Guest utils do not work, Intrepid on Hardy

[Steven McCoy]

Binary package hint: virtualbox-ose

8.04 desktop running VirtualBox OSE 1.5.6, with Guest 8.10.

With virtualbox-ose-guest-source the video drivers are not set by /usr/share/virtualbox/x11config.pl and if manually configured it reports not found screen due to mismatched versions. The mouse functions but is not seamless.

The installed modules report the following error on startup:

 * Starting VirtualBox Additions...
FATAL: Error inserting vboxadd (/lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/updates/dkms/vboxadd.ko): No such device or address
 * cannot modprobe vboxadd kernel module [fail]

Installing "Guest Additions" from the VirtualBox interface produces an error building the modules. View error log in attachment vboxadd-install.log

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

I think is a dupe of #292856

There is a package with the video fix, however the x11config.pl still didn't set correctly xorg.conf that needs to be manually edited.
https://launchpad.net/~blueyed/+archive

[Steven McCoy (dsbunny)]

That fixes the video but not the vboxadd device for the mouse.

virtualbox-ose-guest-source 2.0.4-dfsg-0ubuntu2~blueyedppa8
virtualbox-ose-guest-utils 2.0.4-dfsg-0ubuntu2~blueyedppa8

[Steven Willis (onlynone)]

I posted this over at bug 189444 (which dealt with package dependencies between virtualbox-ose-guest-utils and virtualbox-ose-guest-source) :

=====
This is still a problem with 8.10.

I have 8.04 installed on my desktop. I installed 8.10 within virtualbox. From within 8.10 I installed virtualbox-ose-guest-utils and it failed to start because it couldn't find vboxadd.ko . I then read several bug reports on launchpad and also installed the virtualbox-ose-guest-source and virtualbox-ose-sorce. Again it tried to modprobe vboxadd but failed. This time the error was:

FATAL: Error inserting vboxadd (/lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/updates/dkms/vboxadd.ko): No such device or address

The file actually exists this time, but can't load for some reason. So there are two problems, one is that the package dependencies are still not correct. And two: once you do install the correct package it still doesn't work.
=====

I guess there's also a third problem with the video drivers and people having problems with /usr/share/virtualbox/x11config.pl which seems to be what bug 292856 is all about.

I propose that this bug should concentrate on the issues with the kernel modules. Has anyone gotten the kernel modules to load on Intrepid?

btw:
uname -r: 2.6.27-7-generic
virtualbox-ose-guest-source: 2.0.4-dfsg-0ubuntu1
virtualbox-ose-guest-utils: 2.0.4-dfsg-0ubuntu1

[Steven Willis (onlynone)]

I should mention that I just upgraded to kernel 2.6.27-9-generic. Once again the module was build without error. But, upon trying to load it I got the same error:

FATAL: Error inserting vboxadd (/lib/modules/2.6.27-9-generic/updates/dkms/vboxadd.ko): No such device or address

[Steven Willis (onlynone)]

I think I figured it out from this page:

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10607
"I was getting that too, but found a way to solve it. The cause for me was that I was that the guest additions inside the guest were v1.6.2, while the actual virtual box software I was running on the host (Windows) was 1.5.x. Once I upgraded the software on the Windows host to 1.6.2, all was fine."

Since my host was Ubuntu 8.04 with virtualbox version 1.5.6, and the guest was Ubuntu 8.10 with virtualbox version 2.0.4, this version mis-match must have been the problem. I had no idea that the virtualbox version of host and guest needed to be the same. So I went got the 2.0.4 version of virtualbox for hardy here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds

I removed all my virtualbox* packages from my host, and then installed the .deb from the above URL. I started up my guest and the kernel modules loaded perfectly fine, and I was able to mount shared directories from the host (vboxadd was already loaded upon boot, and I just had to do "sudo modprobe vboxvfs" for the file sharing).

However the video still isn't working for me, it complains about an ABI version mismatch if I put 'driver "vboxvideo"' in my xorg.conf... but that's a separate issue I guess.

Also, the mouse integration started 'working' after rebooting the guest, but the guest cursor only moves in a diagonal line down and to the right when I move my mouse. There were a couple tickets about this weird mouse behavior on virtualbox.org:

http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1324
http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1299

[Steven Willis (onlynone)]

Just in case anyone finds their way into this bug report via google, the mouse and video problems were solved by installing the custom virtualbox-ose-guest-utils and virtualbox-ose-guest-source packages from Daniel Hahler's PPA as mentioned in bug 292856 .

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

There are a lot of issues mixed here, I guess.
x11config.pl is meant to be called manually, there is some README about it, since it could cause miserable failure..

Missing vboxadd is another issue and apparently "just" caused by virtualbox-ose-modules not being up-to-date. If the kernel ABI bumps, the modules have to follow and they get stuck in the bureaucracy of stable release updates.. :/
Currently this is bug 303199.

If I'm wrong, please reopen the bug, but since the original report is about these issues, please file separate bugs (or subscribe to existing ones) for each single issue.

A simple workaround to the module issues upgrading to Intrepid (which has DKMS for the modules) or using the PUEL edition from virtualbox.org.

Thanks.

[Steven Willis (onlynone)]

I think this bug should be closed, but I don't think it's a duplicate of bug 303199.

That bug is about about virtualbox kernel modules on the host not getting updated when the kernel is updated, causing virtualbox on the host to not be able to run any guests at all.

This bug is about not being able to use the guest utils on an Intrepid guest running inside a Hardy host. The guests still run, the guest utils simply won't work.

This problem is caused by the version mismatch between virtualbox on the guest and virtualbox on the host (2.0.4 vs 1.5.6); this can't be resolved since I don't think anyone's going to put the virtualbox 1.5.6 guest utils modules into Intrepid or the virtualbox 2.0.4 host software and modules into Hardy.