no floppy on Debian 4.0 hosts (W2K as guest OS) - or for root only?

[oz42]

First, /dev/fd0 was not found by Virtualbox so I had to start "modprobe floppy" as superuser. This means that VB does not provide all features without root password.

Anyway, it did not help. After the modprobe /dev/fd0 was available, but not usable:

Cannot open host device '/dev/fd0' for read/write access. Check the permissions of that device ('/bin/ls -l /dev/fd0'): Most probably you need to be member of the device group. Make sure that you logout/login after changing the group settings of the current user. VBox status code: -38 (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).

But everything is ok here:

$ id uid=1000(olaf) gid=100(users) groups=6(disk),24(cdrom),25(floppy),100(users),114(vboxusers)

$ l /dev/fd0 brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 0 Apr 20 08:57 /dev/fd0

Yes, I logged out and in after having me put into the floppy group.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

But you didn't restart VBoxSVC (the daemon which coordinates VM configuration and so on). VirtualBox asks that process to launch a new VM (and the new process inherits its group settings from the process which hasn't been in the group). A fix for that is already in the works (terminating it after a few seconds of inactivity). For now you need to stop that daemon process with "VirtualBox shutdown". It will be started again automatically when needed.

[oz42]

I started "VirtualBox shutdown" and then "VirtualBox". Now I get "failed to initialize COM..." :-(

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Is there a VBoxSVC process running? If not, please attach ~/.VirtualBox/VBoxSVC.log. There might be some useful message in there why it couldn't be started successfully.

[oz42]

VBoxSVC is not running. The log file:

olaf@ridcully:~/.VirtualBox$ cat VBoxSVC.log * InnoTek VirtualBox XPCOM Server Version 1.3.8 (C) 2004-2007 InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH All rights reserved.

Starting event loop.... [send TERM signal to quit] Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Informational: VirtualBox object created (rc=00000000). Informational: VirtualBox object deleted. Terminated event loop. XPCOM server has shutdown.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

This means that VBoxSVC hasn't been started again after shutting it down. The log file is opened by the VBox.sh script which is behind all the VirtualBox commands. Do you run the commands directly from /opt/VirtualBox-1.3.8? Because that won't start VBoxSDL.

[oz42]

I started VB with the command /opt/VirtualBox-1.3.8/VirtualBox. I tried the command VirtualBox without a path now, and it works.