vboxclient the virtualbox kernel service is not running

[Fred60]

I'm not going to look for it again, I didn't book mark it. Perhaps it wasn't the developer who said that. if it wasn't then I humbly apologize for the offence, and it may also have been edited out, I don't know. It was in one of the posts I read on this subject and I have to admit that I assumed it was the developer defending the fact that the message existed. I have had my say about stupid messages and I feel better now.

It just seems to me that the PROBLEM deserves more than a sticky. Why not fix it? Stuff like that panics new LINUX users. A simple OOOPS! and we will take care of it, rather than suggesting that someone start ripping out software. I understand a developer having warning or specific message POP UPS during development but generally they are irrelevant to the average user and need to be taken out even if they are "only an annoyance"

[chrisonmint]

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

Unless Fred60 misunderstood your post...

[MintBean]

Could someone explain to me why anything to do with Virtualbox is running at startup? I rarely use vb and I certainly don't want it running any code when I start my machine.

[chrisonmint]

Could someone explain to me why anything to do with Virtualbox is running at startup? I rarely use vb and I certainly don't want it running any code when I start my machine.

well, VirtualBox addons are not actually running, just checking to see if they should be run. that check will take a tiny fraction of a second and wont be noticeable.

having the addons already present is great for those running Mint in virtual machines, but this unnecessary message is leading to confusion. they are not even required if you run virtual box ON your Mint machine, ie the "host" OS. the addons are just for the "guest" OS.

your choices are:
(1) revert back to the older version of the virtualbox, which doesnt send the error message
(2) remove them
(3) ignore the error

instructions on 1 and 2 are above in the thread.

[Hoser Rob]

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.

Just tried purging them on my netbook, haven't rebooted but I don't expect problems.

The silly thing is that it's happening on both my mint 17 laptop and my mint 17.2 netbook. The netbook doesn't even have virtualbox installed. Not much point on a 1Gb netbook AFAIK.

Strange behavior but it didn't seem all that serious. But those guys really frakked up. And I'm including the repo testers in "those guys". I'm not impressed.

[karlchen]

But those guys really frakked up. And I'm including the repo testers in "those guys". I'm not impressed.

Those guys, including the repo testers, have not made any real mistake.
Reason?
Very simple:
On Linux Mint 17 and 17.2, you get the updated version 4.34 of virtualbox-guest-dkms, virtualbox-guest-utils and virtualbox-guest-x11 (the latter holds the script which displays the popup) from the Ubuntu software repositories (trusty-updates).
Ubuntu 14.04.x does not install the virtualbox-guest software packages unless you are running Ubuntu as the guest OS inside a virtualbox. Only Linux Mint does install them on native systems as well.
The Ubuntu guys were therefore not very likely to anticipate that a popup which they will never see might cause a mass frustration among the Linux Mint users.

The popup may be irritating. But it only states what is technically correct if you run Linux Mint on bare metal: The virtualbox kernel service has not been loaded.

[Will547]

Thanks Paladin2019

This worked for me " sudo apt-mark hold virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-dkms ".

Cheers, Will

[Cobber]

I had been wondering why I was getting this popup lately in MATE. Do not get it in KDE.

When I booted up MATE today, I got loads of text scrolling up the screen before reaching the login box. It went too fast to read, but the words TTY and DBUS stood out.

I ran the purge command mentioned, which stopped the Virtualbox popup, and it also stopped all the scrolling text. When I rebooted into KDE, I got the scrolling text there too. So I ran the purge on KDE and the text didn't reappear. I run KDE, MATE and Windows in triple boot, which maybe why KDE suddenly went weird after using MATE.

Glad I found this thread. Don't understand it, but it fixed my problems, which is the main thing.

Edit: Spoke too soon. Text is back. Something about a "bus error" and failing to read DMA. Will start a new topic if it doesn't fix itself.

Edit again: Turned out the problem was a new memory stick I bought on eBay. For some reason (two weeks after I installed it) it is conflicting with my other memory and dragging the memory clock speed from 800 down to 667 and confusing the BIOS. Removed it and the text went away.

Edit final: Thought I might as well keep this all in one post. Got a brand name memory stick locally and it worked no worries. The guy said he has had no end of problems with cheap Chinese sticks doing the same thing. While they work correctly by themselves, they do not interact with brand name sticks, and always drag the speed down.

[ghost123uk]

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 don't 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)

Actually, almost nothing annoys me more than useless popups. Feels like Windows behaviour.

I tend to agree. I have this on every Mint Mate 17 build I do recently (I do about 4 a week). My solution is to remove it via the Synaptic Package manager, I have no problem, but I do feel that we are getting a bit close to those Windows updates that so often introduced errors. btw, I know this is not an error, but as said, for end users it certainly looks like one and I have had several customers ringing me up, worried about it, which does dent my claims to them about Linux being so stable and problem free.

Lets take care not to carelessly introduce Windows like issues into Linux

[subsonik2nine]

Here's the issue with not calling this a bug. Mint is a distro aimed at new/inexperienced linux users. Having meaningless pop-up notifications that look like errors will drive the very core audience of this distro away from it, and possibly linux altogether. It's called lack of polish and is something that all modern distros need to take note of if they want to win marketshare away from the Microsoft's and Apple's of the world. It's easy for an experienced linux users to sit on a high horse and laugh at this "bug", but it puts a poor taste in the mouth of new users when you do so as it fulfills the elitists image that the linux community needs to get away from if it is ever to be adopted on a larger scale. So not trying to start a flame here, just pointing out the bigger issue with not calling this a bug or putting it on a "won't fix" list. It's an annoyance that should not exist in the first place. Verbose kernal errors when everything is running as intended need addressed just like any more serious bug does.

[Colin66]

I have had the pop-up problem on this computer for the last few days.
I use Mint 17 64bit on this computer. My main one (its slower but quieter) uses Mint 17 32 bit and has not had the pop-up problem.
I could not read all of the pop-up message because it was partly offscreen due to fact that I don't get the correct full screen resolution until fully booted/logged in and it had disappeared by then.
Virtualbox is not installed according to the package manager, but there were some other virtualbox support packages installed. There was also a virtualbox item set to run in the services control panel. I turned this off and removed (not complete removal) the remaining virtualbox packages in the package manager and rebooted.
The pop-up still appeared.
I then came to this forum and saw the "purge" solution which was posted and this fixed the problem.
I find unnecessary pop-ups very annoying, even if they do no harm.

[ghost123uk]

Of course, one could, on doing updates, search for the virrtualbox update and mark it as "ignore updates for this package" but then we really are getting that bit closer to the way folk dealt with Windows updates in the days of Win98. "Patch Tuesday" then "fix it Wednesday"

[MenthaSuaveolens]

Open synaptic, search for VirtualBox, remove the 3 items installed (virtualbox-guest-additions).

[Tar_Ni]

I had this issue on Linux Mint 17.2 Xfce 32bit. Very annoying indeed.

What I did is wipe the hardrive and install Linux Mint 17.1 Xfce 32 bit instead. It solved the issue. I know it may sound like a drastic solution but someone has pointed out on this thread that the popup did not show up on the 17.1 release so I think that was the best solution for me.

[prestonR]

Not sure this is relevant but the current version of tails 1.8.2 displays a similar warning at shut down of the liveUSB. The kernel in use is 3.16, same as mint 17.2.

[Trapper]

LM17.2 MATE

Code: Select all

sudo pluma  /etc/X11/Xsession.d/98vboxadd-xclient

Find the line:

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

Change it to:

true #notify-send  “VBoxClient: the VirtualBox kernel service is not running. Exiting.”

You're simply replacing 'notify-send' with 'true' and commenting out 'notify-send “VBoxClient: the VirtualBox kernel service is not running. Exiting.”

No need to purge any virtuabox stuff. If you ever want to revert back just 'remove true #'

Do Not make a backup copy of 98vboxadd-xclient in the folder named 98vboxadd-xclient-original, 98vboxadd-xclient-backup, etc. It WILL get used and you will still see the irritating popup message.

I 'think' this problem has been fixed in LM17.3 Rosa.

[karlchen]

<moderator on>

Split mrbk's post off here and turned it into a new thread there: Mint 17 Mate: desktop icons grayed out and non-functional.
Reason: The vboxclient popup may be annoying, but it has got no ill side-effects. Therefore mrbk must be experiencing different problems on his Mint 17 Mate.

</moderator off>

[itsjoojoo]

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.

Did you reinstall afterwards or just purge?

Thanks I have had the same problem and purging sorted it for me.

[NeverMindMe]

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 -

Code: Select all

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.

  Code: Select all

  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.

  Code: Select all

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

  The above command should output something like this.

  Code: Select all

  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.

hi, i am having this same problem everytime i startup. after reading this thread i see that running the above command in terminal should fix it. i'm just a bit unsure what is meant by 'host' and 'guest' i'm using mint on a single laptop, would this machine be considered the 'host'? does 'guest' refer to a second machine or is it some part of this one, or my OS?

[Cosmo.]

host is the physical machine, where VirtualBox is installed.
guest is the virtual machine, which you run inside of VirtualBox (so no, not a second machine).