VirtualBox fails to start any virtual machine after update to 2.6.24-22-generic

[Roshan George]

VirtualBox fails with the error that the vboxdrv kernel module was not loaded. The exact error is in the attachment. This occurred immediately after updating to the latest kernel version of Ubuntu 8.04.1: 2.6.24-22-generic. VirtualBox works fine if I start my installation of Ubuntu with the 2.6.24-21-generic kernel.

[Roshan George (roshan-george)]

If I may venture a reason for this problem it is that the virtualbox-ose-modules package has no version for this kernel version. Is it possible to package the module for the newer kernel? I would have reported this somewhere to request for packaging but I don't know how.

Thank you

[LumpyCustard (orangelumpycustard)]

If I understand correctly, Hardy and below do not have the DKMS capability made by Dell. Intrepid offers this (2.6.27) but clearly you shouldn't have upgrade to 8.10 to use VB. I only offer this as an option.

[Roshan George (roshan-george)]

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. What is DKMS?

VirtualBox is working fine in the 2.6.21 kernel.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

I'm marking this as duplicate of bug 303199 - it is really a problem with virtualbox-ose-MODULES after all.

There are several workarounds: Use virtualbox from virtualbox.org (which has a Debian repository, too), install the modules manually (module-assistant, has been posted several times when this happened) or wait with the kernel upgrade until virtualbox-ose-modules has caught up (not recommended though!). For the last workaround, you can "just" boot the previous kernel from the Grub/bootloader menu (not recommened, since this kernel has known security issues).