Symbolic link error during installation of Virtualbox 5.0.12 on Debian 8 "jessie"

[virtualbox_neophyte]

During installation of Virtualbox 5.0.12 on host Debian 8 "jessie" 64-bit, an error is thrown by the "ln" command. The error message is:

"ln: target ‘setup’ is not a directory"

This error message is thrown in the following cases:

(1) Installation of package "virtualbox-5.0" using apt-get
(2) Installation of "virtualbox-5.0_5.0.12-104815-Debian-jessie_amd64.deb" using dpkg

The installation runs are below:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
root#
root# apt-get install virtualbox-5.0
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Recommended packages:
  linux-headers
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  virtualbox-5.0
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/63.8 MB of archives.
After this operation, 155 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously unselected package virtualbox-5.0.
(Reading database ... 217108 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../virtualbox-5.0_5.0.12-104815~Debian~jessie_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking virtualbox-5.0 (5.0.12-104815~Debian~jessie) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (215-17+deb8u2) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.13-1) ...
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info (1.3-1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58) ...
Setting up virtualbox-5.0 (5.0.12-104815~Debian~jessie) ...
addgroup: The group `vboxusers' already exists as a system group. Exiting.
Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS ...done.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
ln: target ‘setup’ is not a directory
root# 
root#

==========================

root# 
root# dpkg -i virtualbox-5.0_5.0.12-104815-Debian-jessie_amd64.deb
Selecting previously unselected package virtualbox-5.0.
(Reading database ... 217108 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack virtualbox-5.0_5.0.12-104815-Debian-jessie_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking virtualbox-5.0 (5.0.12-104815~Debian~jessie) ...
Setting up virtualbox-5.0 (5.0.12-104815~Debian~jessie) ...
addgroup: The group `vboxusers' already exists as a system group. Exiting.
Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS ...done.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
ln: target ‘setup’ is not a directory
Processing triggers for systemd (215-17+deb8u2) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.13-1) ...
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info (1.3-1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58) ...
root# 
root#
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Observations:

(1) The error doesn't seem to affect anything after it.
(2) The installer log at /var/log/vbox-install.log looks good.
(3) The dmesg output looks good as well.
(4) The Virtualbox menu item show up correctly. I didn't install any VMs; I had only done a plain-vanilla install of the VM Manager.

The source of the error is in a post installation script:

/usr/lib/virtualbox/postinst-common.sh

Line # 59 of this script is the source of this error:

ln -sf "${MY_PATH}/postinst-common.sh" /sbin/rcvboxdrv setup

That is because "MYPATH" is "/usr/lib/virtualbox" and there is no directory called "setup" in "MYPATH".

My workaround was this:

root# 
root# mkdir -p /usr/lib/virtualbox/setup
root# 
root# /usr/lib/virtualbox/postinst-common.sh
root# 
root# echo $?
0
root# 
root# file /usr/lib/virtualbox/setup/*
/usr/lib/virtualbox/setup/postinst-common.sh: symbolic link to /usr/lib/virtualbox/postinst-common.sh
/usr/lib/virtualbox/setup/rcvboxdrv:          symbolic link to /sbin/rcvboxdrv
root# 
root# rcvboxdrv setup
Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS ...done.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
root# 
root# 

I don't know at what point in the installation process the directory /usr/lib/virtualbox is created, but if the directory "setup" is also created around that point, then this minor defect could be fixed easily.

A discussion of this issue is in the Virtualbox forums at this link:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=75421

[Frank Mehnert]

Thanks. Simple typo which will be fixed in the next maintenance release.

[Frank Mehnert]

Fixed in VBox 5.0.14.