Vboxadd-service fails on boot

English Virtualization
1

I notice in htop that Systemd shows 1 Degraded / Failed service. I tracked it down to vboxadd-service and found that it fails on the boot sequence.

I can restart it with “sudo systemctl reset-failed” and it will run fine till the next reboot. If I try to start it from YaSt2 - services-manager, it immediately fails again. That part is puzzling.

How would I start to determine why it fails and how to stop it happening?

Here is a copy and paste from YaST2 - services-manager.

Warning: The unit file, source configuration file or drop-ins of vboxadd-service.service changed on disk. Run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to reload units.
x vboxadd-service.service - Start/Stop VirtualBox Guest Linux module
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/vboxadd-service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2023-06-26 21:07:51 CDT; 2min 6s ago
   Duration: 192ms
    Process: 1296 ExecStart=/usr/lib/virtualbox/vboxadd-service start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Main PID: 1296 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
        CPU: 23ms

Jun 26 21:07:51 heisenberg systemd[1]: Started Start/Stop VirtualBox Guest Linux module.
Jun 26 21:07:51 heisenberg vboxadd-service[1296]: vboxadd-service.sh: Starting VirtualBox Guest Addition service.
Jun 26 21:07:51 heisenberg vboxadd-service.sh[1324]: Starting VirtualBox Guest Addition service.
Jun 26 21:07:51 heisenberg vboxadd-service[1296]: VirtualBox Additions module not loaded!
Jun 26 21:07:51 heisenberg systemd[1]: vboxadd-service.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 26 21:07:51 heisenberg systemd[1]: vboxadd-service.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20230625
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.6
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.107.0
Qt Version: 5.15.10
Kernel Version: 6.3.9-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 20 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700
Memory: 31.1 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: XPS 8950

Thanks for your time.

2

you have to have ibt=off as a kernel parameter for virtualbox to work on any gen 1 or gen 12 cpu.

add to /etc/default/grub

3

I already had it set to ibt=off. :slightly_smiling_face:

4

The other reason is you failed to install the security key in the BIOS - turn off secure boot and see if it works.

If so you need to reinstall the security key.
see this

5

I already had Secure Boot turned off. I kept getting a MOK screen and I had no idea what key it wanted.

I did try the mokutil to import the keys listed in /etc/uefi/certs and it said they were already enrolled.

6

I also tried forcing the reinstall of the key, as you suggested and it did not change anything.

7

It is security key is your OpenSUSE root password.

Is this on the Host - if so - it is not supposed to be installed on the host - I checked both Leap and Tumbleweed hosts:
Tumbleweed host:

LLR4:~ # systemctl status vboxadd-service.service
Unit vboxadd-service.service could not be found.
LLR4:~ # exit

Leap host:

LLR1:~ # systemctl status vboxadd-service.service
Unit vboxadd-service.service could not be found.
LLR1:~ # exit

On a guest - yes - do you have anything showing in the virtualbox gui for that virtual machine that it is giving a warning for?

Opensuse guest only need 2 parts:

user@VM1:~> zypper se -si virtualbox
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…

S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository
—±-----------------------±--------±-----------------------------------±-------±----------------------
i+ | virtualbox-guest-tools | package | 7.0.8-lp155.1.7 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Leap-15.5-Oss
i | virtualbox-kmp-default | package | 7.0.8_k5.14.21_150500.53-lp155.1.6 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Leap-15.5-Oss

If that is what you have - I would do a forced reinstall - zypper in -f virtualbox-guest-tools virtualbox-kmp-default

Anything else needs to be uninstalled.

This is what a normal OpenSUSE guest looks like:

VM1:~ # systemctl status vboxadd-service.service
Warning: The unit file, source configuration file or drop-ins of vboxadd-servic>
● vboxadd-service.service - Start/Stop VirtualBox Guest Linux module
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/vboxadd-service; disabled; vendor preset: disa>
Active: active (exited) since Fri 2023-06-23 22:14:02 CDT; 3 days ago
Main PID: 720 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Tasks: 9 (limit: 4915)
CGroup: /system.slice/vboxadd-service.service
└─ 776 /usr/sbin/VBoxService --pidfile /var/run/vboxadd-service.sh

8

This was on the host PC. I am guessing this happened when I was trying to get the VirtualBox Guest Additions onto my guest system.

I uninstalled all of it and installed virtualbox and let it grab its dependencies and right now, everything seems to be working fine.

I certainly appreciate the help. Thank you so much. :grinning:

I wish this forum software would allow me to edit the title of the thread and mark it SOLVED.

9

I think it can be edited, but it has to be done within the first five minutes of the original posting time :slight_smile: …

Good to see it’s resolved.