How to correct virtualbox installation

footy picture footy · Nov 8, 2012 · Viewed 56.1k times · Source

Here is how the error output is if I run virtualbox from the terminal. How to correct it? I am on a Ubuntu 12.10 64bit machine.

virtualbox
WARNING: The character device /dev/vboxdrv does not exist.
     Please install the virtualbox-ose-dkms package and the appropriate
     headers, most likely linux-headers-generic.

     You will not be able to start VMs until this problem is fixed.

EDIT:

I have both the latest linux-headers-generic and virtualbox-ose-dkms packages

Answer

Mike Ruelle picture Mike Ruelle · Nov 14, 2012

Before attempting to run this be sure that the current running Kernel headers are installed on your system. If you don't you will receive an error indicating that you need to install them or use the --kernelsource option to point to said headers.

Following the directions on this blog post helped me. Basically after you install those two packages you also need to do the reconfiguration:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-dkms

sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox