In summary (for the benefit of anyone else who comes across these issues), if you get the VERR_VM_DRIVER_VERSION_MISMATCH error yet your kernel driver and !VirtualBox userland version are the same, but you're running a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit userspace, create a 64-bit chroot environment: {{{ sudo debootstrap --arch amd64 sid /var/64 ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian }}} Configure it: {{{ sudo ln /etc/hostname /var/64/etc/hostname sudo ln /etc/environment /var/64/etc/environment sudo ln /etc/passwd /var/64/etc/passwd sudo ln /etc/group /var/64/etc/group sudo ln /etc/shadow /var/64/etc/shadow sudo ln /etc/sudoers /var/64/etc/sudoers sudo ln /etc/localtime /var/64/etc/localtime sudo ln /etc/timezone /var/64/etc/timezone sudo ln /etc/resolv.conf /var/64/etc/resolv.conf sudo ln /etc/apt/sources.list /var/64/etc/apt/sources.list }}} Ensure various stuff is bound to the chroot environment; for this, add lines to your /etc/fstab: {{{ /sys /var/64/sys none bind 0 0 /proc /var/64/proc none bind 0 0 /dev /var/64/dev none bind 0 0 /home /var/64/home none bind 0 0 /tmp /var/64/tmp none bind 0 0 /var/tmp /var/64/var/tmp none bind 0 0 /usr/src /var/64/usr/src none bind 0 0 /lib/modules /var/64/lib/modules none bind 0 0 }}} Then mount them: {{{ for i in /var/64/{sys,proc,dev,home,tmp,var/tmp,usr/src,lib/modules}; do sudo mount $i; done }}} chroot into the environment: {{{ sudo chroot /var/64 su - ${LOGNAME} }}} Set up the environment so you can launch X applications: {{{ export XAUTHORITY=${HOME}/.Xauthority DISPLAY=:0 }}} Install !VirtualBox (I'm presuming you've already built modules outside of the chroot environment using m-a auto-install virtualbox-ose, which will pull virtualbox-ose-source out of apt and build the modules for you): {{{ sudo touch /etc/init.d/udev sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose }}} Add yourself to the vboxusers group and load the driver: {{{ sudo adduser ${LOGNAME} vboxusers sudo modprobe vboxdrv }}} Create a symbolic link from ${HOME}/.!VirtualBox to ~root/.!VirtualBox: {{{ sudo ln -s ${HOME}/.VirtualBox ~root/.VirtualBox }}} For bridged networking, create two scripts that will be used to bring up and down the TAP interfaces and install brctl: {{{ sudo apt-get install uml-utilities bridge-utils cat > vbox-ifup.sh < vbox-ifdown.sh <