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Luís de Sousa
Asked: 2014-07-17 23:06:11 +0800 CST

VBox on 14.04: Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908) [duplicate]

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Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) is either not loaded or there is a permission problem with /dev/vboxdrv. Please reinstall the kernel module by executing

'/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup'

as root. If it is available in your distribution, you should install the DKMS package first. This package keeps track of Linux kernel changes and recompiles the vboxdrv kernel module if necessary.

This is a familiar message to everyone that uses Virtual Box. This "bug" has been popping up every few months at least since 11.10. I got it today for the first time on 14.04 and unfortunately the classical solution of re-installing virtualbox-dkms is not having any effect:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential dkms
sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-dkms
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-dkms

What could be the reason for this old fix to fail?

Update: In the comments user bain makes reference to an old thread that apparently reports to the same problem. While the error message is similar, on Ubuntu 14.04 this issue seems to have a different nature, unrelated to the virtualbox-dkms package. For instance, on Ubuntu 14.04 the virtualbox package is up to date:

$ sudo apt-cache policy virtualbox
virtualbox:
  Installed: 4.3.10-dfsg-1
  Candidate: 4.3.10-dfsg-1
  Version table:
 *** 4.3.10-dfsg-1 0
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/multiverse amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
14.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The fix for 14.04 is indeed different, but not that different:

    sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential dkms
sudo apt-get remove --purge virtualbox-dkms
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-dkms

    The install virtualbox-dkms command was actually failing applying the 13.10 fix. By fully purging the package things got back to normal.

    Update [17-01-2015]: In the latest iteration of this bug a restart to the system is required between the apt-get remove command and the second apt-get install.

    Update [07-02-2016]: This fix is reportedly functional on Ubuntu 15.10.

    Update [29-09-2016]: This fix is also functional on Ubuntu 16.04.

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