Question regarding status of upstream vboxguest module

[Jan Palus]

Not really sure what's the best place to ask such question but I hope someone here will know the answer.

I've just tried vboxguest module shipped with 4.16 kernel in a guest running both under VirtualBox 5.2.8 (Windows) and VirtualBox 5.2.10 (Linux). Every time it ends up the same:

vbg_status_code_to_errno: Unhandled err -1
vboxguest: probe of 0000:00:04.0 failed with error -71

followed by unknown symbols from vboxsf:

vboxsf: Unknown symbol VBoxGuest_RTMemTmpFree (err 0)
...

From what I've gathered so far vboxsf is not expected to work until it's mainlined as well. However my primary question is whether mainlined vboxguest is expected to work now? Or maybe not ready for prime time yet?

[Michael Thayer]

I am trying to work out from the description what you are actually trying to do (attaching a log file would be good too). I see two things which might be what you are asking. It looks like the in-kernel module might be having problems with our device. And it looks like you might be trying to mix and match in-kernel and out-of-kernel modules, which is not expected to work. An error like you are reporting would be reasonable (though should probably, with a rather low priority, be fixed) in dmesg after you installed our modules but before you restarted the guest. After you restart the guest our vboxguest module should be loaded and things should work.

If you are indeed trying to mix and match as I described, you might also want to see if vboxguest has problems without the out-of-tree modules. It might make more sense to report problems directly to the maintainers and on vbox-dev though. (I think I am listed as one of the maintainers.)

[ttorcz]

It happens on vanilla Fedora 28 with 4.16.6-300.fc28.x86_64 kernel. What kind of logs you need? Currently all that happens is modprobe vboxguest causing:

[ 1760.224921] vbg_status_code_to_errno: Unhandled err -1
[ 1760.225881] vboxguest: probe of 0000:00:04.0 failed with error -71

in dmesg, and none of the integrations (shared clipboard, OpenGL, shared folders with ​https://github.com/jwrdegoede/vboxsf/ compiled) does not work

[Michael Thayer]

For a start, could you please describe what you actually did to produce that error message? Did you try to install the Guest Additions which came with VirtualBox, or are you only using the Fedora ones? If just the Fedora ones then you should probably ask Fedora first (someone has probably already done that, so try finding them). And the log file you should attach is the log file of the virtual machine you created, after the message has occurred.

[PiotrAF]

This is happens when the kernel module vboxguest.ko is loaded either on boot or manually. The widely advertised 'new feature' of latest Fedora 28 simply doesn't work neither on installed anaconda packages nor after 'dnf update' with new kernel and new virtualbox-guest-additions-5.2.10-1.fc28.x86_64. i.e.

systemctl --failed
UNIT                LOAD   ACTIVE SUB    DESCRIPTION              
● vboxservice.service loaded failed failed VirtualBox guest services
lsmod|grep vbox
vboxguest              40960  0
vboxvideo              45056  3
drm_kms_helper        200704  1 vboxvideo
ttm                   126976  1 vboxvideo
drm                   454656  6 vboxvideo,ttm,drm_kms_helper

[Michael Thayer]

If you think this is a Fedora-specific issue then you can file a bug-report there: ​https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora Component: virtualbox-guest-additions If you want to test whether or not this is a Fedora-specific issue, try removing all Fedora Guest-Additions packages and installing the Additions which come with VirtualBox.