Installing VirtualBox OSE on Ubuntu 8.04

      by Wyatt Walter

Tonight I wanted to play with a couple of Linux distros on my desktop and I decided to install VirtualBox since it’s free and already has packages in Ubuntu for it. That turned into a much longer process than I thought, but not too bad. There’s a couple of steps that the open source edition’s installer on Ubuntu that are missed.

I installed VirtualBox through the Add/Remove Applications GUI application. When I ran VirtualBox, created a virtual machine, and tried to boot it I was greeted with an error:
VirtualBox kernel driver not installed. The vboxdrv kernel module was either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created for some reason. Please install the virtualbox-ose-modules package for your kernel, e.g. virtualbox-ose-modules-generic..

Apparently you have to install an additional module which Ubuntu conveniently left out. To get the correct module for any running kernel that you are using:
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-modules-`uname -r`

Fine. My module is now installed. I went to boot up my VM again..
The VirtualBox kernel driver is not accessible to the current user. Make sure that the user has write permissions for /dev/vboxdrv by adding them to the vboxusers groups. You will need to logout for the change to take effect..

I had to add my user to the vboxusers group in order to gain access to the VirtualBox module:
sudo usermod -G vboxusers -a user

Log out and log back in and voila, VM boots.

Slightly irritating, but not too bad.

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Filed under How-Tos / Tips : Comments (3) : Jul 22nd, 2009

  • http://www.ubuntu-news.net/2009/07/24/installing-virtualbox-ose-on-ubuntu-8-04/ Installing VirtualBox OSE on Ubuntu 8.04 | Ubuntu-News – Your one stop for news about Ubuntu

    [...] I decided to install VirtualBox since it’s free and already has packages in Ubuntu for it. More here That turned into a much longer process than I thought, but not too bad. There’s a couple of steps [...]

  • http://Yup Paul Charles Leddy

    Wait until you try to set up networking.

    Let me know if you run into any blocks. I wanted my virtual server to grab an IP off the DHCP running on my home network, and had to do the bridge option on the virtual and pipe it over my airport card (en1) on the Mac running the virtual. That means, if I bring my laptop into work, I have to manually move the bridge to the hard ethernet interface/port (en0) I use on my laptop at work, or use work’s wireless. Ugh.

    If you want to set up mysql clustering using virtuals, I believe it gets even more complex, can’t quite remember, but never ended up using ndb anyways.

  • Guntur

    I have same trouble with you when i run the vbox on my Ubuntu 8.04. Thanks for your solution and sorry for my bad english