[SOLVED] Is it still possible to run virtualbox on debian? (2024)

[aario]

Hi Folks,
It's been long since I could install and run virtualbox on Debian. I know there is virtmanager. I know the license of Virtualbox is not perfect and ideal for opensource community. But somehow I want to have the option.
I tried installing from virtualbox repositories. It installs but it doesn't run any virtual machine because:

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Loading of module with unavailable key is rejected

I tried installing from debian fasttrack repositories but installation fails because:

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installed virtualbox-dkms package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 10

And:

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/var/lib/dkms/virtualbox/7.0.12/build/vboxdrv/r0drv/linux/memobj-r0drv-linux.c:1177:9: error: implicit declaration of function ‘p4d_large’; did you mean ‘p4d_page’? [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]
 1177 |     if (p4d_large(u.Four))
      |         ^~~~~~~~~
      |         p4d_page

I'm out of ideas right now. Any ideas is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Meow]

Bummer!
I took for granted that I could run VirtualBox on Debian.

This page says that Debian abandoned VirtualBox after Sid.

Is that really true?

Edit:
At least VMware simplified their license model, and its VMware Workstation Pro 17 is https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/20 ... l-use.html. So it is still possible to run virtual machines easily, even without VBox

[aario]

Yeah. That's true. Still. Any way to have virtualbox running on debian?

[arzgi]

virtualbox was once in the repos. As they refused to correct quite grave bug, it was dropped. I have said this many times, qemu is much more capable, would start learning that instead of how to get virtualbox to run.

[Meow]

virtualbox was once in the repos. As they refused to correct quite grave bug, it was dropped. I have said this many times, qemu is much more capable, would start learning that instead of how to get virtualbox to run.

Additionally with a software-made "processor", there are no difficulties moving a Windows virtual machine between different computers, without Windows complaining each time that the hardware has changed and it wants to be re-activated.

Thus, maybe this is the way to go

[arzgi]

To OP. virtualbox is quite outcast in the FOSS community, it is much easier to find examples of qemu. Debian wiki is a good resource for any Debian user, for exmaple https://wiki.debian.org/QEMU

[blackbird]

I have Virtualbox running on Debian 12 from the Virtualbox repository. It don't officially supports Wayland and also with X11 it don't runs very stable for me. So my plan is to switch to Virtmanager when I find the time to convert my VM.

Your first problem looks like you have secure boot enabled so the Virtualbox kernel modules can't be loaded since they are not signed.

[steve_v]

The first is a secureboot problem. The second is almost certainly a kernel version incompatibility.

Reports of VirtualBox demise are greatly exaggerated, I'm running it (from debian-fasttrack) currently, and it works as well as it ever did.

[aario]

I understand all the bad blood between oracle and us, the open source community. Now, let's get back to the topic.
I installed the deb package from virtualbox website. Then I followed this comment: https://stackoverflow.com/a/61248316 and signed the kernel module for virtualbox and that solved the problem. Thanks for all the replies.