Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)
The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) is probably not loaded.You may not have kernel driver installed for kernel that is runnig, if so you may do as root: dnf install akmod-VirtualBox kernel-devel-$(uname -r)If you installed VirtualBox packages and don't want reboot the system, you may need load the kernel driver, doing as root: akmods; systemctl restart vboxdrv.service
If your system has EFI Secure Boot enabled you may also need to sign the kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt, vboxnetadp) before you can load them. Please see your Linux system's documentation for more information.
where: suplibOsInit what: 3 VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED (-1908) - The support driver is not installed. On linux, open returned ENOENT.
I confirm if the driver in installed by the command below:
$ sudo dnf install akmod-VirtualBox kernel-devel-$(uname -r)
Last metadata expiration check: 0:24:31 ago on Mon 08 Jan 2024 08:56:36 AM EAT.
Package akmod-VirtualBox-7.0.12-1.el9.1.x86_64 is already installed.
Package kernel-devel-5.14.0-362.13.1.el9_3.x86_64 is already installed.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!
Checking if kmods exists:
$ sudo akmods
Checking kmods exist for 5.14.0-362.13.1.el9_3.x86_64 [ OK ]
Checking the status:
$ sudo systemctl restart vboxdrv.service
Job for vboxdrv.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status vboxdrv.service" and "journalctl -xeu vboxdrv.service" for details.
$ systemctl status vboxdrv.service
Ă— vboxdrv.service - Linux kernel module init script
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/vboxdrv.service; enabled; preset>
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2024-01-08 09:23:40 EAT; 1m>
Process: 6498 ExecStart=/sbin/modprobe vboxdrv (code=exited, status=1/FAI>
Main PID: 6498 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CPU: 23ms
Jan 08 09:23:40 rocky-linux-9 systemd[1]: Starting Linux kernel module init s>
Jan 08 09:23:40 rocky-linux-9 modprobe[6498]: modprobe: ERROR: could not inse>
Jan 08 09:23:40 rocky-linux-9 systemd[1]: vboxdrv.service: Main process exite>
Jan 08 09:23:40 rocky-linux-9 systemd[1]: vboxdrv.service: Failed with result>
Jan 08 09:23:40 rocky-linux-9 systemd[1]: Failed to start Linux kernel module>
lines 1-12/12 (END)...skipping...
Do you have gcc and make installed? Oh, and kernel-headers also. If they are installed then I would wonder if you have secure-boot enabled in the firmware and if so you need to disable it.
I read that “As of version 8.5, Rocky Linux supports secure boot and is completely trusted using our own Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation signed shims.”
This thus confirms that secure-boot is by default on Rocky 9.
Will it be advisable to disable secure-boot on my system ? What are the risks involved?
Secure Boot requires that the boot loader, kernel, and kernel modules have valid signatures.
Signature is ok, if UEFI (i.e motherboard) has certificate that validates the signature.
If a binary is not signed, then it is not loaded nor executed.
If signatures are not checked/required (Secure Boot is off), then machine can load anything,
like modified (trojan included) kernel / kernel module.
That you have to do in the UEFI. (I.e. not from Linux.) It depends on motherboard how to get there, but your GRUB menu might have “UEFI Firmware Settings” entry after kernels too.
The akmods package does create the “.der and .priv” certs and signs the modules upon creation. So all you need to do to retain secure-boot is to load the “.der” cert with mokutil. The certs are in /etc/pki/akmods.
Read “man mokutil” for how.
The dkms does generate similar certificate: /var/lib/dkms/mok.pub
(but recent builds – NVidia kernel modules from their CUDA repo “sources” – no longer seemed signed).
You can check with modinfo <path-to-module> .
It may be that dkms was not updated to sign compressed modules “.xz” suffix. There are recipes out there that do, but after I discovered the rpmfusion modules are already signed I never tested them.
