Tag: virtual machine

Virtual Box Issue “Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)”

Alright, nothing like multi-OS environments so you can prepare for the maximum number of issues that might come up. My recent issue is re-opening some virtual machines, originally created on Windows 10, and now with intent to use them on Linux. When trying to open these existing virtual machines I’ve gotten the following error:

Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) is either not loaded or there is a permission problem with /dev/vboxdrv. Please reinstall the kernel module by executing

‘modprobe vboxdrv’

as root.

where: sublibOsInit what: 3 VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED (-1908) – The support driver is not installed. On linux, open returned ENOENT.

vbox-error1908
Error Screenshot on Ubuntu Linux

Upon researching I found this could occur on multiple operating systems really, and have included the fixes for the various platforms. First however, let’s talk about the Linux fix.

Linux

For this particular situation I tried the command given in the dialog modprobe vboxdrv to see if that would fix it. But no go. I got some additional errors that seemed nonsensical.

arg

At this point I dug into the search engine. The first post I found seemed to make sense. I tried the commands.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
sudo apt-get install build-essential module-assistant
sudo m-a prepare
[/sourcecode]

step1.png

That went well, so on to the next step of building the virtualbox kernel driver.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
[/sourcecode]

That gave me “sudo: /etc/init.d/vboxdrv: command not found“. So I did a find for the file.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
sudo find / -name “vboxdrv”
[/sourcecode]

The results pointed out that my install of Virtual Box, done via the Ubuntu App Store, was version 5.2.8. This is clearly not going to work out well because the latest version is 6.0.4 right now. Next I uninstalled this old version via the Ubuntu App Store Application.

step2.png

Next I navigated back out the Virtual Box Download page. There I downloaded the latest version and installed it via the downloadable Ubuntu *.deb file.

This installs Virtual Box through the Ubuntu App Store application but sets up the more up to date repository to get the installation from.

step3.png

Ok, so all this at this point I ran VirtualBox after the installation, it installed according to the standard directories this time but still didn’t work. What the hell, I’ve no idea. I did another search and found Øyvind Stegard’s blog entry on fixing the “VirtualBox + Secure Boot = Fail“. He states at the start of the blog entry,

“The problem is the requirement that all kernel modules must be signed by a key trusted by the UEFI system, otherwise loading will fail. Ubuntu does not sign the third party vbox* kernel modules, but rather gives the user the option to disable Secure Boot upon installation of the virtualbox package.”

Stegard then adds two very important links with pertinent information about this issue, I’ve reposted here too:

After going through Øyvind‘s steps, I finally got the previously specified command from above.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
[/sourcecode]

Now VirtualBox started up just fine. Finally. Ugh! But hey, in the process I now understand a little bit more about secure boot, current BIOS’s, and related hardware concerns. Not that I had set out or wanted to deal with this right now, but boom, it’s done!

Alright, but if you fall into this with MacOS, it’s a slightly different story. Here’s some fixes around that.

MacOS

Ok, I started writing up and searching as I wrote, and instead of continuing to write it looks like this blog entry popped up with the exact error I’d gotten in the past (the reason I wanted to included MacOS for future ref). If you’ve gotten this error, check out Xilin Sun‘s post Solving VirtualBox “Solving VirtualBox “kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)” Error on macOS“.

Docker Red Hat and Containerization Wreck Virtualization

Conversation has popped up around a few tweets Alex Williams regarding virtualization at the Red Hat Summit. One of the starts to the conversation.

https://twitter.com/alexwilliams/status/456134531821887489/

Paraphrased the discussion has been shaped around asking,

“Why is OS-level virtualization via containers (namely Docker) become such a massive hot topic?”

With that, it got me thinking about some of the shifts around containerization and virutalization at the OS level versus at the hyper-visor level. Here’s some of my thoughts, which seemed to match more than a few thoughts at Red Hat.

  1. Virtualization at the hyper-visor level is starting to die from an app usage level in favor of app deployment via OS-level virtualization. Virtualization at the OS level is dramatically more effective in almost every single scenario that virtualization is used today for application development. I’m *kind of* seeing this, interesting that RH is I suppose seeing this much more.
  2. Having a known and identified container such as what Docker works with provides a dramatically improved speed and method for deployment over traditional hyper-visor based virtualized or pure OS based deployment.

There are other points that have brought up but this also got me thinking on a slight side track, what are the big cloud providers doing now? Windows Azure, AWS, Rackspace or GCE, you name it and they’re all using a slightly different implementation of virtualized environments. Not always ideally efficient, fast or effective but they’re always working on them.

…well, random thoughts aside, I’m off to the next session and some hacking in between. Feel free to throw your thoughts into the fray on twitter or in the comments below.

New Relic, The King Makers, MS Open Tech, Riak VMs and Life Gets Easier Today

Today Microsoft released, with partnerships with a number of companies including Basho, Hupstream and Bitnami, the VM Depot. I’ve always followed Bitnami, so it’s really cool to see their VM releases for Jenkins (CI Build Server), WordPress, Ruby 1.9.3 stack, Node.js and about everything you can imagine out their along side our Basho Riak CentOS image. If you want a great way to get kick started with Riak and you’re setup with Windows Azure, now there is an even easier way to get rolling.

Over on the Basho blog we’ve announced the MS Open Tech and Basho Collabortation. I won’t repeat what was stated there, but want to point out two important things:

  1. Once you get a Riak image going, remember there’s the whole community and the Basho team itself that is there to help you get things rolling via the mail list. If you’re looking for answers, you’ll be able to get them there. Even if you get everything running smoothly, join in anyway and at least just lurk. 🙂
  2. The RTFM value factor is absolutely huge for Riak. Basho has a superb documentation site here. So definitely, when jumping into or researching Riak as software you may want to build on, use for your distributed systems or the Riak Key Value Databases, check out the documentation. Super easy to find things, super easy to read, and really easy to get going with.

So give Riak a try on Windows Azure via the VM Depot. It gets easier by the day, and gives you even more data storage options, distribution capabilities and high availability that is hard to imagine.

New Relic & The Rise of the New Kingmakers

In other news, my good friends at New Relic have released a new book in partnership with Redmonk Analyst Stephen O’Grady @, have released a book he’s written titled The New Kingmakers, How Developers Conquered the World. You may know New Relic as the huge developer advocates that they are with the great analytics tools they provide. Either way, give a look see and read the book. It’s not a giant thousand page tomb, so it just takes a nice lunch break and you’ll get the pleasure of flipping the pages of the book Stephen has put together. You might have read the blog entry that started the whole “Kingmakers” statement, if you haven’t, give that a read first.

I personally love the statement, and have used it a few times myself. In relation to the saying and the book, I’ll have a short review and more to say in the very near future. Until then…

Cheers, enjoy the read, the virtual images and happy hacking.