How to Install Linux in VirtualBox: A Step-by-Step Guide 'Install Linux in Virtualbox'

Having upgraded my kernel recently, I encountered an issue that prevented me from booting any images. To resolve this problem, I decided to install the latest version of VirtualBox from Oracle, which worked perfectly fine.

The process began with loading the virtualbox service using the following command: `sudo systemctl start virtualbox`. However, this resulted in a failure, indicating that the control process exited with an error code.

Upon investigation, I discovered that the issue was related to the lack of support for the latest Ubuntu kernel by virtualbox-dkms. This meant that the package could not be reinstalled using the command `sudo apt-get install -reinstall virtualbox-dkms`.

To resolve this problem, I needed to reload the VirtualBox kernel modules manually. This involved loading the necessary modules, including vboxdrv, vboxnetadp, and vboxpci, which are required for various features such as host-only networking.

The process of reloading the modules was straightforward. First, I used the command `sudo modprobe vboxdrv` to load the vboxdrv module. If your Virtual Machine runs without any issues after loading the module, you can activate it permanently by adding the following line to the `/etc/modules-load.d/` file: `vboxdrv`.

In some cases, you may encounter an error message when trying to run a virtual machine, indicating that the VBoxDrv kernel module needs to be installed. However, if you have already installed and compiled the modules into your kernel using dkms, this is not the issue.

The solution in such cases lies in activating the modules manually using the `sudo modprobe vboxdrv` command. This has worked for me across two different Linux distributions: Ubuntu and Arch.

In conclusion, installing Linux in VirtualBox requires careful attention to the kernel modules and their activation. By following these steps, you can overcome common issues and successfully install a virtual machine on your system.

Install linux in virtualbox