How to install VirtualBox?

English Virtualization
1

Dear forum,

I am a bit confused right now… But I seem unable to install Oracle’s Virtual Box. :question:

What I did is: I went to software.opensuse.org and installed what I assumed to be Oracle VB – throught Yast one click install. Went all through, no errors. Now, in my installed programmes, I cannot find »VirtualBox«, but an application called »VBoxGtk« (I am on openSUSE GNOME btw). Starting it yields the following error messages:


~> vboxgtk 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/vboxgtk", line 94, in <module>
    vboxgtk.main()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/vboxgtk/iface.py", line 47, in call_with_method
    return func(self,*args,**kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/vboxgtk/iface.py", line 74, in main
    builder.add_from_file(os.path.join(paths.data_path, f))
GLib.Error: gtk-builder-error-quark: Invalid property: GtkGrid.n_rows on line 1564 (11)
Exception ImportError: 'No module named xpcom' in <bound method VirtualBoxManager.__del__ of <vboxapi.VirtualBoxManager object at 0x7f64abede090>> ignored

Does anyone know what I did wrong here?

Best regards,

pbiel

2

vboxgtk is a GTK based frontend for VirtualBox.
But it is broken and doesn’t work. And it is not being developed any more since years.

Remove it and install virtualbox-qt instead, which is the official Qt GUI by Oracle.

Btw, you don’t need to use a 1-click install, virtualbox is included in the distribution. Just start YaST->Software Management and install it, or use zypper. No need to add any additional repo either, unless you always want to have the latest version.

3

Oh, well, that worked.

If it is well known that VBoxGtk is obsolete, why does the “official” openSUSE ymp still enforce it rather than the Qt thing (from software.opensuse.org, I installed the official release – nothing from some 3rd party obs repos). That’s really a bad thing.

4

It does not enforce it.

The virtualbox package requires any GUI, available are virtualbox-qt, virtualbox-web, and vboxgtk. YaST chooses a random one if you don’t do that yourself (and vboxgtk is first alphabetically).

But vboxgtk has been dropped completely from the distribution nearly a year ago. It’s still available in the 13.2 standard repo though because it is not possible to remove packages after the release.

5

Still it is not solved
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=811221It seems to me that it was already fixed in Tumbleweed some time ago.

6

It is “solved”. Again, vboxgtk has been dropped completely nearly a year ago and is neither available in Tumbleweed nor in the Virtualization repo any more (and won’t be in Leap either).
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=902610

7

Yes. I mentioned it.
But we are in openSUSE 13.2 thread, where it is not solved.
I had to fix it during my install of openSUSE 13.2 a month ago.

8

No, you didn’t.

But we are in openSUSE 13.2 thread, where it is not solved.

It cannot be solved for 13.2, because we cannot remove packages from a released distribution.
As I wrote.

I had to fix it during my install of openSUSE 13.2 a month ago.

So you fixed it.
And?

Install virtualbox-qt and everything’s fine.
It’s not that you need a patch or something.

9

Nothing.
Life goes on.