Arch Linux

aardwolf

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2005-07-23

Posts: 304

What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

Hello,

For some reason /dev/vboxdrv is gone on my system.

pacman -S virtualbox or pacman -S virtualbox-host-modules don't create it.

Also, downloading the source of virtualbox and building it with kmk etc... also don't create it.

What stage of configure, make, make install should normally create it?

Or in case of pacman, should installing something with pacman put a module in /dev/ if needed?

If not, what should do it?

Thanks.

P.S. the problem is the following:

$modprobe vboxdrv
modprobe: FATAL: Module vboxdrv not found.

Last edited by aardwolf (2014-10-12 17:35:40)

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

I'd say you should "modprobe vboxdrv".

aardwolf

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2005-07-23

Posts: 304

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

That says:

$modprobe vboxdrv
modprobe: FATAL: Module vboxdrv not found.

Where is modprobe looking to find vboxdrv?

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

You need to run it as root.

modprobe is generally looking in /usr/lib/modules/, in this case in /usr/lib/modules/extramodules-major-kernel-version-ARCH/ (for Arch kernels). virtualbox-host-modules provides the module for Arch kernels. Perhaps you're using the kernel from the testing repo and don't have the community-testing repo enabled. Wiki has info concerning building the module for custom kernels.

aardwolf

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2005-07-23

Posts: 304

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

I'm trying as root (su):

$ls /lib/modules/extramodules-3.16-ARCH/
nvidia-uvm.ko.gz  nvidia.ko.gz  vboxdrv.ko.gz  vboxnetadp.ko.gz  vboxnetflt.ko.gz  vboxpci.ko.gz  version

$modprobe --verbose vboxdrv 
modprobe: FATAL: Module vboxdrv not found.

Is vboxdrv.ko.gz in extramodules not sufficient?

Thanks.

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

What's your "uname -a"?

Two things to try: running "modprobe vboxdrv" after running "depmod -a" and running "modprobe /lib/modules/extramodules-3.16-ARCH/vboxdrv.ko.gz".

aardwolf

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2005-07-23

Posts: 304

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

$uname -a
Linux 2600K 3.16.2-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Sep 6 13:12:51 CEST 2014 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$su
Password:
$modprobe vboxdrv
modprobe: FATAL: Module vboxdrv not found.
$depmod -a
$modprobe vboxdrv
Killed
$modprobe vboxdrv
(hangs forever, does not go back to prompt...)
$modprobe /lib/modules/extramodules-3.16-ARCH/vboxdrv.ko.gz
modprobe: FATAL: Module /lib/modules/extramodules-3.16-ARCH/vboxdrv.ko.gz not found.
(even though the file exists)

My only explanation now is that it's my fault, I'm trying to keep an old version of VirtualBox working because networking of a certain game does not work in later versions of virtualbox, for over a year I've been trying to fix the vboxdrv kernel module's C/C++ code every time after an archlinux update, it breaks every time the kernel changes its headers. I was trying to do what is visible for it on github, but maybe now finally the code has deviated so much that it became unfixable, and the vboxdrv is doing something unexpected... Unfortunately in the latest vbox version the game's networking doesn't work even with all possible exhaustive combinations of network settings so it's useless.

Last edited by aardwolf (2014-10-13 22:44:05)

Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,092

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

Try kvm/qemu instead?

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2014-10-14 15:21:03)

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mmealman

Member

Registered: 2014-10-14

Posts: 1

Re: What should normally create "/dev/vboxdrv"?

This wasn't working for me either. To fix this I just switched to using virtualbox-host-dkms instead. Install that, remove virtualbox-host-modules, and run "dkms install vboxhost/4.3.18" to build your modules(you might need linux-headers for this).

After that you can modprobe vboxdrv and setup a /etc/modules-load.d/virtualbox.conf file to load that module on boot. When you upgrade your kernel you'll need to run the dkms command again, but it's no biggie.