vboxclient the virtualbox kernel service is not running

[SirGreatNose]

This is the solution that worked for me:

I just purged virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-dkms and that solved the pop-up message.
Do this only if you're running mint natively i.e., not in a virtual box.

The command to do this is -

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sudo apt-get --purge autoremove virtualbox-guest-*

It should remove the 3 packages responsible for this problem. Don't forget to reboot.

Same problem here, and this is the only fix that I found. Thank you SOOOOOOOOOO much! ^_^

[krow7]

If I delete them, then Mint in the VM will not work properky, right? What can I then do?

You need them on your guest environment but not host.

On your host system you can purge these files with this -

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sudo apt-get --purge autoremove virtualbox-guest-*

Then reboot.

On your guest system you have 2 options -

• Do nothing. Its just a pop-up. (Your guest system should work if it did before.)
• If you dont want the pop-up in your guest system your can do the following:
  Remove the new packages. And install the old ones.

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  sudo apt-get --purge autoremove virtualbox-guest-* && sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-utils=4.3.10-dfsg-1 virtualbox-guest-x11=4.3.10-dfsg-1 virtualbox-guest-dkms=4.3.10-dfsg-1

  Do not update anything! And run this command. It will prevent these packages from updating to the broken version.

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  sudo apt-mark hold virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-dkms

  The above command should output something like this.

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  virtualbox-guest-utils set on hold.
  virtualbox-guest-x11 set on hold.
  virtualbox-guest-dkms set on hold.
  

  Reboot and check if everything works.

If you are not clear on something feel free to pm me.

[karlchen]

Hi, folks.

I guess we all can calm down and lay back relaxed, who receive the popup message "VBoxClient: the VirtualBox kernel service is not running. Exiting." after each login to our graphical desktop environments.
No new bug introduced. It works as designed.

Whoever has not started fiddling around in order to revert from virtualbox-guest-* packages 4.34 to virtualbox-guest-* packages 4.18 (e.g. me), don't do it. No need to fiddle around. No need to revert!
Whoever has started purging virtualbox-guest-* packages 4.34 just to get rid of the popup message: You have taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Hope you have not caused more severe trouble to your system than an annoying little popup.

To all of you who almost got a heart attack just because the update to virtualbox-guest-* packages 4.34 introduced a useless little popoup message, I repeat: No new bug introduced. It works as designed.

virtualbox-guest-x11 package 4.18
Holds a script 98vboxadd-xclient. It checks whether it is running inside a virtualbox. In case it is not it exits silently.

virtualbox-guest-x11 package 4.34
Holds a script 98vboxadd-xclient. It checks whether it is running inside a virtualbox. In case it is not it displays a popup message. Guess which one! Correct: "VBoxClient: the VirtualBox kernel service is not running. Exiting."
Lines 24-26 read:

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if test -f /proc/modules && ! grep -q vboxguest /proc/modules 2>/dev/null; then
   # Do not start if the kernel module is not present.
   notify-send "VBoxClient: the VirtualBox kernel service is not running.  Exiting."

That's the end of the storm in a tea-cup.
Have fun and enjoy life!
Karl
--
Guess I may mark this thread [solved] now!

[WharfRat]

Whoever has started purging virtualbox-guest-* packages 4.34 just to get rid of the popup message: You have taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Hope you have not caused more severe trouble to your system than an annoying little popup.

I confess, that was me

However, in my defense, if Mint is running natively those packages are not necessary therefore it won't cause any trouble.

I didn't mean to cause any confusion and I hope no one experienced any adverse effects from my actions.

And virtualbox 4.3.34 did segffault for me, I went back to 4.3.10 and it's back to normal. So for the time being I placed 4.3.34 on hold.

Cheers

[chrisonmint]

You have taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Hope you have not caused more severe trouble to your system than an annoying little popup.

No, more like a surgeon's blade:

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- Doctor, I seem to have a problem with my appendix
- Is it causing pain?
- No, but it is popping up every so often
- Well, you are'nt using it, why dont i just take it out?
- Ok, i suppose.  If you're sure...

packages 4.34 introduced a useless little popoup message, I repeat: No new bug introduced. It works as designed.

I disagree with you on this. I dont know whether most instances of Ubuntu/Mint etc are run virtually or not, but it was very short-sighted of the dev to introduce that error message everywhere. So unnecessary, causing lots of users concern (if no harm).

Rolling back and holding the packages is likely the safest option here, or going in and editing that file to exit silently once more.

Works as designed? No, bad design.

Definitely mark as [SOLVED] though. Its up to people on how aggressive they want to be on this "fix"...

[capivara]

To all of you who almost got a heart attack just because the update to virtualbox-guest-* packages 4.34 introduced a useless little popoup message, I repeat: No new bug introduced. It works as designed.

Useless = annoying. Actually, almost nothing annoys me more than useless popups. Feels like Windows behavior. Oh well, we can always edit that script to get rid of the verbose part.

Hans

[reddot]

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 7&t=115592

Hi, I've split your post from http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=105824 and moved it here.

If you are not running Linux Mint on a virtual machine inside VirtualBox, you can remove the VirtualBox guest additions. And note that if you are using VirtualBox on Linux Mint to host other operating systems on virtual machines, then also for that you don't need the VirtualBox guest additions installed. Guest additions you need to install on the guest operating system, and you can do so from VirtualBox's Devices menu when running a virtual machine.

To remove the VirtualBox guest additions, run the following command from a terminal:

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sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-guest-*

i had the same problem, just removed virtualbox-guest-* like some of the post here.

[Cosmo.]

No new bug introduced. It works as designed.

The question is, whether this is good news or bad news. I consider it as bad - concordant with others here.
Yes, it works as designed (following the explanation).
No, this design is bad or even stupid.
Why do the maintainers (of this and other packages) not introduce a whole company of messages, which entertain the user with some minutes of showing meaningless messages? Like: "You are logged in", "Your desktop has loaded", "Your computer is consuming power" or "You are now ready for launching the installed programs". All of them would be true and could be justified with "they show as designed".
The message system gets meaningless, if the user has at first to decide, whether shown messages are at all meaningful for him or if he should look aside. Such kind of messages are not worth to look at. The user does know and expect all this by himself. He also does know, that he is running a host system on a physical system; only this script doesn't seem to know anything about its environment. The only information this message does provide is the stupidity of the script.
But those kind of funny(?) messages are a good chance, that the user ignores in the future messages, which he really should obey. And because of this easily to expect bad consequence such a message may be technically not a bug, by design it is.

The number of users asking about something, what allegedly is only a harmless message is a proof, that the message has a side-effect. The user see something, what they never saw before and have no idea, why suddenly they get it. Normal reaction in such a situation is to believe, that something is wrong in the own system. It is abnormal to believe, that a user would think: Okay, they gave me an additional piece of entertainment.
It is remarkable to note, that it took nearly 48 hours (taken from the first post), until someone (karlchen in this case) found the origin of this kind of entertainment. Quite obviously this code-change, which creates the message "by design" is nothing, where the users - inclusive 3 of the most experienced users of this forum (xenopeek, WharfRat, karlchen) - can be expected to find the accurate explanation in the moment, they see the message.

Further more, there are still open questions:

Why do get one half of the LM 17 branch the packages from a different repo then the other half?
By design or mistake?

Not sure about that, because I do not have a Ubuntu-installation, but doing searches with different search expressions gives me the impression, that the message does probably not affect Ubuntu users. The only thing I was able to find is a launchpad-report by (guess what) a Mint-user. If this impression should be right, why does the message appear in Mint?

[karlchen]

Hi, folks.

It is questionable why Linux Mint by default ships with the virtual-guest-* software packages. Therefore removing them will not do any harm, in case you are running on bare metal.
It is questionable why someone introduced a popup notification into virtual-guest-x11, which merely tells you something which you should know, in case you are running on bare metal, and which does so in a way that most users will take it for an error message.
In fact, no bug, no malfuntion, everything works as it should, even the questionable popup message.
Nonetheless, (almost) everybody was terribly upset about a suspected bug and terribly keen on tearing down any wall just to get rid of this harmless popup message. This might be some mild form of mass hysteria.

Cheers,
Karl

[Fred Barclay]

I agree with the others (sorry, karlchen!) It may not be a technical bug, but it's annoying and essentially useless--a bug for all practical purposes. It's been annoying me for months now! (VBox 5 series here.)

[karlchen]

Hi, folks.

It is not my task and not my goal to defend the decision to insert the commandline

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notify-send "VBoxClient: the VirtualBox kernel service is not running.  Exiting." 

into the script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/98vboxadd-xclient.
The message is very likely to make users believe that an error occurred, although this is not true, in case your Mint runs on bare metal. Therefore it should not be displayed in this case.

But now that everybody can find this thread this popup message could simply be ignored as a minor annoyance.

Everybody is free to create a Launchpad request to change the script and disable the popup.

Oh, yes, before I forget:
krow7 had explained ways of getting rid of the popup notification in a very detailled way in his post above.

Cheers,
Karl

[Fred Barclay]

Sticky? Or at least an announcement might be nice.

[White Phoenix]

I never had Virtual Box installed. I checked for any references to vbox, virtual and virtualbox in the start up programs and Package Manager. Nothing marked Vbox or Virtualbox is installed, including this “virtual box guest”. I do have VMware Player installed, but that is a different virtual machine and is not set to start at boot up.

I don’t want Vbox installed, so how do I make Linux quit trying to start it up?

I completely agree with Cosmo. To do this then not correct the problem with the excuse that it is not a problem and can be safely ignored is unprofessional.

This is the kind of behavior that drove me from Microsoft to Linux. I thought Linux developers were better than that.

Using the purge command in terminal did not work. The pop up persists.

[reddot]

virtualbox has no spaces, to remove it use command below, there is a workaround if you like to keep it look inside this thread.

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sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-guest-*

[karlchen]

Sticky? Or at least an announcement might be nice.

Thread made sticky.

[aljoriz]

Thank goodness I was about to go bonkers. I love the support of the linux mint team.

[Icarus149]

Just want to say "thank you" to everyone involved helping to clarify the situation.

I also got this message this morning and thought to myself "oh no, this will take 1-2 h to fix" ... did a quick search on the forum and found this thread. Now I can focus on my work again, I will just ignore the message and wait for the mint team to fix it

[eladhen]

I'm with the party who see this as a bad bug. Linux Mint is great partly because it's geared toward "average users" (like myself!). An average user is not supposed to know the mysterious message that suddenly appeared is harmless, and this is something that needs to be fixed. I understand that virtualbox-guest-additions is included to make the out-of-the-box experience for the people running mint in a virtual machine better, but this should not be at the expense of native users.

[Fred60]

Got the same message after one of the latest updates. At first it panicked me and after noting that nothing bad followed it, I was wondering why it was even displayed in the first place. After having done a search I found posts by the developer saying, he designed it that way. What a stupid answer, to something that has caused widespread panic among users. Why not just put out a fix to the code to not display the message. I've run into this arrogance from code developers on other systems. I've even had a developer that designed software that didn't work tell me "that's because I designed it that way". Well Mr. developer, not everybody is a so called GURU. The majority of us folks out here are users and perhaps GURUs of some other field and want to get on with our work rather than wasting our time trying to figure out why we just got a stupid, useless message. Did I die and go to Microsoft HELL for daring to ditch Windows? So stop with the, "I designed it that way" BS and put out a quick fix with out requiring me to have to rip out the code to get rid of your designed in dumb message. It just might be that I have some plans of using VirtualBox and also don't need to be told it's not running when I'm not using it. The last time I checked, my short term memory was at least 10 minutes.

Just saying

[karlchen]

Hello, Fred60.

After having done a search I found posts by the developer saying, he designed it that way.

Would you care to post the link to the developer's statement, please? I admit my search on more details about the reasons why the popup notification has been added has not returned any hits so far.

Cheers,
Karl