Trying to Install GuestAdditions on Virualbox using Oracle Enterprise Linux Update 5

[capslocked]

Hi,

I am trying to install guest additions on Oracle Enterprise Linux Update 5.
Whenever I try to the run VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run script I get the following problem:

erifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 2.0.0 Guest Additions for Linux installation.....
VirtualBox 3.0.6 Guest Additions installation
Please install the build and header files for your current Linux kernel.
The current kernel version is 2.6.18-164.el5PAE
Problems were found which would prevent the Guest Additions from installing.
Please correct these problems and try again.

I also tried yum install using the following commands without any luck:

yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers-`uname -r`

Following are the package information of my kernel-devel and headers:

> rpm -q kernel-devel
kernel-devel-2.6.18-164.el5

> rpm -q kernel-headers
kernel-headers-2.6.18-164.el5

I have been spending a couple of hours already on how to fix this but I still couldnt get to install this. Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks.

[reed9]

What is the output of uname -r?

The installer thinks your kernel is 2.6.18-164.el5PAE, but you're kernel-devel and headers are for 2.6.18-164.el5.

[capslocked]

Hi reed9,

Thank you for your reply.

My uname -r output is 2.6.18-164.elPAE

I have also tried yum remove on both the kernel-devel and kernel-headers and reintalled them back using the ones that came with the installer DVD but no luck..

[Rubberman]

You need to install the correct kernel devel package (contains the headers) with yum, your el5 package manager.

[capslocked]

Hi Rubberman,

I can seem to find 2.6.18-164.el5PAE on my install disk. I can only see kernel-devel.2.6.18-164.el5.i686.rpm.

Do you know how I can change the uname -r so that it would look for the kernel-devel that I have instead?

Thanks.

[Rubberman]

I don't know about Oracle's version of el5. I am running CentOS which is also a version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As far as I know, the PAE refers to the Physical Address Extension which allows 32-bit systems to support more than 4GB of memory, although each process is still limited to that amount. I was under the impression that the 32-bit el5 kernels supported it if the CPU also does and that feature is enabled in the BIOS. I don't see a PAE designation for any CentOS or RHEL kernel in the standard repositories. I would suggest that you check on the Oracle web site, or contact them about this issue. Alternatively, install the standard kernel and enable PAE in your BIOS if you have more than 4GB of memory on your system and need to use it. Then see if you can access that additional memory, probably by running some test processes that allocate a big chunck of memory each (say about 2GB). If you run more than 2 of those test processes, and they can each allocate that memory, then you know that you have access to the PAE features of the chip. The alternative is, if you are running a current processor that has the x86_64/AMT64 features, to run an x86_64 kernel instead. The latter is the preferable method to utilize all the memory modern systems can support.

[capslocked]

Thanks Rubberman for your useful information.

I will raise this issue to oracle and will post the resolution here whenever I have resolved my issue.

[capslocked]

Hi,

Just fixed my issue. The problem was that I have installed 2 devel header versions on my EL in my virtualbox. I just need to uninstall both and reinstall the correct devel-header version with PAE version.

Thanks again for all your help.