i am trying to set up a vm for windows on my laptop. the initial setup went fine. when i try to start the vm, i get this:

kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) is either not loaded or there is a permission problem with /dev/vboxdrv. Please reinstall the kernel module by executing

'/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup'

as root. If it is available in your distribution, you should install the DKMS package first. This package keeps track of Linux kernel changes and recompiles the vboxdrv kernel module if necessary.

i have run both the string above and attempted to install the dkms package, and both abort.

as a newbie, what am i missing?

Are you running the above command as root/superuser?

As, it needs to be run as root/superuser, for it to work.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi Myra,

Welcome to LQ! Which distribution are you running? How new are you to Linux?

i'm running Mint 18.0.

and i'm an intel troop attempting to learn linux. so far, so good, but i want to have a windows VM to work from as well.

and yes, i was running as root.

but i am also confused about root. i installed some app called root, and once i did i could not get out of it back to the standard command prompt other than killing the terminal window...but that's another issue...

For both Virtualbox and VMware, you need to be sure to have "make" and "gcc" installed. And you need to have the "kernel-headers" installed that match the version of your kernel.

That was for Debian/Ubuntu distros, some distros, maybe fedora?, need "kernel-devel" installed in place of "kernel-headers".

With these programs installed, virtualbox will be able to build the kernel modules.

i'll go back to the drawing board...thanks.

1) don't be root.
2) the error you posted is maybe the single most posted newbie virtualbox error out there. please search a) your distro's forums and b) virtualbox documentation and c) virtualbox forums for same error.

ondoho, You need to run the /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup command as root (as the error message states), otherwise it will not be able to build the kernel module.

1 members found this post helpful.

Guessing they meant "don't run Virtualbox as root".

in a terminal is necessary to comply with Vbox's "instructions".

Just sayin'

i'm very sorry, i largely misread the op for lack of quote/code tags.

dkms is not required by Virtualbox5.1 and up.

I'd start over using authentic sources:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtu...nial_amd64.deb

i'm going to blow it away and start over. i need to run some updates, apparently.

thanks all.