Upgrade to next linux kernel fails

[BertN45]

The upgrade fails, note that Ubuntu Studio is the only flavor that failed as follows:

1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Setting up linux-image-5.15.0-87-lowlatency (5.15.0-87.96~20.04.1) ...
Processing triggers for linux-image-5.15.0-87-lowlatency (5.15.0-87.96~20.04.1)
...
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-87-lowlatency
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/vboxadd:
run-parts: failed to exec /etc/kernel/postinst.d/vboxadd: Exec format error
run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/vboxadd exited with return code 1
dpkg: error processing package linux-image-5.15.0-87-lowlatency (--configure):
 installed linux-image-5.15.0-87-lowlatency package post-installation script sub
process returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-image-5.15.0-87-lowlatency
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: linux-image-5.15.0-87-lowlatency 5.15.0-87.96~20.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-86.95~20.04.1-lowlatency 5.15.122
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-86-lowlatency x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.27
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Sat Oct 21 09:43:07 2023
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-07-02 (1206 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Studio 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
SourcePackage: linux-signed-lowlatency-hwe-5.15
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Juerg Haefliger (juergh)]

> run-parts: failed to exec /etc/kernel/postinst.d/vboxadd: Exec format error

Where is this file coming from? I don't believe it's provided by an official Ubuntu package so you have a contaminated system and need to clean it up first. It's probably an unsupported DKMS module. What does the following show:

$ dkms status

[BertN45 (lammert-nijhof)]

DKMS was not installed and on installing dkms, I got the same error see annex: errordkms.

vboxadd.service is from Virtualbox and since 10 years I use the latest version from the www.virtualbox.org website. The only problems I remember are with newest Linux kernels, not yet supported by Virtualbox. It starts normally on each boot.

see vboxadd.service status:

bertadmin@VM-Studio-2004:~$ systemctl status vboxadd.service
● vboxadd.service
     Loaded: loaded (/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-7.0.12/init/vboxadd; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Mon 2023-10-23 08:41:25 AST; 34min ago
    Process: 746 ExecStart=/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-7.0.12/init/vboxadd start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 746 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

oct 23 08:41:23 VM-Studio-2004 systemd[1]: Starting vboxadd.service...
oct 23 08:41:24 VM-Studio-2004 vboxadd[746]: VirtualBox Guest Additions: Starting.
oct 23 08:41:25 VM-Studio-2004 systemd[1]: Finished vboxadd.service.

It seems something changed in, how the installation of new Linux lowlatency kernel used that vboxadd.service.
Note that the same normal kernel upgrade worked for Ubuntu 20.04; Xubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu Mate 20.04.