I recently had to reinstall my Mageia 8. Although it was running quite
happily, initramfs suddenly threw up an error message saying that a disk
it was trying to start, identified by UUID only, didn't exist, and
dropped me to a dracut shell. Since it was of no use looking for
something that wasn't there, and searching from a dracut shell produced
weird results (no /etc/fstab, although the boot procedure so far had
clearly found one), I stared again from scratch.

The fresh install went well, but now, I cannot start the VirtualBox
driver, no matter what I try. I gave up and decided to try KVM/QEMU.
The installation procedure from the Mageia wiki was O.K., but could be
made easier by an installer file. I am now at the stage of setting up
my "guest" distro.

Has anybody already done this? If not, could my experience help?

Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> I recently had to reinstall my Mageia 8.  Although it was running quite
> happily, initramfs suddenly threw up an error message saying that a disk
> it was trying to start, identified by UUID only, didn't exist, and
> dropped me to a dracut shell.  Since it was of no use looking for
> something that wasn't there, and searching from a dracut shell produced
> weird results (no /etc/fstab, although the boot procedure so far had
> clearly found one), I stared again from scratch.
>
> The fresh install went well, but now, I cannot start the VirtualBox
> driver, no matter what I try. I gave up and decided to try KVM/QEMU.
> The installation procedure from the Mageia wiki was O.K.,  but could be
> made easier by an installer file.  I am now at the stage of setting up
> my "guest" distro.
>
> Has anybody already done this?  If not, could my experience help?

Once version 9 is about to be released, you could install Mageia 9 Alpha
1 https://distroprowage.com/?newsid=11681. This would help discuss
distribution problems.

You did not specify what exactly the wrong happened with VirtualBox.

--

Abraços

Gilberto F da Silva

On 11/12/22 03:55, Gilberto F da Silva wrote:
> You did not specify what exactly the wrong happened with VirtualBox.

Sorry. VirtualBox failed to load the driver. This is the most common
problem, and there is plenty of info on the Web about how to deal with
it. I tried a few:

* Uninstalling and reinstalling the RPM.
* Confirming that I had the dkms-virtualbox RPM installed (that fixed it
last time.)
* Renaming the directory in ~/.config, forcing the creation of a new,
clean one.
* Most of the hints say to run vboxconfig, but it is no longer used.
An alternative was given in one place, but didn't work.

Nothing worked, and everybody says that KVM is better, because it is
part of the Linux kernel, and shares resources. (Also, the girl in the
video is kinda cute and well-informed!)

Doug.

On Sat, 10 Dec 2022 01:31:01 -0500, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:

> I recently had to reinstall my Mageia 8. Although it was running quite
> happily, initramfs suddenly threw up an error message saying that a disk
> it was trying to start, identified by UUID only, didn't exist, and
> dropped me to a dracut shell. Since it was of no use looking for
> something that wasn't there, and searching from a dracut shell produced
> weird results (no /etc/fstab, although the boot procedure so far had
> clearly found one), I stared again from scratch.

As you've reinstalled, to late to debug it. In the emergency shell it is
using only the files that are in the initrd file. You have to mount the
on disk root file system to be able to look at and fix it's fstab etc.

> The fresh install went well, but now, I cannot start the VirtualBox
> driver, no matter what I try. I gave up and decided to try KVM/QEMU.
> The installation procedure from the Mageia wiki was O.K., but could be
> made easier by an installer file. I am now at the stage of setting up
> my "guest" distro.

For the vb driver, you may have encountered
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29830
in which case installing the dkms-virtualbox package should workaround the
bug.

> Has anybody already done this? If not, could my experience help?

kvm has a much steeper learning curve. I don't normally use it, but have
some limited experience with it.

I'd go back to virtualbox. It's much more widely used by people using the
Mageia mailing lists, so there are more people available to help with it.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

On 2022-12-10 12:25, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> On 11/12/22 03:55, Gilberto F da Silva wrote:
>> You did not specify what exactly the wrong happened with VirtualBox.
>
> Sorry.  VirtualBox failed to load the driver.  This is the most common
> problem, and there is plenty of info on the Web about how to deal with
> it.  I tried a few:
>
> * Uninstalling and reinstalling the RPM.
> * Confirming that I had the dkms-virtualbox RPM installed (that fixed it
> last time.)
> * Renaming the directory in ~/.config, forcing the creation of a new,
> clean one.
> *  Most of the hints say to run vboxconfig, but it is no longer used. An
> alternative was given in one place, but didn't work.
>
> Nothing worked, and everybody says that KVM is better, because it is
> part of the Linux kernel, and shares resources. (Also, the girl in the
> video is kinda cute and well-informed!)
>
> Doug.

I'm part of "everybody," and I find KVM entirely too difficult to learn
how to use effectively. Probably because I already understand much about
VirtualBox and it works well enough for me that I don't care to learn
something else.

It's often the basics that trip me up, so my first question would be...

Since you re-installed the host system, did you remember to make your
user a part of the vboxusers group?

TJ

On 11/12/22 06:39, David W. Hodgins wrote:
> For the vb driver, you may have encountered
> https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29830
> in which case installing the dkms-virtualbox package should workaround the
> bug.
>
I always add the dkms-virtualbox package. Virtualbox has now fixed
itself, and starts normally. The only change to my system was to
install a swag of libraries recommended for Second Life. The list was
short, but the dependencies of the devel package were numerous.Maybe one
of those was missing for VB. Anyway, I will keep using VB and play
around with KVM.

Doug.

On Wed, 14 Dec 2022 07:53:17 +1100, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> On 11/12/22 06:39, David W. Hodgins wrote:
>> For the vb driver, you may have encountered
>> https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29830
>> in which case installing the dkms-virtualbox package should workaround the
>> bug.
>>
> I always add the dkms-virtualbox package. Virtualbox has now fixed
> itself, and starts normally. The only change to my system was to
> install a swag of libraries recommended for Second Life. The list was
> short, but the dependencies of the devel package were numerous.Maybe one
> of those was missing for VB. Anyway, I will keep using VB and play
> around with KVM.

I do not install the Second Life package yet VirtuaBox works for me.
Then again I followed the install instructions from the VB site for
installing it and extension pack.

I find it handy to always script my installs. That way nothing is
missed after you get it working. For example you need to add the
vboxusers group to VB users.

Having said that there are occasions where the guest will not resume after
a host VB or kernel update/upgrade and I discard guest saved state and
gust reboot works.