#1 2021-08-11 12:22:08

Peregrino69

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 99

[SOLVED] Virtualbox installation fails

Hi guys

After a long break I'm back with Bunsen. Just love the idea of minimal OS to maximize available resources for the applications.

I'm trying to install Virtualbox following instructions in https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads. Installation fails at the end with:

This system is currently not set up to build kernel modules.
Please install the Linux kernel "header" files matching the current kernel
for adding new hardware support to the system.

uname-r shows 4.19.0-13-amd64

Apt-cache search doesn't give anything below 4.19.0-14, so I'm assuming next step would be a kernel upgrade. I'm a bit hesitant, as I've never done it, so firstly I'd need to set the system up for that, secondly need to figure out how to. Third problem here is that I've no idea what the upgrade will break.

Can anyone advise me how to get this done?

Last edited by Peregrino69 (2021-08-11 17:22:37)

DeepDayze

Like sands through an hourglass...

From: In Linux Land

Registered: 2017-05-28

Posts: 1,897

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox installation fails

you need to install the kernel headers package as you need the headers to build modules like virtualbox. In addition install the build-essential package which installs the compiler and supporting scripts to build modules. You also should install the DKMS package to permit auto-build and auto-install of modules.

I would also recommend you enable backports and then install the linux-image-amd64 and linux-headers-amd64 metapackages which pulls the latest kernel image and headers in from the backports repo.

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Real Men Use Linux

Peregrino69

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 99

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox installation fails

Yeah, that's what it says - install kernel headers. And the problem still is that from what I can see the running kernel's 4.19.0-13, for which I can't find headers.

Funny enough with a different google search term I finally found https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=4870, which worked up to "make oldconfig". Seems thorough but isn't really... I ended up just reinstalling BL.

Next found Debian's instructions at https://wiki.debian.org/HowToUpgradeKernel. Tried

sudo apt install linux-image-4.19.0-17-amd64

which produced

linux-image-4.19.0-17-amd64 is already the newest version (4.19.194-3)
linux-image-4.19.0-17-amd64 is set to manually installed

So am I completely mistaken to imagine that current kernel is available somewhere in my system? If yes, how the heck do I install it?

EDIT

I should add - sudo update-grub shows:

Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-17-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-17-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-13-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-13-amd64
Generating custom entry for: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-17-amd64
initrd image OK: /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-17-amd64

Also /boot/grub/grub.cfg shows entries for 0-17, both normal and recovery. However in grub menu only 0-13 is available.

Last edited by Peregrino69 (2021-08-11 17:10:45)

unklar

Back to the roots 1.9

From: #! BL

Registered: 2015-10-31

Posts: 2,641

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox installation fails

^The command is:

sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64 linux-image-amd64

where linux-image-amd64 is most likely already present on your system. You can check this with

apt policy linux-image-amd64

Peregrino69

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 99

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox installation fails

Thanks unklar, headers did install correctly.

The problem turned out to be Ubuntu on the same drive. After installing Bunsen first time I did in Ubu sudo update-grub, but for whatever reason it decided only to add the older kernel. After doing update-grub again in Ubuntu, new kernel got installed, and Virtualbox is successfully installed following instructions in virtualbox.org.

Thanks for everyone for trying :-)

DeepDayze

Like sands through an hourglass...

From: In Linux Land

Registered: 2017-05-28

Posts: 1,897

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox installation fails

Aha, that's the rub...when you got more than one Linux distro installed only ONE of them can take control of the bootloader. So when you update a kernel in one distro (BL) and you have Ubuntu controlling the bootloader so then you have to boot into Ubuntu to update grub thus you can then select the new kernel in Grub. You will have to do this for every kernel update.

Good that you finally were able to build the vbox modules for the new kernel you installed.

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Real Men Use Linux