It is excellent news that there is (since 6.1.18 ?) an IPS package (p5p) at the downloads page of virualbox.org.
As far as I can see in 6.1.26 the reboot-needed line was removed from the manifest in later versions:
# pkg info -g ./myrepo/ virtualbox
Name: system/virtualbox
Summary: Oracle VM VirtualBox
Description: A powerful PC virtualization solution
Category: System/Virtualization
State: Not installed
Publisher: virtualbox
Version: 6.1.26 (6.1.26r145957)
Build Release: 5.11
Branch: 0.0.0.145957.0.0.0
Packaging Date: Wed Jul 28 16:47:29 2021
Size: 257.24 MB
FMRI: pkg://virtualbox/system/virtualbox@6.1.26,5.11-0.0.0.145957.0.0.0:20210728T164729Z
When I check the driver lines it appears they are now without reboot-needed :
$ pkg contents -g ./myrepo/ -r -m virtualbox | grep driver
driver name=vboxbow
driver devlink=type=ddi_pseudo;name=vboxdrv;minor=vboxdrv\t\D devlink=type=ddi_pseudo;name=vboxdrv;minor=vboxdrvu\t\M0 name=vboxdrv perms="* 0600 root sys" perms="vboxdrvu 0666 root sys"
driver name=vboxnet
driver name=vboxusb
driver devlink=type=ddi_pseudo;name=vboxusbmon\t\D name=vboxusbmon perms="* 0660 root vboxusers"
Anyway it is great to see that there is support for an IPS p5p.
When I wrote my old
https://sourceforge.net/projects/create ... lbox-repo/ script for VirtualBox 5.x and 6.0, which is now partly or entirely obsoleted by those .p5p files, I also set reboot-needed=true on the drivers.
But I have nothing to do with (and did not work on) the VirtualBox.org p5p files.
Also after writing my create-virtualbox-repo script, I discovered the OpenIndiana virtualbox package.
The OI OpenIndiana package seems to have driver lines without reboot-needed=true.
I don't know the history of the OI virtualbox package but the OI package has a separate virtualbox-additions package which could be useful.
The create-virtualbox-repo also did something like that , e.g.
- local virtualbox/guest/vboxguest 6.0.0-3.127054:20181210T095011Z
local virtualbox/guest/vboxguest 5.2.29-130064:20190418T145609Z
Maybe I am mistaken but I think I read somewhere that longtime ago in the days of OpenSolaris (parent of OpenIndiana and Solaris 11) there existed an extra repo ('extra' as the name of the repo) which had extra software such as VirtualBox. But I have never seen or used that.
ANYWAY ... I am sincerely happy to see this p5p appear on the official VirtualBox.org as it is much better than home-brewn solutions like mine.