Comment 10 for bug 1849348

Folks,
Thanks to @dacorsa and his post on the virtualbox forum, here is the "workaround" for the issue (this is to build the VirtualBox modules. different modules may be different)

1. Install gcc-8

sudo apt install gcc-8 g++-8
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-8 80 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-8 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-8

if you now run

gcc --version

you will see that you have v8.

2. Next, issue the vboxconfig command:

sudo /sbin/vboxconfig

and voila. No need to recompile the kernel or anything. vbox started right after that. I am on kernel 5.5.0