VBox: Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

[lads]

UPDATE: Jump to the solution.

Hello everyone,

The following is from a Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit install, that has been running VBox without trouble for a month.

This morning as I tried to start a Win7 virtual machine (that I've used every day) I got a window with these messages:

VirtualBox - Error

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Windows7.
The virtual machine 'Windows7' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1.

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: Machine
Interface: IMachine {5eaa9319-62fc-4b0a-843c-0cb1940f8a91}

And a second window with this:

VirtualBox - Error in suplibOsInit

Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

Please install the virtualbox-dkms package and execute 'modprobe vboxdrv' as root.

So I tried to run what it suggested:

$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-dkms
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
virtualbox-dkms is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded.

$ sudo modprobe vboxdrv
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/options, it will be ignored in a future release.
FATAL: Module vboxdrv not found.

Googling about it I found a closed thread with the same error on Maverick, but it is marked as solved without providing any fix.

I have to use VBox everyday because Oneiric doesn't run one of the programs I use the most. Can someone help? Thank you.

[BC59]

As I remember when I was using VirtualBox, in every kernel update I had to recompile, so check here if this helps you:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/8143
http://www.howtoforge.com/virtualbox_ubuntu

If not consider reinstall VirtualBox from Ubuntu Software Center.

[BC59]

And a suggestion, Win7 is very slow and sluggish in a Virtual Machine, WinXP works perfectly and almost all Win programs work fluently on it.

[lads]

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't sort out how to make the command to change the .h files working on my machine so I opted for a re-install. Here's the result of dpkg:

# dpkg -i virtualbox-4.1_4.1.6-74713~Ubuntu~oneiric_amd64.deb 
Selecting previously deselected package virtualbox-4.1.
dpkg: considering removing virtualbox in favour of virtualbox-4.1 ...
dpkg: yes, will remove virtualbox in favour of virtualbox-4.1.
(Reading database ... 347746 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking virtualbox-4.1 (from virtualbox-4.1_4.1.6-74713~Ubuntu~oneiric_amd64.deb) ...
 * Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules                                              [ OK ] 
Setting up virtualbox-4.1 (4.1.6-74713~Ubuntu~oneiric) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/vboxdrv ...
addgroup: The group `vboxusers' already exists as a system group. Exiting.
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/options, it will be ignored in a future release.
 * Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules                                              [ OK ] 
 * Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules                                        Error! Could not locate dkms.conf file.
File:  does not exist.
                                                                                   [ OK ]
 * Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS                     [ OK ] 
 * Starting VirtualBox kernel modules                                              [ OK ] 
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info ...
Unknown media type in type 'all/all'
Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/mms'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmst'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmsu'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/pnm'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspt'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspu'
Unknown media type in type 'interface/x-winamp-skin'
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus ...
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for python-central ...

This was run as superuser. Right now I have no Virtual Box, please help me, I'm really in trouble.

Thanks.

[lads]

Ok I managed to get VBox back by installing from the software centre. Problem is: the errors reported at the opening of this thread are also back.

Any other suggestions? I really need this working. Thanks?

[BC59]

Sometimes Oracle who owns Virtualbox is late to prepare fixes for the new kernels, so if the machine is working just wait.

If not there is another solution to boot and choose the old kernel. That fixes everything.

[lads]

If not there is another solution to boot and choose the old kernel. That fixes everything.

How can I do that? I've been tweaking with /etc/default/grub but so far I haven't managed to get the kernel selection menu at start up.

Thanks.

[BC59]

From Grub Menu Screen while booting you choose Previous Linux Versions

If you cannot see the Grub Menu Screen, you have to hold down SHIFT during boot.

[lolpenguin]

Did you upgrade your kernel? Virtualbox depends on kernel modules so you have to recompile them:

sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-dkms
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-dkms

[BC59]

Did you upgrade your kernel? Virtualbox depends on kernel modules so you have to recompile them:

sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-dkms
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-dkms

This is the correct procedure but as I see from his first post, he already did it.