It's Really Sad Virtual Box on CentOS

Hi,

I'm writing's this issue as a Linux enthusiast who faced really annoyed situation while installing the latest Virtualbox distribution for CentOS 6.3 64 bit version :(

I tried to install the 4.2.4 x86 version. Got the following error during installation

Code:

---

root@xw4400 Downloads]# rpm -ivh VirtualBox-4.2-4.2.4_81684_el6-1.i686.rpm
warning: VirtualBox-4.2-4.2.4_81684_el6-1.i686.rpm: Header V4 DSA/SHA1
Signature, key ID 98ab5139: NOKEY
Preparing...                ###########################################
[100%]
  1:VirtualBox-4.2        ###########################################
[100%]

Creating group 'vboxusers'. VM users must be member of that group!

No precompiled module for this kernel found -- trying to build one. Messages
emitted during module compilation will be logged to
/var/log/vbox-install.log.

Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules [  OK  ]
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel modules [FAILED]
  (Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong)
[root@xw4400 Downloads]#

---

when I try to run Virtualbox I can see the following error

Code:

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amitha@xw4400 ~]$ virtualbox
WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
        available for the current kernel (2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64) or it
failed to
        load. Please recompile the kernel module and install it by

          sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

        You will not be able to start VMs until this problem is fixed.
Qt WARNING: QGtkStyle was unable to detect the current GTK+ theme.

---

Since there is a time limitation I reluctantly installed Virtualbox in the same PC installing Windows 7

I tried

Code:

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KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`-`uname -m`

export KERN_DIR

---

to get the thing work but it failed. I'm very sad about an Open Source software making troubles in installing in a Open Source platform while it runs on a propitiatory OS without any issue :?:?

CentOS is not designed to be a desktop distro, per se.

It's a Community Enterprise Operating System. Thus, stability is the primary concern. CentOS tries to make their distro compatible with RHEL upstream sources, so if RHEL didn't include a specific kernel module, you can expect the same from CentOS.

Consider switching to a desktop oriented distro such as Fedora or Debian and you shouldn't have any issues.

On another note, CentOS 64 bit supports KVM/QEMU, which IMO is superior to virtual box. Consider using that software instead if you must use CentOS.

There are no issues with installing CentOS 6.3 with VirtualBox, but DO NOT USE rpm directly! Use yum instead. It deals with all of this sort of cruft. IE: use yum to install VBox on your system. My operations staff uses RPM to install stuff on our production servers, but personally it is an anachronism. It doesn't deal with dependencies like you are experiencing. Yum deals with that cruft much better!

FWIW, I have installed VirtualBox on CentOS 5.x, 6.x systems, as well as RHEL 6, and Scientific Linux 6 (an RHEL 6 clone). No problems, EVER. But then, I always have used YUM to install it...

Did you bother installing build software and compiling the kernel modules?

Code:

---

$ sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
$ KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/your_running_kernel
$ export KERN_DIR
$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

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You may have an additional problem judging from Qt WARNING: error

Open source software is free but no one said it's easy. If you want easy then stick with Microsoft.

Read much? If you paid attention to the erorr messages and acted on them you would have had VirtualBox up and running shortly thereafter. CentOS is not at fault.

Dear Rubberman,

Thank you for your advice. followed yum, it installed without any issue. Many Thanks!!!

dear glennzo you are correct, I should have refer more articles in the net before posting this. But the limited time that I had given was the problem :( since I'm a Linux buddy my first choice was Open Source. I installed this in Ubuntu desktop without any issue previously. But this is the first time, I installed Virtualbox in CentOS in a hurry.

Thank you all for your advice and comments !! :)

Glad to help! I'll be offline from the 18th until the end of the year, so I'll let my colleagues here help you deal with other issues... :-)

After Following http://http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos...ion/VirtualBox link was able to geth the thing worked ;)

Thanks

Amitha