Cannot start VirtualBox as user, only as root => Upgrade package

[Nikos Platis]

My VirtualBox installation was working fine, until today: now I cannot start VirtualBox as a regular user, only as root. The error message I am getting is:

VirtualBox: supR3HardenedMainGetTrustedMain: dlopen("/opt/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.so",) failed: 
VBoxVMM.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I am running the generic amd64 version downloaded from virtualbox.org on a Mandriva Linux:

Linux melissa 2.6.33.7-desktop-2mnb #1 SMP Mon Sep 20 18:19:20 UTC 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I am suspecting that this issue is due to a recent update of glibc made by Mandriva. The changelog says: "security fix for CVE-2010-3847 (redhat)" and the related entries in Red Hat's database are:

​https://www.redhat.com/security/data/cve/CVE-2010-3847.html

​https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=643306

[Frank Mehnert]

Which VBox package are you using?

[Nikos Platis]

VirtualBox-3.2.10-66523-Linux_amd64.run downloaded from ​http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

As I already mentioned, this version was working fine prior to today's updates of glibc. I should add that after seeing this problem, I uninstalled it and reinstalled it with the same results.

Other than glibc, today only the nvidia driver was updated in my system (from 256.53 to 260.19.12).

[Frank Mehnert]

If you use another Linux package it should work as the .run packages are indeed a bit different. I will investigate but to me it seems that the Redhat guys was a bit overeager with the check.

[Nikos Platis]

I am sorry, but some other rpm packages that I tried would not be installed due to unsatisfied dependencies. Even the Mandriva packages are for older releases and cannot be installed on Mandriva 2010.1. So the generic package is the only option for me...

[Frank Mehnert]

Confirmed. As a temporary workaround use chrpath to change the RPATH for all *.so libaries in /opt/VirtualBox to /opt/VirtualBox.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please download the updated packages. Again, only .run packages for Linux are affected and only those were replaced (r66523 does not work, r66896 works).

[Frank Mehnert]

Note that these packages will only work when installed into /opt/VirtualBox (the default installation path).

[Alexander Shopov]

Replying to frank:

temporary workaround use chrpath

The problem with this solution is that the new path should be no longer than the old path. If the binary was compiled with RPATH=$ORIGIN, the new path must be no longer than length('$ORIGIN') which is just 7 chars. Not possible to change to either '/opt/VirtualBox' (15 chars) or '/usr/lib/virtualbox' (19 chars).

Additionally r66523 and r66896 changesets are not publicly available - last revision in the OSE version is r33324

[Alexander Shopov]

Additionally r66523 and r66896 changesets are not publicly available - last revision in the OSE version is r33324

Found it: r33316

[zebul6]

how are we supposed to deal with that bug if we use the binary build from virtualbox.org ?

[Frank Mehnert]

zebul6, I honestly don't understand your question. If you are affected by this bug (you cannot start VirtualBox anymore since some days, you get the error message which is described above) then you just should download the appropriate .run package again because they were updated as I already wrote. Note that the new packages will insist of installing to /opt/VirtualBox -- there is no way to change the installation path.

[zebul6]

I apologize I read too quickly and missed the part talking about updated .run Sorry again

[Frank Mehnert]

Obsolete since VBox 3.2.12.