Mailing List Archive

Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox
Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer works. This
is to be expected, of course, BUT ...

How do I fix it !!!

What I always did on my old system was to re-emerge the modules.

The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".

Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".

What else can I do?

Cheers,
Wol
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On Saturday, 27 November 2021 12:29:10 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer works. This
> is to be expected, of course, BUT ...
>
> How do I fix it !!!
>
> What I always did on my old system was to re-emerge the modules.
>
> The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
>
> Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
>
> What else can I do?

You could try 'emerge @x11-module-rebuild'.

--
Regards,
Peter.
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On 27/11/2021 12:41, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Saturday, 27 November 2021 12:29:10 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
>> Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer works. This
>> is to be expected, of course, BUT ...
>>
>> How do I fix it !!!
>>
>> What I always did on my old system was to re-emerge the modules.
>>
>> The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
>>
>> Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
>>
>> What else can I do?
>
> You could try 'emerge @x11-module-rebuild'.
>
Same result - nothing to rebuild :-(

Cheers,
Wol
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
I’d recommend emerging Virtualbox again. It should just work with emerge
@module-rebuild unless Virtualbox isn’t compatible with the newer version
of kernel.

On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 8:00 AM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:

> On 27/11/2021 12:41, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Saturday, 27 November 2021 12:29:10 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> >> Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer works. This
> >> is to be expected, of course, BUT ...
> >>
> >> How do I fix it !!!
> >>
> >> What I always did on my old system was to re-emerge the modules.
> >>
> >> The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
> >>
> >> Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
> >>
> >> What else can I do?
> >
> > You could try 'emerge @x11-module-rebuild'.
> >
> Same result - nothing to rebuild :-(
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On Saturday, 27 November 2021 12:59:49 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> On 27/11/2021 12:41, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Saturday, 27 November 2021 12:29:10 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> >> Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer works. This
> >> is to be expected, of course, BUT ...
> >>
> >> How do I fix it !!!
> >>
> >> What I always did on my old system was to re-emerge the modules.
> >>
> >> The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
> >>
> >> Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
> >>
> >> What else can I do?
> >
> > You could try 'emerge @x11-module-rebuild'.
>
> Same result - nothing to rebuild :-(
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

It may be worth mentioning ... I've noticed my MSWindows VirtualBox VMs are
malfunctioning when I launch them from within Plasma Wayland. I can login,
but then lose the ability to click on anything or interact with the Windows
desktop. Things work fine when I run them within Plasma in Xorg instead of
Wayland.
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On 27/11/2021 13:03, Jeremy Hendricks wrote:
> I’d recommend emerging Virtualbox again. It should just work with emerge
> @module-rebuild unless Virtualbox isn’t compatible with the newer
> version of kernel.

HOW !?!?

The problem is that they are already installed, so any attempt to emerge
them fails with "nothing to emerge".

Unless I do an "emerge -C", but that of course will then break the old
kernel (assuming I might want to go back to it ...)

Cheers,
Wol
>
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 8:00 AM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk
> <mailto:antlists@youngman.org.uk>> wrote:
>
> On 27/11/2021 12:41, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Saturday, 27 November 2021 12:29:10 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> >> Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer
> works. This
> >> is to be expected, of course, BUT ...
> >>
> >> How do I fix it !!!
> >>
> >> What I always did on my old system was to re-emerge the modules.
> >>
> >> The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
> >>
> >> Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
> >>
> >> What else can I do?
> >
> > You could try 'emerge @x11-module-rebuild'.
> >
> Same result - nothing to rebuild :-(
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
I mean that as: just reinstall Virtualbox as a first troubleshooting step.
If that works, great. If it doesn’t, then that can be marked off the list
as something that was tried.

On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 8:21 AM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:

> On 27/11/2021 13:03, Jeremy Hendricks wrote:
> > I’d recommend emerging Virtualbox again. It should just work with emerge
> > @module-rebuild unless Virtualbox isn’t compatible with the newer
> > version of kernel.
>
> HOW !?!?
>
> The problem is that they are already installed, so any attempt to emerge
> them fails with "nothing to emerge".
>
> Unless I do an "emerge -C", but that of course will then break the old
> kernel (assuming I might want to go back to it ...)
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 8:00 AM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk
> > <mailto:antlists@youngman.org.uk>> wrote:
> >
> > On 27/11/2021 12:41, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > > On Saturday, 27 November 2021 12:29:10 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> > >> Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer
> > works. This
> > >> is to be expected, of course, BUT ...
> > >>
> > >> How do I fix it !!!
> > >>
> > >> What I always did on my old system was to re-emerge the modules.
> > >>
> > >> The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
> > >>
> > >> Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
> > >>
> > >> What else can I do?
> > >
> > > You could try 'emerge @x11-module-rebuild'.
> > >
> > Same result - nothing to rebuild :-(
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Wol
> >
>
>
>
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 7:29 AM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Simple problem, after a kernel upgrade, virtualbox no longer works. This
> is to be expected, of course, BUT ...
>

I can't offer any VirtualBox-specific solutions but I would try
reinstalling it as others have suggested (emerge -1
virtualbox-modules).

Some more general suggestions:

1. I use Virtualbox on Windows as there aren't a lot of good free
alternatives that I'm aware of. I stopped using it on Linux ages ago
because KVM/libvirt are generally much better these days.
app-emulation/virt-manager is a nice front-end for libvirt which will
be reminiscent of Virtualbox, but it uses the kernel's built-in KVM as
the engine and libvirt for management. You can use the nice gui of
course, but everything is also manageable via the command line and is
easily scriptable, or turned into services.

2. Anytime I'm using either out-of-kernel modules or more experimental
features in the kernel (zfs, nvidia binary drivers, btrfs, etc) I tend
to carefully control what kernel series I'm running. I pick an LTS
that is supported and stable for everything I'm doing, and stick with
it until the next LTS is stable and seems ok to me, and then I do some
testing before migrating. I just switched to 5.10 a few weeks ago.

In general you're unlikely to get regressions or issues with
out-of-tree drivers between minor releases (eg 5.10.81 to 5.10.82),
but depending on the software you can get them between major releases
(eg 5.4.162 to 5.10.82). Also, updates between minor releases tend to
be really trivial to build since the config files almost never change,
or at most a make oldconfig rarely gives you a single prompt to
answer.

Gentoo doesn't really manage kernel QA around out-of-tree modules.
Other distros will pick and choose - for example, if the distro wants
to support zfs as an option then it will only release stable kernels
that work with zfs. It is pretty easy though on Gentoo to just manage
your own kernel, so you don't have to worry about what out-of-tree
modules are/aren't supported officially. Of course you're still at
the mercy of upstream - if Nvidia doesn't want to release a driver for
your 20 year old GPU that works with a kernel that still gets security
updates then you're up the creek. That's just the price of using
out-of-tree modules.

This is just another reason to run KVM - everything it uses in kernel
space is built into the kernel, and basically "just works." The
userspace stuff doesn't care so much about kernel versions since the
syscall interface is stable.

--
Rich
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
>The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".

>Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".

Strange. try: emerge virtualbox-modules
That should be rebuild after everuy kernel upgrade and that happens normally with emerge @module-rebuild
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On 27/11/2021 22:15, Kees wrote:
> >The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
>
>
> >Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
>
>
> Strange. try: emerge virtualbox-modules
>
> That should be rebuild after everuy kernel upgrade and that happens
> normally with emerge @module-rebuild
>
"nothing to rebuild"

It always USED to work ...

Cheers,
Wol
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
quickpg the existing  modules then try the remove/reinstall fix. You can
then use "emerge -K =package" or even a manually reinstall (by coping
them over the newer ones) to replace the modules if things don't work out.

I would think in your case needing to keep kernel specific modules
around this would be an attractive task to script keeping matching
modules with a kernel and swapping them in and out as necessary.

BillK


On 28/11/21 08:11, Wols Lists wrote:
> On 27/11/2021 22:15, Kees wrote:
>>  >The docu says "emerge @module-rebuild".
>>
>>
>>  >Both of these terminate with "nothing to rebuild".
>>
>>
>> Strange. try: emerge virtualbox-modules
>>
>> That should be rebuild after everuy kernel upgrade and that happens
>> normally with emerge @module-rebuild
>>
> "nothing to rebuild"
>
> It always USED to work ...
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:11:57 +0000, Wols Lists wrote:

> > Strange. try: emerge virtualbox-modules
> >
> > That should be rebuild after everuy kernel upgrade and that happens
> > normally with emerge @module-rebuild
> >
> "nothing to rebuild"

emerge pkg should always emerge it, whether it is installed or not. Have
you added anything to EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS to alter this behaviour?


--
Neil Bothwick

"Fascinating," said Spock, watching Kirk's lousy acting.
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On 28/11/2021 07:50, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:11:57 +0000, Wols Lists wrote:
>
>>> Strange. try: emerge virtualbox-modules
>>>
>>> That should be rebuild after everuy kernel upgrade and that happens
>>> normally with emerge @module-rebuild
>>>
>> "nothing to rebuild"
>
> emerge pkg should always emerge it, whether it is installed or not. Have
> you added anything to EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS to alter this behaviour?
>
That *could* alter it, yes. That I think *would* alter it, no.

--buildpkg --deep --newuse --oneshot --usepkg


Comment that line out, and it works! I'll need to remember that.

Thanks. But why?

Cheers,
Wol
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On Sunday, 28 November 2021 08:53:07 GMT Wols Lists wrote:
> On 28/11/2021 07:50, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:11:57 +0000, Wols Lists wrote:
> >>> Strange. try: emerge virtualbox-modules
> >>>
> >>> That should be rebuild after everuy kernel upgrade and that happens
> >>> normally with emerge @module-rebuild
> >>
> >> "nothing to rebuild"
> >
> > emerge pkg should always emerge it, whether it is installed or not. Have
> > you added anything to EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS to alter this behaviour?
>
> That *could* alter it, yes. That I think *would* alter it, no.
>
> --buildpkg --deep --newuse --oneshot --usepkg
>
>
> Comment that line out, and it works! I'll need to remember that.
>
> Thanks. But why?
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

Because of "--newuse".
Re: Kernel upgrade breaks virtualbox [ In reply to ]
On Sun, 28 Nov 2021 10:03:59 +0000, Michael wrote:

> > > emerge pkg should always emerge it, whether it is installed or not.
> > > Have you added anything to EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS to alter this
> > > behaviour?
> >
> > That *could* alter it, yes. That I think *would* alter it, no.
> >
> > --buildpkg --deep --newuse --oneshot --usepkg
> >
> >
> > Comment that line out, and it works! I'll need to remember that.
> >
> Because of "--newuse".

--usepkg will also cause it to fail because it will re-emerge the files
for the previous kernel version.


--
Neil Bothwick

What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered
plant?