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    Sun, 15 Jan 2012

    /Admin/virtualization/virtualBox: Debian Host and Guest

    At least on Debian, there is one thing that is constantly breaking in my VirtualBox (VB) installation: missing kernel headers. The symptom is, that after a new kernel comes in, VB suddenly will not work any longer. It seems particulary insidious on the guest Debian OS, because "all" that stops working are certain conveniences, like (what I was just sorely missing) the ability to copy and paste between host and guest OS. I found it very easy to assume that something was just broken, when in fact all that was missing was the kernel headers package.

    So once and for all, here is the drill for getting VB working properly on both host and guest....

    On the host, this is the list of modules I have installed: 

    virtualbox
virtualbox-dkms
virtualbox-guest-additions
virtualbox-guest-additions-iso
virtualbox-ose
virtualbox-ose-dkms
virtualbox-ose-qt
virtualbox-ose-source
virtualbox-qt
virtualbox-source

    On the host, if VB is not working and

    modprobe vboxdrv

    does not find your VB kernel driver, ie.

    FATAL: Module vboxdrv not found.

    you are almost certainly missing headers, ie. there should be a headers package installed that exactly matches your current kernel:

    linux-image-3.1.0-1-686-pae
    linux-headers-3.1.0-1-686-pae

    Install it and all should be well. On the Debian guest OS, things are only slightly different. Here are my current VB modules on the guest: 

    virtualbox-guest-dkms
virtualbox-guest-source
virtualbox-guest-utils
virtualbox-guest-x11
virtualbox-ose-guest-source
virtualbox-ose-guest-utils
virtualbox-ose-guest-x11

    if you cannot copy and paste between host and guest (my recent symptom) and the vboxguest kernel module is missing, same drill: install your headers. Then:

    /etc/init.d/virtualbox-guest-utils start

    and now 

    # ps -ef | grep -i vbox
clayton     1641     1  0 18:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
clayton     1650     1  0 18:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --display
clayton     1655     1  0 18:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --seamless

    you can see all the things that were not working perfectly before. ("Clipboard" being the shared clipboard whose absence meant my copying and pasting was not working.)

    One final tweak to get sound working on the guest OS:

    apt-get install pulseaudio pavucontrol

    Then start pavucontrol, and in the output section, turn off the mute button. (I did try installing a couple of simpler mixers to see what was going on, but they would not even start for some reason. And in any case, in my experience, pulseaudio works well and I do not mind having it around.)

    posted at: 07:10 | path: /Admin/virtualization/virtualBox | permanent link to this entry