[vbox-dev] dkms setup for virtualbox

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Sebastian,

On 15.07.2015 13:49, Sebastian Dransfeld wrote:
> Hi,
>
> When installing virtualbox on Ubuntu I have a small annoyance.
>
> If I install packages in this order:
> 1. new kernel
> 2. virtualbox
> with no reboot after installing the new kernel.
>
> Then virtualbox will use the current kernel (uname -r) to install the
> kernel modules for, not the newly installed kernel.

Right, and it should actually try to build the modules on the next boot, 
as it notices they're not there. Something seems to go wrong, and the 
usual cause is missing kernel module build environment packages. There's 
a log file which should give hints, /var/log/vbox-install.log.

> It seems that the virtualbox package maintaned by ubuntu/debian does not
> have this problem. The reason is that the use dh_dkms:
> http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/raring/man1/dh_dkms.1.html
> when installing the dkms modules. dh_dkms triggers:
> /usr/lib/dkms/common.postinst
> which searches for all installed kernels and installs the dkms modules
> for this.

Didn't look into the details, but VirtualBox supports DKMS for a long 
time if present, and lets it take care of kernel module building.

> Can someone please fix this? Or will you accept a patch to fix this problem?

There are so many requests to fix various things that we can't promise 
anything within the time frame which most users would find acceptable.

If there's a patch (see the contributions information on virtualbox.org 
for details) which improves the behavior without negative effects 
(especially for other distributions) we'll gladly review and integrate 
it. Contributions are always appreciated!

Klaus
>
> Best regards
> Sebastian Dransfeld