[vbox-dev] VBoxHeadless: Libgcrypt warning: missing initialization - please fix the application

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Hi John,

On 2021-08-18 03:15, John Lumby wrote:
> The subject warning is logged once in my syslog for every VBoxHeadless startvm that I run.
> I see it on two different systems  -  one running  6.1.20 from a distro,  other running  6.1.22   which I built from the OSE.
> On that 6.1.22 one,  My libgcrypt version is libgcrypt-1.9.3     --   lib is  libgcrypt.so.20.3.3

This smells like some distros have invented a way to use libgcrypt as 
the implementation for libcrypto. Possibly indirectly by using GnuTLS as 
an OpenSSL drop-in replacement through the gnutls-openssl library.

VirtualBox definitely doesn't use libgcrypt directly.

> Searching on the web shows numerous instances of the message "Libgcrypt warning: missing initialization - please fix the application"  but none of them indicate VBoxHeadless or any virtualbox connection.
> I have not attempted to debug this further and it is probably not too important as everything works,    but I wonder if anyone else has seen this.     On a quick glance at the virtualbox source I cant find any direct reference to or use of libgcrypt at all.

You're correct. There is no direct reference.

Which distribution do you use? Wonder if the distro or you are making 
any funny tricks to replace OpenSSL with GnuTLS? Because VirtualBox so 
far is tested with "the real deal" only. Anything else is uncharted 
territory.

Klaus

> Cheers,  John Lumby