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#1 2019-01-31 22:06:49

pgoetz
Member
From: Austin, Texas
Registered: 2014-02-21
Posts: 341

SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

Whenever I try attaching a shared folder to an Arch VirtualBox client  (linux 4.20.x kernel) I get the following error message:

vboxsf: Old binary mount data not supported, remove obsolete mount.vboxsf and/or update your VBoxService.

There appears to be a request to open a bug report on this:  https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/58272

(The solution proposed there didn't work for me) and I also found a 9-month-old VirtualBox ticket on this issue (https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/17728#no1) which got this response:

I will comment here to save creating an account on the Arch bugtracker. If you use our Additions then you will get our kernel modules and our user-space binaries, which work together. However if you try to use our user-space binaries with the in-kernel modules you will get this. Removing mount.vboxsf should fix this particular issue. Hans made quite a few adjustments and fixes when he upstreamed in particular the shared folder module to the kernel which we currently do not have the developer capacity to re-integrate. By the way, volunteers are welcome (ping us on vbox-dev).

I'm not sure I understand what "using our Additions" means -- isn't upstream exactly what  Arch is providing?  And in any case, the suggested solution of simply removing mount.vboxsf didn't work.

My question is there are working workaround for this?

Last edited by pgoetz (2019-02-01 15:19:18)

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#2 2019-02-01 01:37:18

kermit63
Member
Registered: 2018-07-04
Posts: 171

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

Not sure about this, but I think he's referring to the 2 alternate ways to install guest additions to arch:

By "our Additions", he probably meant inserting the iso file provided by virtualbox-guest-iso and manually installing the guest addtions using the provided bash script.

Alternatively, "user-space binaries" probably meant installing the package virtualbox-guest-utils, which theoretically also provides guest additions functionality to the guest arch vm.

Unfortunately, I tried both but still couldn't get my guest arch vm to automount shared folders with my arch host. I must admit I didn't try too hard to diagnose the problem.

Instead, I just set up NFS on both host and guest to get the same shared folder functionality.

Last edited by kermit63 (2019-02-01 01:41:46)

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#3 2019-02-01 07:39:32

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,974

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

What exact command produced that error and which mount.vboxsf did you remove?
The one in /usr/bin or the one in /usr/lib/virtualbox/mount.vboxsf?
Also: "pacman -Qs virtualbox"

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#4 2019-02-01 13:39:42

xiaoliniess
Member
Registered: 2018-11-01
Posts: 3

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

As some one modified and merged vboxguest and vboxvideo into the linux kernel, currently archlinux is using the in kernel modules, not building the kernel modules from source code released by virtualbox upstream. vboxsf depends on vboxguest. As vboxguest in linux kernel is different from upstream, a modified vboxsf from github is used. The user space utilities are still built from upstream.

But seems these modules are not maintained by virtualbox, now the in kernel modules are out of sync to upstream. User space utilities don't match the kernel modules.

You can modify the PKGBUILD of virtualbox to build all guest modules from upstream source code to fix this problem.
See https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/61307

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#5 2019-02-01 13:44:49

pgoetz
Member
From: Austin, Texas
Registered: 2014-02-21
Posts: 341

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

seth wrote:

What exact command produced that error and which mount.vboxsf did you remove?
The one in /usr/bin or the one in /usr/lib/virtualbox/mount.vboxsf?
Also: "pacman -Qs virtualbox"

I removed /usr/bin/mount.vboxsf

Is that why it didn't work?  Seems problematic that there are 2 of these on the system.

As for the exact command, the simplest way to trigger this message is to use the VirtualBox GUI to add a shared folder.  Immediately upon clicking [OK] this message appears on the console twice:

[96631.550249] vboxsf: Old binary mount data not supported, remove obsolete mount.vboxsf and/or update your VBoxService.

If you create the share when the Arch VM is off, the messages appear during the boot process.  In either case, nothing is actually mounted (in case this wasn't clear).

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#6 2019-02-01 13:47:49

pgoetz
Member
From: Austin, Texas
Registered: 2014-02-21
Posts: 341

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

kermit63 wrote:

I just set up NFS on both host and guest to get the same shared folder functionality.

I can do that (NFS is already set up on the host system), but it seems like overkill for most people.  Better for the simple QT GUI solution to work.  Thanks for the tip, though.

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#7 2019-02-01 13:50:10

pgoetz
Member
From: Austin, Texas
Registered: 2014-02-21
Posts: 341

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

xiaoliniess wrote:

As some one modified and merged vboxguest and vboxvideo into the linux kernel


Ugh.  Why?  That just seems like a pointless (and frankly dumb) thing to do; especially given how aggressively VirtualBox is updated all the time.  That explains what the VirtualBox guy was talking about, though -- thanks for that explanation!

Just took a look at the comments on https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/61307  -- did they not accept your proposed patch?  This seems like a good idea.

Last edited by pgoetz (2019-02-01 14:44:33)

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#8 2019-02-01 14:08:54

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,974

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

simplest way to trigger this message is to use the VirtualBox GUI

It's probably also the cause for the problem as it will most likely invoke /usr/lib/virtualbox/mount.vboxsf directly, /usr/bin/mount.vboxsf should be a script and dynamically invoke /usr/bin/mount on newer kernels.
Can you mount the share directly (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vi … l_mounting)?

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#9 2019-02-01 15:18:05

pgoetz
Member
From: Austin, Texas
Registered: 2014-02-21
Posts: 341

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

seth wrote:

Can you mount the share directly (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vi … l_mounting)?

So that works.  I was confused by what was meant by shared_folder_name and only just now realized this refers to the name assigned by the hypervisor.  I'm going to add a comment to the wiki page in case this is confusing other people to.  The share name is pgoetz  (my home dir on the host):

mount -t vboxsf pgoetz /home/share/pgoetz

mounts the share.  I tried the automount via /etc/fstab solution:

pgoetz  /home/share/pgoetz  vboxsf  uid=1000,gid=1000,rw,dmode=700,fmode=600,noauto,x-systemd.automount

and that works perfectly as well.  I still get the error messages on boot, but at least I can access the share folder from the virtual machine, which is what matters.

Thanks for your help this.  I'm going to mark this as solved, since the functionality I'm looking for has been achieved.

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#10 2019-02-01 15:25:41

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,974

Re: SOLVED: Arch client in VirtualBox can't mount: obsolete mount.vboxsf?

The boot message is likely from some service that invokes /usr/lib/virtualbox/mount.vboxsf directly.

systemctl list-unit-files --state=enabled

inspect the ones w/ a suspicious name.

To work around the GUI, you might have to indirect /usr/lib/virtualbox/mount.vboxsf as well and replace/symlink it w/ /usr/bin/mount.vboxsf and have that conditionally call eg. /usr/lib/virtualbox/mount.vboxsf.bin instead.

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