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Moshe Katz
Asked: 2015-02-26 11:10:23 +0800 CST

Can't build Virtualbox-dkms - mismatched kernel and headers

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I have previously used VirtualBox on my Ubuntu 14.10 machine, but I had not used it in the last two months.

When I tried to start a VM, I got the following error:

WARNING: The character device /dev/vboxdrv does not exist.
     Please install the virtualbox-dkms package and the appropriate
     headers, most likely linux-headers-generic.

     You will not be able to start VMs until this problem is fixed.

I found several other questions which say to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-dkms or to uninstall and reinstall virtualbox.

When I run any of these commands, I get the following message:

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 4.3.18
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Loading new virtualbox-4.3.18 DKMS files...
Building only for 3.13.0-29-generic
Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.
 * Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules                                  [ OK ] 
 * Starting VirtualBox kernel modules
 * No suitable module for running kernel found
                                                                       [fail]
invoke-rc.d: initscript virtualbox, action "restart" failed.

When I run uname -a, I see that the running Kernel version is 3.13.0-29-generic, as the message above says.

However, when I check which Kernel headers are installed, I see these:

linux-headers-3.16.0-24 - Header files related to Linux kernel version 3.16.0
linux-headers-3.16.0-24-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-24-lowlatency - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-25 - Header files related to Linux kernel version 3.16.0
linux-headers-3.16.0-25-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-25-lowlatency - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-26 - Header files related to Linux kernel version 3.16.0
linux-headers-3.16.0-26-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-26-lowlatency - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-28 - Header files related to Linux kernel version 3.16.0
linux-headers-3.16.0-28-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-28-lowlatency - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-29 - Header files related to Linux kernel version 3.16.0
linux-headers-3.16.0-29-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-29-lowlatency - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-30 - Header files related to Linux kernel version 3.16.0
linux-headers-3.16.0-30-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-30-lowlatency - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-31 - Header files related to Linux kernel version 3.16.0
linux-headers-3.16.0-31-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
linux-headers-3.16.0-31-lowlatency - Linux kernel headers for version 3.16.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP

I tried to install the 3.13.0-29 headers using sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` and got this error:

Package linux-headers-3.13.0-29-generic is not available...

I tried running sudo apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade the Kernel to 3.16..., but it doesn't seem to do anything.

How can I either update the installed kernel to match the headers that are available or get the old headers?

kernel

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I figured this out after finding https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/170580/package-linux-headers-3-13-0-27-generic-has-no-installation-candidate and noticing that 14.10 should have shipped with the 3.16 kernel from the start.

    This machine was upgraded from 14.04 to 14.10 using do-release-upgrade. However, the 3.13.x kernel from 14.04 was installed explicitly instead of through the linux-image-generic meta-package, so it didn't get upgraded. However, the headers were installed using the -generic meta-package, so they did get updated.

    Installing linux-generic caused the Kernel and Headers to both update to the newest 3.16.x.

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