VirtualBox no longer working after latest update

[Cyclonick]

I’m in Tumbleweed Plasma X11

Trying to start one of my virtual machines after the last kernel update, I get this message. This happens with all three…

VirtualBox can't enable the AMD-V extension. Please disable the KVM 
kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_SVM_IN_USE).
|Result Code:|NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)|
| --- | --- |
|Component:|ConsoleWrap|
|Interface:|IConsole {6ac83d89-6ee7-4e33-8ae6-b257b2e81be8}|

For some time now, on login I get the notification that VirtualBox has failed to start, but have had no problem starting a machine.

Fixing this looks way above my paygrade

[Sauerland]

Some threads about this problem here in the forum.
Also:
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1234823

[Cyclonick]

Thanks for the link

I found this comment

As announced on the mailing list and the forum, add following code to the kernel command line:

kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0

Looking at it, it looks as though I should add it in “bootloader options” in Yast… This line is getting longer and longer - the plymouth fiasco had me adding to it already ! Should we really be adding commands to the bootloader to work round developers mistakes?

[myswtest]

@Cyclonick

I found this comment
As announced on the mailing list and the forum, add following code to the kernel command line:

kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0 mm

Looking at it, it looks as though I should add it in “bootloader options” in Yast… This line is getting longer and longer - the plymouth fiasco had me adding to it already !

Should we really be adding commands to the bootloader to work round developers mistakes?

You should see the boot options line for one of my desktops.

Just add it and move on

And BTW, this isn’t really about “developer mistakes”. You may not understand the software industry product challenges (for every software company).

This is mostly about a kernel change, which results in how VBox starts up - they will most likely provide an update. So, in the meantime, if you want to complain, write a letter to Linus

[Cyclonick]

I do understand that the kernel seems to be evolving fairly fundamentally and that probably gives headaches all round.

I don’t know if I’ll add the instruction or wait for the update… I’m beginning to think of moving to “Slowroll” (I think it’s called), I don’t really need the anxiety of wondering whether the damn thing’s going to start after an update but I do need my apps (particularly graphics) to be up to date which Leap refuses to install…

[hui]

Also Slowroll will/has recieve/d kernel-6.12 unless you have installed the longterm version.

[Cyclonick]

Kernel 6.12 perhaps, but Tumbleweed is at 6.12.6-1 - the chaos started about 3 weeks ago…
Anyway got to go and fiddle with Yast

[ENTPRESTIGIOUS]

Adding kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0 didn’t work at all for me. I’ve commented about this in another post. It immediately closes the session.

[Cyclonick]

Thanks for the info
Looks like I’ll be waiting for the update then…

[ENTPRESTIGIOUS]

After running cat /proc/cmdline

splash=silent quiet security=apparmor kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0 mitigations=auto

So yeah, doesn’t work even though the parameter is applied.

[Cyclonick]

I noticed in the other post you commented, people saying you need to update the system after changing the options even after using YaST - I thought (and still do) that the whole point of using YaST was that it automates the whole process…

I’ll just wait for them to sort it out…

[ENTPRESTIGIOUS]

@Cyclonick

the options even after using YaST - I thought (and still do) that the whole point of using YaST was that it automates the whole process…

really? Oh…

[ENTPRESTIGIOUS]

@Cyclonick

whole point of using YaST was that it automates the whole process…

Well Hui did say it does it automatically so…

@hui

Did you recreate initrd? When you manually add the parameter to the grub file, you need to run dracut. If you use YaST Bootloader instead, it is done automatically.

[myswtest]

@Cyclonick

I thought (and still do) that the whole point of using YaST was that it automates the whole process…

“What” process?

[ENTPRESTIGIOUS]

I’m assuming updating the bootloader config, dracut and all that stuff.

[malcolmlewis]

@ENTPRESTIGIOUS YaST Bootloader only updates, well the bootloader… If your adding modules and parameters via /etc/modprobe.d or /etc/dracut.conf.d/, then you would need to run manually dracut -f --regenerate-all

[ENTPRESTIGIOUS]

I don’t know why but now it just simply says the session is aborted. It didn’t say it’s caused by KVM. Like before, I ran modprobe commands to disable kvm and kvm_intel but that didn’t work so I re-enabled it. I’ve done the update for 20250101, added the kvm cmd on YaST and ran update-bootloader --config. Didn’t work. I ran sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse/grub.cfg which adds a lot of stuff into the grub.cfg file which was supposed to be like empty. Didn’t work. I enabled Nested VT-x/AMD-V which didn’t work. In the end, I disabled 3D acceleration and it worked.

I hope whatever i did such as regenerating grub.cfg didn’t cause any harm to my system. I still have the kvm command in place.

[barkoslo]

This worked for me:

echo "options kvm enable_virt_at_load=0" | sudo tee /usr/lib/modprobe.d/virtualbox.conf