A fairly frequent problem related to the world of virtual machines, in this case VirtualBox, is that when we update the kernel or the system in general, the virtual machine stops working and there is no way to start it.
In this post we will show you how easy it is to solve this problem and how we can make VirtualBox work correctly again. We explain.
If you use VirtualBox frequently, and you have suddenly updated the system or the kernel, it may be that when trying to start VirtualBox as you have always done, you cannot do it due to an error similar to the following:
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'iri
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.
This error precisely describes us perfectly what we must do to solve it. As he informs us, the problem is that the file / dev / vboxdrv not loaded o have permission problems. By the way, if you don't remember how permissions work in Linux, we remind you that a while ago in Ubunlog we dedicated an entry thereto.
To solve the problem, we must first reinstall the kernel module in the terminal with:
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
Now, if for whatever the file vboxdrv not created, you will get an error when trying to execute the previous command, so before executing that command again you should do the following.
Go to the VirtualBox website and download the .deb package corresponding depending on the characteristics of your PC and your system. You can download it from here. Once downloaded, go to the directory where you downloaded the .deb and run the following command to install it:
sudo dpkg -i package_name.deb
Now we should be able to run
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
No problem. Once you have finished this process, restart the system and VirtualBox should work as usual.
We hope that this post has helped you to recover the correct functioning of VirtualBox after updating the kernel or the system. If this solution has not worked for you, leave us a comment explaining the problem you have and from Ubunlog we will try to help you as best we can.
Not long ago we had a problem to finish installing VirtualBox on GNU / Linux Canaima, we hope it will help you to use this VERY USEFUL software in Debian-based distributions that are not "famous".
At that time we made use of "Module Assistant" -a little documented option as recognized in https: //wiki.debian.org/ ModuleAssistant (web links we insert spaces, copy and delete them to navigate) -
To install it:
apt-get install module-assistant
BEFORE COMPILING:
ma prepare
Then run what is recommended in this article:
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
If you want to observe (includes video on youtube) please go to our website, a short entry on the subject:
http:// www. ks7000.net.ve/ 2015/04/24/virtualbox-kernels-canaima/
Thanks for your attention 😉.
Virtualbox did not work for me, it started but I could not run any of the machines. The solution I found was:
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-dkms
and then:
sudo modprobe vboxdrv
The same thing happened to me, if you want, visit my website where I publish the solution and compare it with yours, have a happy day!
http: // www. ks7000. net. go / 2015/04/24 / virtualbox-kernels-canaima /
[spaces inserted to the web link, copy them, remove them and you will navigate 😉].
But since I install the .deb package, I can't find it