Specify kernel source locations on dkms?

[kpbotbot]

Okay, so I'm having an extremely hard time getting VirtualBox to work. Everything went smoothly during the installation, but when I try to run my VM, it gives me an error like this.

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

'/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup'

as root. Users of Ubuntu, Fedora or Mandriva should install the DKMS package first. This package keeps track of Linux kernel changes and recompiles the vboxdrv kernel module if necessary.

and here's the output of the log file after issuing the command found above.:

Attempting to install using DKMS
  removing old DKMS module vboxdrv version  3.2.4

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 3.2.4
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.

Creating symlink /var/lib/dkms/vboxdrv/3.2.4/source ->
                 /usr/src/vboxdrv-3.2.4

DKMS: add Completed.

Error! Your kernel source for kernel 2.6.33.5-124.fc13.i686.PAE cannot be found at
/lib/modules/2.6.33.5-124.fc13.i686.PAE/build or /lib/modules/2.6.33.5-124.fc13.i686.PAE/source.
You can use the --kernelsourcedir option to tell DKMS where it's located.
Failed to install using DKMS, attempting to install without
Makefile:159: *** Error: unable to find the sources of your current Linux kernel. Specify KERN_DIR=<directory> and run Make again.  Stop.

how in the world do i specify the kernel source dir? i do know that my f13 kernel source is at /usr/src/kernels.

so, how do i tell dkms it's there?

[Rubberman]

dkms looks for sources (headers and such) in /usr/src/kernels/kernel-name where kernel-name is what is returned by the command uname -r. Normally, /usr/src/linux is a soft link to that directory, however if you have installed a new kernel, but are not using it yet, then that link will be incorrect for your current environment. That said, the most likely thing is that you have not installed the packages kernel-devel and kernel-headers yet.

Finally, how are you trying to install VirtualBox? Normally, I just uninstall the old package with yum and install the new rpm with yum install package-name.rpm where package-name.rpm is the name of the VirtualBox rpm file. Yum will deal with missing dependencies for you, normally. In any case, I have never had an issue with installing VirtualBox.

[kpbotbot]

I installed VirtualBox by going to the downloads section since I can't seem to find it in the repos, which I sorta kinda messed up when I added a bunch of other repos.

Anyway, I just got this solved. I didn't notice that GRUB had multiple options, so I just loaded the one without the ".PAE" at the end and VirtualBox works perfectly.

And also, I tried installing the kernel-related stuff which I found needed in the VirtualBox setup.

It works perfectly now. I just have to avoid using the new kernel. And I also have to avoid adding test repositories and stuff.

To answer the last questions:

- I normally, and as much as possible, install stuff with yum.
- I tried to install those kernel-devel and kernel-headers stuff. There were 4 of them that was listed on some forum. 1 cant be found in the repos. Can't seem to remember.

But anyway, thanks. I might need this in the future when F13 installs a new kernel or some sort

[Rubberman]

There is no repository entry for the VirtualBox package. You have to download the RPM from Oracle and install it with Yum. That deals with the dependencies, although you do need the kernel-devel and kernel-headers packages installed. You should NOT have had to do anything else but run Yum. Also, the dkms system is what allows you to change kernels and it will intelligently rebuild the kernel modules when you do. So, updating the kernel (as well as kernel-devel and kernel-headers) and rebooting into the new kernel will result in a new VirtualBox kernel module being automatically built and installed for you without doing anything at all. FWIW, you can thank Dell Computers for dkms - a nice piece of work, in my opinion.

[kpbotbot]

you can thank Dell Computers for dkms - a nice piece of work, in my opinion.

They do support Linux, right? My sister's Dell Laptop came with an Ubuntu DVD, but they decided to install Win7 on it.

Anyway, thanks for the help, and for the information about these stuff. Shedding light on some problem or some thing is way better than fixing it without knowing anything.

Btw, this can be marked as solved now

And yes, I know there's no VBox entry in the repos. I just downloaded the rpm from their website

However, I do have a question. The "latest" kernel I have in my F13 system has a .PAE extension in the last part. That kernel caused the VirtualBox problem. What happened here? I researched and that it was just a feature that would allow x86 systems to see more than 4 gb of ram.

Is there something I can do here?

[Rubberman]

The PAE stands for Physical Address Extension. It is a processor extension that allows a supporting 32-bit operating system to use more than 4GB of physical memory, although each process is still limited to 3-4GB of RAM. As long as you are using a 32-bit version of VirtualBox, it won't care whether or not the PAE is there, although you will be able to run more virtual machines if you have the memory than you would have otherwise.

If you don't have more than 4GB of RAM in your system, enabling PAE in the BIOS or operating system will do no good, but it won't do any harm either...