Ubuntu – VBoxManage is unable to start vm code NS_ERROR_FAILURE ubuntu 16.04

16.04vagrantvirtualbox

I recently upgraded to virtualbox 5.2.4 and vagrant 2.0.1 because of this issue. Since then, I haven't been able to run any of my vagrant boxes (some ubuntu, some centos). I get the following error when running vagrant up:

There was an error while executing VBoxManage, a CLI used by Vagrant
for controlling VirtualBox. The command and stderr is shown below.

Command: ["startvm", "ef47d1fc-4ed1-42cb-b564-09bc2bb43296", "–type", "headless"]

Stderr: VBoxManage: error: The virtual machine 'ishbook-centos' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component MachineWrap, interface IMachine

When I just run vboxmanage without --type headless, I get a popup saying to run /sbin/vboxconfig.

RTR3InitEx failed with rc=-1912 (rc=-1912)

The VirtualBox kernel modules do not match this version of VirtualBox. The installation of VirtualBox was apparently not successful. Executing

'/sbin/vboxconfig'

may correct this. Make sure that you do not mix the OSE version and the PUEL version of VirtualBox.

where: supR3HardenedMainInitRuntime what: 4 VERR_VM_DRIVER_VERSION_MISMATCH (-1912) – The installed support driver doesn't match the version of the user.

No luck even after running sudo /sbin/vboxconfig multiple times.

I've tried reinstalling virtualbox and the extension pack multiple times and reinstalling linux-headers and dkms as seen in answers to questions similar to this one, but nothing has worked. Any ideas?

Edit: Just tried it out on 5.1, but it's the same error, 5.0 just hangs my computer

Best Answer

OK. Figured out the problem here. My kernel modules hadn't been deleted from the previous install of virtualbox when I uninstalled. So when I ran modinfo vboxdrv, it said I was using the kernel drivers for 5.0.4.

I deleted everything in the path to the filename given in the modinfo output and rebooted. Installing virtualbox and starting vms worked after that.

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Please note that this answer is intended to specifically solve the original poster's problem when typical solutions like running sudo /sbin/vboxconfig or removing virtualbox-dkms and installing dkms does not work.

Please first try these simple workarounds, these might help you right away.

It seems that your installation version of virtualbox is for 32-bit architecture while you are running 64-bit operation system which can be the cause of this problem.

My workaround would be to remove the installed version from PPA, and installing virtualbox from official repositories.

To remove virtualbox, run:

sudo apt autoremove --purge virtualbox*

After that make sure there is no other version installed on your system by:

dpkg -l 'virtualbox*' | grep ^i

You shouldn't get any output, also you can try to run virtualbox to make sure it's not installed.

Then remove all related PPAs from your sources.list and sources.list.d directory. ex:

mkdir ~/apt-tmp
sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* ~/apt-tmp

Make sure there is nothing except official repositories sources in /etc/apt/sources.list.

And update your sources:

sudo apt update

Now we can search to see which versions are available to install:

apt-cache madison virtualbox | grep -iv sources

Which produces an output like this:

virtualbox | 5.0.32-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.2 | http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu xenial-updates/multiverse amd64 Packages
virtualbox | 5.0.18-dfsg-2build1 | http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu xenial/multiverse amd64 Packages

Then I would install the last version mentioned in xenial-updates:

sudo apt install virtualbox=5.0.32-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.2

Also sudo apt install virtualbox, would be fine, but I would go with the above command to make sure my desired version is going to be installed.

And after all, check that the correct version is installed.

From command line:

dpkg -l virtualbox* | grep ^i

ii  virtualbox                     5.0.32-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.2 amd64        x86 virtualization solution - base binaries
ii  virtualbox-dkms                5.0.32-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.2 all          x86 virtualization solution - kernel module sources for dkms
ii  virtualbox-qt                  5.0.32-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.2 amd64        x86 virtualization solution - Qt based user interface

From GUI: to make sure correct version is running.

Help menu -> about virtualbox

Pay attention to green highlight

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – VirtualBox – RTR3InitEx failed with rc=-1912 (rc=-1912)

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