Virtualbox < 5.1.34 crashes frequently on kernel > 5.18

Question

Virtualbox 5.1.34 (and below) crashes and prints strange error messages like segementation faults or kills the x11/wayland server.

This strange behavior occurs on ubuntu22, debian bookworm, debian sid, archlinux after upgrading the host kernel to 5.18.3.

Answer 1

After some internet recherche I found this nice discussion on the virtualbox forum. At first I thought my vm installation troubles but it happens on all guest machines.

The solution up to now is to use an older kernel (< 5.17.11) or to install the the test build: Virtualbox (6.1.34.xx) crashes frequently on debian sid. You can avoid this by using the older kernel (<5.17.10) or install the test build as described below.

Installation virtualbox test build

First you have to remove the virtualbox package with sudo apt remove virtualbox- This will not remove your configurations or virtual machines.

Download the app from Oracles' Testbuild homepage.

Install with

sudo sh ./VirtualBox-6.1.35-151573-Linux_amd64.run

This will also compile and install the dkms modules vboxdrv ...

To remove virtualbox, which gets installed in the /opt directory, run the script with uninstall parameter.

Further you have to download the Extension package and Guest Additions from the previous link and type the following command:

VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.35-151571.vbox-extpack

You can also adopt this script for speeding up the task:

#!/bin/bash
# download virtualbox testbuild
#
# install with the following command:
#    sudo sh ./VirtualBox-6.1.35-151573-Linux_amd64.run
# To uninstall run with `uninstall` parameter:
#    sudo sh ./VirtualBox-6.1.35-151573-Linux_amd64.run uninstall 
#
# The extension package (for usb... support) can be installed from command line
#    VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.35-151571.vbox-extpack

release=6.1.35
build=151866

version=$release-$build
base="https://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase"
virtualbox=VirtualBox-$version-Linux_amd64.run
guest_additions=VBoxGuestAdditions_$version.iso
extension_pack=Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-$version.vbox-extpack

download_files=($virtualbox $guest_additions $extension_pack)

for file in "${download_files[@]}"; do
   wget -c $base/$file
done

sudo sh ./$virtualbox
sudo vboxmanage extpack install $extension_pack