Virtualbox-guest-x11 no longer working in Ubuntu 16.04

[Michael Kofler]

I have been using Ubuntu 16.04 betas in Virtual Box for two months now and all was working fine. But beginning two days ago, I am no longer able to use a resolution higher than 1024x768. virtualbox-guest-x11 is installed. After login, the following error message is shown on my desktop:

VBoxCliend DND Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service rc=VERR_ACCESS_DENIED

Host: OS X, VirtualBox 5.0.18, 64bit
Guest: Ubuntu 16.04 latest daily (2016-04-17) plus all updates as of 2016-04-19

dmesg does not show any virtualbox related errors:

dmesg | egrep -i 'virtual|vbox'
[ 0.000000] DMI: innotek GmbH VirtualBox/VirtualBox, BIOS VirtualBox 12/01/2006
[ 0.000000] CPU MTRRs all blank - virtualized system.
[ 0.000000] ACPI: RSDP 0x00000000000E0000 000024 (v02 VBOX )
[ 0.000000] ACPI: XSDT 0x0000000059BF0030 00003C (v01 VBOX VBOXXSDT 00000001 ASL 00000061)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: FACP 0x0000000059BF00F0 0000F4 (v04 VBOX VBOXFACP 00000001 ASL 00000061)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: DSDT 0x0000000059BF0470 002106 (v01 VBOX VBOXBIOS 00000002 INTL 20100528)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: APIC 0x0000000059BF0240 000054 (v02 VBOX VBOXAPIC 00000001 ASL 00000061)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: SSDT 0x0000000059BF02A0 0001CC (v01 VBOX VBOXCPUT 00000002 INTL 20100528)
[ 0.000000] Booting paravirtualized kernel on KVM
[ 0.172655] KVM setup paravirtual spinlock
[ 0.667404] ata2.00: ATAPI: VBOX CD-ROM, 1.0, max UDMA/133
[ 0.667954] scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM VBOX CD-ROM 1.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 1.244650] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: VirtualBox
[ 1.266448] input: VirtualBox USB Tablet as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/0003:80EE:0021.0001/input/input6
[ 1.266600] hid-generic 0003:80EE:0021.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [VirtualBox USB Tablet] on usb-0000:00:06.0-1/input0
[ 1.374830] ata3.00: ATA-6: VBOX HARDDISK, 1.0, max UDMA/133
[ 1.375055] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA VBOX HARDDISK 1.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 3.885556] systemd[1]: Detected virtualization oracle.
[ 4.398474] vboxguest: misc device minor 55, IRQ 20, I/O port d020, MMIO at 00000000f0400000 (size 0x400000)
[ 4.398476] vboxguest: Successfully loaded version 5.0.16_Ubuntu (interface 0x00010004)
[ 4.439133] [drm] Initialized vboxvideo 1.0.0 20090303 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
[ 4.859641] vboxsf: Successfully loaded version 5.0.16_Ubuntu (interface 0x00010004)
[ 4.868795] VBoxService 5.0.17_Ubuntu r106382 (verbosity: 0) linux.amd64 (Apr 15 2016 21:47:37) release log
[ 4.869357] 00:00:00.000615 main Executable: /usr/sbin/VBoxService

lsmod looks fine:

lsmod | grep vbox
vboxsf 49152 0
vboxvideo 16384 0
drm 360448 2 vboxvideo
vboxguest 286720 2 vboxsf

however, Xorg.0.log says, it cannot load the vboxvideo driver

grep -i vbox /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 4.964] (==) Matched vboxvideo as autoconfigured driver 0
[ 4.964] (==) Matched vboxvideo as autoconfigured driver 1
[ 4.964] (II) LoadModule: "vboxvideo"
[ 4.965] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vboxvideo_drv.so
[ 4.966] (II) Module vboxvideo: vendor="Oracle Corporation"
[ 4.966] (**) Load address of symbol "VBOXVIDEO" is 0x7f5c4f28d380
[ 4.970] (II) VBoxVideo: guest driver for VirtualBox: vbox
[ 4.985] (II) vboxvideo: kernel driver found, not loading.
[ 4.985] (II) vboxvideo: kernel driver found, not loading.

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Hi, can you please run
dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-guest-dkms?

thanks

[Michael Kofler (michael-kofler)]

it turned out virtual-box-guest-dkms was not installed at all (I formerly did apt install virtualbox-guest-x11 to install the guest utilities; are there any dependencies missing?)

after

apt install virtual-box-guest-dkms

I got an error message (in the terminal):

module 5.0.16_ubuntu for vboxvideo.ko is not newer than what is already found in kernel 4.4.0-18-generic. You may override by specifiying --force.

---

I now tried

dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-guest-dkms --force

same error again; I don't know for which command I should use --force

---

I finally tried:

dkms build -m virtualbox-guest -v 5.0.16
Module virtualbox-guest/5.0.16 already built for kernel 4.4.0-18-generic/4

dkms install -m virtualbox-guest -v 5.0.16
Module virtualbox-guest/5.0.16 already installed on kernel 4.4.0-18-generic/x86_64

---

after a reboot, the problem persists (as expected)

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

indeed, because the module provided by the kernel itself is *bad*.

Please try to remove the vbox* from /lib/modules, and do again the dpkg-reconfigure.
after a reboot everything is fine.

[Michael Kofler (michael-kofler)]

> everything is fine

it is, thank you