{"id":7820,"date":"2024-10-02T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=7820"},"modified":"2024-10-16T12:01:08","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T16:01:08","slug":"virtualbox-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=7820","title":{"rendered":"VirtualBox failures"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n

I just tried to update VirtualBox and encountered some strange problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started when a student of mine tried to update their Fedora 40 host and received an interesting error, “Can’t find VirtualBox COM object … .” They installed VB from the Oracle VirtualBox website using instructions in, Using and Administering Linux<\/a>, Volume 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried updating to the latest release of VirtualBox. I currently use the packages in the Fedora rpmfusion-free-updates repo. I got he same error when trying to start the VirtualBox Manager. I then attempted to start VB from the command line with the the result in Figure 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

$ VirtualBox %U &<\/strong>\n[1] 923320\ndboth@david:~$\n(VirtualBox:923320): dbind-WARNING **: 12:56:34.763: Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket \/root\/.cache\/at-spi\/bus_0.0: Permission denied<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Figure 1: Launching VirtualBox from the command line results in this error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have sometimes found that removing and reinstalling VirtualBox can resolve problems like this. I tried to do that but got strange results. Just to satisfy myself that VB had been removed, I ran the command line program in Figure 2 to see if there were any remnants that I should also delete. Imagine my surprise when I saw all of these remaining packages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
# dnf list installed *VirtualBox* | grep -v Installed<\/strong>\nVirtualBox-kmodsrc.noarch                      7.1.0-2.fc40  @rpmfusion-free-updates\nVirtualBox-server.x86_64                       7.1.0-2.fc40  @rpmfusion-free-updates\nakmod-VirtualBox.x86_64                        7.1.0-1.fc40  @rpmfusion-free-updates\nkmod-VirtualBox-6.10.10-200.fc40.x86_64.x86_64 7.1.0-1.fc40  @@commandline\nkmod-VirtualBox-6.10.5-200.fc40.x86_64.x86_64  7.0.20-1.fc40 @@commandline\nkmod-VirtualBox-6.10.6-200.fc40.x86_64.x86_64  7.0.20-1.fc40 @@commandline\nkmod-VirtualBox-6.10.7-200.fc40.x86_64.x86_64  7.0.20-1.fc40 @@commandline\nkmod-VirtualBox-6.10.9-200.fc40.x86_64.x86_64  7.0.20-1.fc40 @@commandline\nvirtualbox-guest-additions.x86_64 <\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Figure 2: This command showed me all the old VB cruft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problematic ones are the multiple versions of kmod-VirtualBox. Over the years I’ve installed some versions of VB from the rpm-fusion repositories, and other times from the Oracle download page. It’s obvious that the Oracle version doesn’t clean up after itself very well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Multiple versions of these packages can cause problems and I needed to get rid of everything — all that cruft. I did that with the command line program in Figure 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
# for X in `dnf list installed *VirtualBox* | grep -v Installed | awk '{ print $1 }'` ; do echo \"Working on $X\" ; dnf -y remove $X  ; done<\/strong><\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Figure 3: This command removed all the VirtualBox cruft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Figure 4: The new VirtualBox logo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
After removing the cruft, I installed VirtualBox from the rpm-fusion repositories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
# dnf -y install VirtualBox<\/strong><\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
I then ran akmods to rebuild the kernel modules and restarted the vboxdrv.service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
# akmods; systemctl restart vboxdrv.service<\/strong><\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
 Everything runs now as expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was surprised by the new VirtualBox Logo in Figure 4. I like the old one better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just tried to update VirtualBox and encountered some strange problems. It started when a student of mine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,83,81],"tags":[585],"class_list":["post-7820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","category-problem-solving","category-virtualbox","tag-virtualbox"],"modified_by":"David Both","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7820"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8147,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions\/8147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}