#1082157 virtualbox: VM's no longer start after update in last few days on Stable and Sid

#1082157#5
Date:
2024-09-18 20:38:31 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

Hear are some errors that seem to be at play I had some similar issues on sid a
few months back and was able to fix somehow I can't figure out what it was I
did but the fixes I've tried have all fail this time and it fails on my stable
machine as well both running 12.7

"unable to enumerate usb devices"

"The virtual machine '*******' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with
exit code 1 (0x1).
Result Code:
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0X80004005)
Component:
MachineWrap
Interface:
IMachine {300763af-5d6b-46e6-aa96-273eac15538a}"

"The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver is either not loaded or not set up
correctly. Please reinstall virtualbox-dkms package and load the kernel module
by executing

'modprobe vboxdrv'

as root.

If your system has EFI Secure Boot enabled you may also need to sign the kernel
modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt, vboxnetadp, vboxpci) before you can load them.
Please see your Linux system's documentation for more information.

where: suplibOsInit what: 3 VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED (-1908) - The support
driver is not installed. On linux, open returned ENOENT."

running said comand dosn't fix the issue on any machine I try it on.

also /sbin/vboxconfig issue from seems to be at play as well as some lib issues
as far as I can tell could be more I'm not sure.

#1082157#10
Date:
2024-12-30 04:31:31 UTC
From:
To:
Hi, just like to chime in that I'm also affected by this bug. I upgraded
from Bookworm to Sid about a week ago, and virtualbox stopped working after
that point. I re-installed virtualbox through the package in Sid instead of
through Oracle's deb repo, and it still doesn't work.

the error I have is a bit different:
Result Code:

 I am running kernel 6.12.6-amd64, and my user is part of the vboxusers
group. This is my first time here on the bug tracker, so if anyone wants to
ask for more system specs info from me that could be useful, I'll do so; I
don't know exactly what info I should provide.

#1082157#15
Date:
2025-01-12 17:38:37 UTC
From:
To:
It's a problem with linux 6.12.x , also described in the virtualbox forum.

The workaround given on the forum is to start linux by appending
"kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0" to the command line.

#1082157#20
Date:
2025-01-31 12:42:40 UTC
From:
To:
I've added the following NEWs entry for the pending NMU, so user will
get the information what they need to do, so the severity of this bug
can be reduced, or (at the maintainers decission) this bug be closed.

virtualbox (7.0.20-dfsg-1.2) unstable; urgency=medium

  In kernel 6.12, KVM initializes virtualization on module loading by
default.
  This prevents VirtualBox VMs from starting. In order to avoid this,
either add
  "kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0" parameter into kernel command line or
unload
  the corresponding kvm_XXX module.

#1082157#29
Date:
2025-02-08 11:29:04 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

IMO, better solution would be to install file in /etc/modprobe.d with:

    options kvm     enable_virt_at_load=0

I don't like to modify GRUB config for that, it is prone to forget
about it and it will reside there even on virtualbox uninstall (ot when
become unneeded for any other reason).

I tried it and it works, while i must to reboot, but perhaps i didn't
unload all related modules (only kvm*).

I suggest to mention that file somewhere, first in NEWS file, but
README.Debian can be good place too, and of course add appropriate
comments into that file...

regards

#1082157#34
Date:
2025-08-31 18:36:12 UTC
From:
To:
It looks to me like this is fixed in the VirtualBox package in Sid:

    user@ks-build-d13:~$ apt-file find
    /usr/lib/modprobe.d/virtualbox-dkms.conf virtualbox-dkms:
    /usr/lib/modprobe.d/virtualbox-dkms.conf user@ks-build-d13:~$ cat
    /usr/lib/modprobe.d/virtualbox-dkms.conf #
    # In kernel 6.12, KVM initializes virtualization on module loading
    by # default. This prevents VirtualBox VMs from starting. In order
    to # avoid this, block loading kvm module by default.
    # (No need to do manually execute modprobe -r kvm_xxx and so on)
    # See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1082157
    #
    options kvm     enable_virt_at_load=0

I verified that I am able to launch a VirtualBox VM with the kvm and
kvm_intel modules loaded without adding any of my own modprobe or GRUB
configuration.

Should this bug be closed?