

My first course of action was to install VB from the repo's. Installation went fine however upon starting VB I got the following message in the terminal:

WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module available for the current kernel (2.6.39-bpo.2-486) or it failed to
load. Please recompile the kernel module and install it. You will not be able to start VMs until this problem is fixed.

Despite the above message, the VB Manager window still opened. I went ahead and created a VM but when I tried starting it I got:

Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908) Please install the virtualbox-ose-dkms package and execute ‘modprobe vboxdrv’ as root.

So I go ahead and sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-dkms and the execute sudo modprobe vboxdrv. Next error:

Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules:.
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules:.
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS:Error! Your kernel headers for kernel 2.6.39-bpo.2-486 cannot be found.
Please install the linux-headers-2.6.39-bpo.2-486 package.

Failed, trying without DKMS ... failed!
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel modules:
Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong ... failed!

I tried to install the linux-headers-2.6.39-bpo.2-486 package but I get the irritating:

E: Unable to locate package linux-headers-2.6.39-bpo.2-486
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'linux-headers-2.6.39-bpo.2-486'

Not sure what to do next, I uninstalled using sudo apt-get purge virualbox. I then got another (older) version from a colleague, installed it but got a similar error message:

The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) is either not loaded or there is a permission problem with /dev/vboxdrv. Please reinstall the kernel module by executing

'/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup'

as root. If it is available in your distribution, you should install the DKMS package first. This package keeps track of Linux kernel changes and recompiles the vboxdrv kernel module if necessary.

Running /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup returns the same error as before:

Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules:.
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules:.
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS:Error! Your kernel headers for kernel 2.6.39-bpo.2-486 cannot be found.
Please install the linux-headers-2.6.39-bpo.2-486 package.

Failed, trying without DKMS ... failed!
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel modules:
Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong ... failed!

Frustrated, I again uninstalled VB, went to Oracles website, downloaded the latest version, installed it, ran it, same thing.

Now, the strange part is that after I completely uninstalled VB again, when I type virtualbox in the terminal, the VB Manager still runs!

Anyone have any thoughts on what's going on or bar that, any decent alternatives to VB?

Last edited by fortyseven (2012-04-13 05:54:22)

xaos52 · 2012-04-12 09:41:34

Are you sure you have the bpo repository in your sources, and you did 'sudo apt-get update' after including them?
Or perhaps the bpo repo was temporarily unavailable when you did your last update?

(1) Check your /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d
(2) Even if the backports repo was enabled, run

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo m-a prepare
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-dkms
sudo modprobe vboxdrv

I am not a vbox user myself - 512MB RAM, you know - so I could not test all of this, but I never had problems installing kernel-headers.

hth

fortyseven · 2012-04-13 05:53:55

I've spent two days on this problem with no progress. I've now added another hdd and setup a dual boot. Abandoned.

xaos52 · 2012-04-13 10:03:00

Problem is that your kernel and kernel headers are no longer in the backport repo.
Debian only maintains one version of the kernel (and its headers) per architecture in the backports repo.

You will have to upgrade your kernel to the latest one available in backports.

sudo apt-get -t squeeze-backports install linux-image-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-686-pae

Reboot into the new kernel, and

sudo apt-get -t squeeze-backports install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Also, depending on you hardware, you may be better off upgrading to the 686-pae version of the kernel.

Last edited by xaos52 (2012-04-13 10:21:36)

fortyseven · 2012-04-13 11:44:24

I needed VB for something at work so I really don't have any more time to spend on this. Perhaps later on when my workload relaxes a little, I'll come back to this.

Thank so much for your time though. Appreciated.

pvsage · 2012-04-13 15:26:19

xaos52 wrote:

Problem is that your kernel and kernel headers are no longer in the backport repo.
Debian only maintains one version of the kernel (and its headers) per architecture in the backports repo.

Looks like they're hanging on to both 0.bpo.1 and 0.bpo.2 for now...possibly because of lingering kernel panic issues with the latest kernel image?

xaos52 · 2012-04-13 16:25:27

I suppose so, yes.

stratoka · 2013-01-09 01:16:57

Thanks, xaos52 it helped me to.

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2012-04-12 06:41:33

[Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

#2 2012-04-12 09:41:34

Re: [Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

#3 2012-04-13 05:53:55

Re: [Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

#4 2012-04-13 10:03:00

Re: [Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

#5 2012-04-13 11:44:24

Re: [Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

#6 2012-04-13 15:26:19

Re: [Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

#7 2012-04-13 16:25:27

Re: [Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

#8 2013-01-09 01:16:57

Re: [Abandoned] The Strangest Problem With Virtualbox

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