virtualbox-host-kmp problem prevents zypper dup

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1

Hi,
since last week i get this error when trying to upgrade my tumbleweed system via: zypper dup

Warning: You are about to do a distribution upgrade with all enabled repositories. Make sure these repositories are compatible before you continue. See 'man zypper' for more information about this command.
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Computing distribution upgrade...

Problem: virtualbox-host-kmp-default-5.1.4_k4.7.2_2-2.2.x86_64 conflicts with virtualbox-guest-kmp provided by virtualbox-guest-kmp-default-5.1.4_k4.7.2_2-2.2.x86_64
 Solution 1: deinstallation of virtualbox-guest-kmp-default-5.1.4_k4.7.2_1-1.3.x86_64
 Solution 2: deinstallation of virtualbox-host-kmp-default-5.1.4_k4.7.2_1-1.3.x86_64

Choose from above solutions by number or cancel [1/2/c] (c):

normally there is at least an option to skip this package but this time both given options could create new problems i do not want.
Is this a packaging bug?

2

Choose “Solution 1: Deinstallation of of virtualbox-guest-kmp-default-5.1.4_k4.7.2_1-1.3.x86_64”.
This conflict has been added on purpose to prevent the installation of the guest tools on the host (where they are useless anyway).

3

Ok thank you i will try this, but i never had this problem before. you say the conflict was added on purpose, was this just recently? And is this ideal, i can imagine that most users will not know what to do here and if it is forced on everyone this could be problematic right?

4

Yes.

And is this ideal, i can imagine that most users will not know what to do here and if it is forced on everyone this could be problematic right?

No, I don’t think this is ideal, because of the manual intervention it requires.
Somebody filed a bug report already too:
http://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=997920

Actually the conflict was added as a “fix” for 983927 – virtualbox-guest KMP breaks weak-updates also for kernel modules of other KMPs like NVIDIA, but I submitted a proper fix meanwhile anyway.

That’s why I raised my voice against this for the 13.2 maintenance update.

It is not problematic though: again, the guest tools are useless on the host, there is absolutely no point at all in having them installed.

PS, for clarification: you only got the conflict this one time, because you had virtualbox-guest-kmp-default installed. In the future you won’t get conflicts, and virtualbox-guest-kmp-default will not get installed any more either.

5

Thank you very much for clearing this up.