Re: [gentoo-user] Kernel parameters for VirtualBox

[Peter Humphrey]

On Wednesday 17 February 2016 15:11:50 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 01:32:56 PM Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > I'm going round in circles here. I've been running VirtualBox and
> > BOINC for years with no problems to speak of.
> >
> > Over the last year or more I've experienced mysterious failures in many
> > programs, some of them real nuisances, and recently I decided to replace
> > my RAM modules with a single matched set, which seems to have done the
> > trick - so far! It's required complete recompilation of everything, and
> > throwing away quite a lot of data that seemed to have been damaged at
> > some time (hello KMail).
>
> Corruption due to bad memory can't be blamed on the actual software.

No, of course not. It's just that KMail can't cope with whatever kind of 
damage was caused. Archiving and importing the 30,000 mails didn't cure it 
either.

> > Now however I can't get VirtualBox running properly. I've tried the latest
> > stable version and two testing versions, but at every login via KDM I get
> > a
> > pop-up notice "VBoxClient: the VirtualBox kernel service is not running."
> > That's without any clients active or trying to be. If I then start
> > virtualbox- guest-additions I get this:
> >
> > # /etc/init.d/virtualbox-guest-additions start
> >
> >  * Loading kernel modules
> >
> > modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'vboxguest': No such device
> > modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'vboxsf': No such device
> >
> >  * ERROR: virtualbox-guest-additions failed to start
>
> This is ONLY for guests, NOT the host.

As I thought. However, some BOINC projects download a .vdi file and present it 
to VirtualBox as a guest. I wasn't sure (while going round in circles) whether 
that required me to set some kernel options to suit.

> > I assume I'm missing something in my kernel config, but I can't see what.
> >
> > linux # grep -i virt .config
> > # CONFIG_VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNTING_GEN is not set
> > CONFIG_HAVE_VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNTING_GEN=y
> > CONFIG_VIRT_TO_BUS=y
> > # CONFIG_FB_VIRTUAL is not set
> > # CONFIG_SND_VIRTUOSO is not set
> > CONFIG_VIRT_DRIVERS=y
> > # Virtio drivers
> > # CONFIG_VIRTIO_PCI is not set
> > # CONFIG_VIRTIO_MMIO is not set
> > # CONFIG_DEBUG_VIRTUAL is not set
> > CONFIG_VIRTUALIZATION=y
>
> VirtualBox does NOT use these.
> I only have the following set:
> # CONFIG_VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNTING_GEN is not set
> CONFIG_HAVE_VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNTING_GEN=y
> CONFIG_VIRT_TO_BUS=y

Okay. I've tried that and I still get the pop-up notice "VBoxClient: the 
VirtualBox kernel service is not running." This is with version 4.3.32. I'll 
try later versions and see what happens. Thanks for the info.

> > Most of those unset values are for when this kernel is running as a guest
> > of another OS, so I assume I don't need them when running as the host OS.
> > Others I can't set because they're hidden until I set the values to be a
> > guest.
> >
> > I can find lots of other people struggling with this and similar problems,
> > but no fix.
> >
> > Any ideas here?
>
> Yes, for the host, make sure you load the virtualbox modules:
>
> % lsmod | grep vbox
> vboxpci                12760  0
> vboxnetflt             16280  0
> vboxnetadp             17808  0
> vboxdrv               347894  3 vboxnetadp,vboxnetflt,vboxpci
>
>
> I achieve this with the following:
>
> % cat /etc/conf.d/modules | grep vbox
> modules="vboxdrv vboxnetadp vboxnetflt vboxpci"
>
> These can be found in " app-emulation/virtualbox-modules "
>
> It tells you to do this in the post-emerge:
>
>  * If you are using sys-apps/openrc, please add "vboxdrv", "vboxnetflt"
>  * and "vboxnetadp" to:
>  *   /etc/conf.d/modules

Yes, of course I did that long ago. I also found that it's important to 
specify vboxnetadp before vboxnetflt, otherwise adp doesn't get loaded.

-- 
Rgds
Peter