Issues installing VirtualBox guest additions 5.2.8 under RHEL 7.5

[Oliver Jones]

Hi,

I eagerly downloaded RHEL 7.5, since it was released a few days ago, installed it on a VirtualBox 5.2.8 VM, but ran into issues immediately after installing the guest additions: The VM will boot up, but never fully enters graphical mode - the mouse pointer will appear - and even moves in and out of the VirtualBox window as it should, but nothing else happens. Even logging in as root and issuing "startx" doesn't get me anywhere.

The following errors are listed in the /var/log/vboxadd-setup.log file:

Code: Select all

$ cat vboxadd-setup.log | grep 'rror \|rror:'
/tmp/vbox.0/vbox_drv.h:195:21: error: field ‘base’ has incomplete type
/tmp/vbox.0/vbox_drv.h:195:21: error: field ‘base’ has incomplete type
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vbox.0/modesetting.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vbox.0/hgsmi_base.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vbox.0] Error 2
make: *** [vboxvideo] Error 2

A full copy of the log is also included. This was conducted on a fresh RHEL 7.5 minimal install, with the 'X Window System', 'GNOME' and 'Fonts' yum install groups manually installed, plus yum-utils, ftp, vsftpd, telnet, telnet-server, firefox, curl, wget, httpd, gcc, make, kernel-devel, net-tools, bridge-utils, libvirt-client, compat-libstdc++-33.i686, epel-release-latest-7 (from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/e ... noarch.rpm) and dkms (from epel-release-latest-7).

[socratis]

I eagerly downloaded RHEL 7.5, since it was released a few days ago

Well, the latest VirtualBox wasn't released a few days ago, so that's not a surprise. If you want to use the latest version for your host/guests, you should also consider doing the same for VirtualBox. You should try the latest test builds.

[Oliver Jones]

To be honest, RHEL 7.5 uses Kernel 3.10.0-862 - which is truly ancient. While it's true that there may be new fixes in the kernel due to security issues and other compatibility criteria, we're not talking about cutting-edge software here, nor anything that should seriously break compatibility with stuff like VirtualBox - it's a point release for a good reason.

It's also worth mentioning that anyone who is running RHEL 7.4 will automatically get RHEL 7.5 when they next do a 'yum -y update', so this isn't something that should be simply dismissed, ignored or minimised: A response like yours would have been acceptable (and even justified) a couple of months ago, but RHEL 7.5 has been in beta since late January. Now it's officially released, and even users who now install from RHEL 7.4 media and do a yum update will now be facing this issue.

[socratis]

I'm not dismissing, ignoring or minimizing anything. I was simply stating the facts. And I'm pretty sure that the VirtualBox team has been testing RHEL 7.5, that's why I proposed the latest test builds, to see if they've actually implemented the fixes.

Did you try them?

[Oliver Jones]

I don't run test builds, for the same reason I don't run Fedora, and the same reason I didn't run the RHEL 7 beta. I run releases! Why is that? Because I look out for what my customers want to run, and my customers do not install untested software. At the moment, the situation is as follows: Your latest release of VirtualBox is not compatible with RHEL 7, if a user installs and then updates the software before building the guest additions. This applies to all versions of RHEL install media - not just RHEL 7.5. The only practical difference is the amount of updates yum will download.

I will be catching a plane to Athens at midday, where I will be attending the Oracle Infrastructure Forum, this week. For customers who ask "Can your software run on the latest version of RHEL?", I will be able to answer "Yes" - because I have a backup plan already prepared. I had hoped to be able to show them the software running on VirtualBox - it is an Oracle forum, after all - but in this case, it won't be happening. When it comes to presenting technical material - or products - everyone wants to look like Steve Jobs - but nobody wants to look like Bill Gates. The best way to wind up looking like Bill Gates is to run the latest, cutting-edge, unreleased, software, in front of important strangers.

Thanks for the offer, but I'll wait for the next release.

[andyp73]

I have had a look at the VirtualBox header file that is throwing the compilation error and it hasn't been touched in a few months according to subversion. It does include some kernel header files based on either the kernel or RHEL version (it mentions 7.3 and 7.4) but they look as though they use >= checks so 7.5 perhaps ought to have worked.

Someone (maybe even you) has raised this in the bug tracker as ticket #17676 so it will be on the developers radar but as we are all just users we don't get to see visibility on who is doing what or when.

-Andy.

[edgilmore]

I tried the 5.2.9 testbuilds, my OL7.5 VM is still b0rked.
It looks like the same problem we had with the upgrade from 7.3 to 7.4 and the updated Xorg.

[socratis]

This doens't belong in the "Windows Hosts" section, it's clearly a "Linux Guests" post. Moving.

[edgilmore]

Issue seems to be resolved with the 5.2.122202 test build

Ed