I installed Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS (2015 September) and I used Ubuntu Software Centre
to install VirtualBox. I encountered this error:
Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)
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.
To deal with this problem, I first used
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
When that did not fix VirtualBox, I tried various fixes suggested at this link:
What are the adverse consequences for having tried the most popular answer:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-dkms
sudo modprobe vboxdrv
and the adverse consequences of having tried this suggestion from a less popular answer:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall virtualbox-dkms
Epilogue: I used Ubuntu Software Centre
to uninstall VirtualBox and then I used the instructions from the virtualbox.org
to successfully install it. However, I am still interested in the adverse effects of the trial and error activities. Should Ubuntu be reinstalled to clean up the effects of the trial and error activity?