Error opening current controlling terminal for the process

[Harri]

Trying to install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.4-70112.vbox-extpack I got an error popup saying

Failed to install the Extension Pack /export/harri/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.4-70112.vbox-extpack.

The installer failed with exit code 127: Error creating textual authentication agent: Error opening current controlling terminal for the process (`/dev/tty'): No such device or address.

Details

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) Component: ExtPackManager Interface: IExtPackManager {2451b1ba-ab1c-42fb-b453-c58433bea8c7}

Of course I checked the access permissions to /dev/tty. Its readable and writable for everybody:

% ls -al /dev/tty crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 5, 0 Mar 2 06:04 /dev/tty

Please note that running Virtualbox as root is not an option.

[Frank Mehnert]

Yes, you should never run VBox as root. Therefore the GUI will try to find gksu, kdesudo or just xterm + su to get admin permissions for installing the extension pack. Could you check if some of these requirements are installed?

[Harri]

xterm and su are available, but obviously this didn't work. If I try "xterm -e su" on the command line, then a xterm opens, I am asked for the root password, and next I get the expected su session.

The bad part on this extension stuff is that it relies upon an XWindow application asking for the root password. Thats _very_ easy to attack, since the password key strokes are sent unencrypted to the server. XWindow wasn't made with security in mind.

My suggestion would be to provide the extensions as *.deb files, at least for Debian and Ubuntu. This would make sure that all files are under dpkg control, upgrades could be handled gracefully, and there would be no messing around with files to be downloaded separately, XWindow applications asking for root passwords, and so on. Virtualbox and its extensions could be installed/upgraded on the terminal, or unattended by a nightly update script. This would be very important for managing the Linux PCs in the office.

Many thanx

Harri

[Adam Spiers]

On Fedora 15 systems this can be caused by ​https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=699233

The workaround is simply to run /usr/libexec/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 manually before attempting to install the extension pack.

[nickzoic]

Confirmed today, on Ubuntu 11.10, using the oracle-distributed virtualbox-4.1 package

$ VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.1.8-75467.vbox-extpack 
0%...
Progress state: NS_ERROR_FAILURE
VBoxManage: error: Failed to install "/home/nick/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.1.8-75467.vbox-extpack": The installer failed with exit code 127: Error creating textual authentication agent: Error opening current controlling terminal for the process (`/dev/tty'): No such device or address

Comment 1 is correct, works fine once gksu is installed AND you actually set a root password. Previously, I always just used my own password, via sudo. I don't think the default Ubuntu install even sets a root password.

$ sudo apt-get install gksu
    [... etc ... it installs successfully ... ]

$ sudo passwd
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully

$ VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.1.8-75467.vbox-extpack 
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Successfully installed "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack".

Agree with comment 2, it would make more sense to wrap these extensions in .deb files as well, so they can be distributed/updated along with the rest.