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Problem with VirtualBox

After upgrading from Ubuntu 14.04 to 14.10 I have a problem with starting a VirtualBox virtual machine. I'm running VirtualBox on a 64-bit host using two virtual machines, one a Windows 7 (32 bit) guest and the other a Windows XP guest. After starting either virtual machine, the initial Windows splash screen opens and then disappears followed by the state of the machine reported as aborted. I had no problem when using Ubuntu 14.04.

At first I got the error message Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

There was no /etc/init.d/vboxdrv

After googling around and checking questions on askubuntu finding various pieces of advice I reinstalled the packages (with the currently installed versions shown)

   dkms                     2.2.0.3-1.1ubuntu5
   virtualbox-dkms          4.3.18-dfsg-1
   virtualbox               4.3.18-dfsg-1
   unity-scope-virtualbox   0.1+13.10.20130723-0ubuntu1
   virtualbox-qt            4.3.18-dfsg-1
   virtualbox-source        4.3.18-dfsg-1

I also checked I have the most current version of the kernel and kernel headers

$ uname -a
Linux Maria-Agnesi 3.16.0-25-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 4 12:06:54 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

and the headers for this kernel are installed 

$ dpkg-query -s linux-headers-generic

Package: linux-headers-generic
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: kernel
Installed-Size: 28
Maintainer: Ubuntu Kernel Team <[email protected]>
Architecture: amd64
Source: linux-metak
Version: 3.16.0.25.26k
Depends: linux-headers-3.16.0-25-generic
Description: Generic Linux kernel headers
 This package will always depend on the latest generic kernel headers
 available.

In synaptic the installed version is shown as 3.16.0-25.33

Despite repeatedly reinstalling all the packages /etc/init.d/vboxdrv is never created.

I tried sudo modprobe vboxdrv, but that did nothing.k

And I checked I am a member of the vboxusers group k

$ sudo members --all vboxusers
rquint

Any ideas, the only thing I can think to do next is a complete reinstall of the entire system.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Recent versions of VirtualBox (4.3.18+) don't seem to install file /etc/init.d/vboxdrv. The instructions you have been following are obsolete.

Just start virtualbox and if it needs to recompile modules it will tell you.

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  • Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. Whether I start virtualbox from a launcher or the command line there is no error message nor is vboxdrv created.
    – Richard Quint
    Nov 7, 2014 at 5:53
  • Well, if there is no error message then maybe everything just works and you don't actually have a problem. What happens if you try to run a VM?
    – sмurf
    Nov 8, 2014 at 11:47
  • The Windows splash screen appears, then it disappears and the VM is tagged as aborted. I don't know what the connection is, if there is even one, but after the upgrade to 14.10 I found another borked application, TeX. I decided to bite the bullet and do a fresh install of 14.10 and now everything is working, so far.
    – Richard Quint
    Nov 9, 2014 at 2:53
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It seems that the problem is in the old Virtual Box Extension Pack as has been discussed here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox/+bug/1386445

So this is basically not a bug, but another VB perk. The solution is to download matching Extension Pack version, which can be found here:

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/

Or, alternatively, use KVM.

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