How to port an old virtualbox to a newer version of virtual box?

[NavN]

I'm on Linux Mint version 21, and I was earlier using VirtualBox version 6 (I think it was 6.1.8). With version 6, I had created a Virtual machine using an Ubuntu 22 ISO file.
Now I've uninstalled Virtual Box version 6, and I installed the latest Virtual Box version 7. On starting the Ubuntu 22 virtual machine, Virtual Box shows me this error:

Code: Select all

VirtualBox - Error in supR3HardenedMainInitRuntime
RTR3InitEx failed with rc=-1912 (fRtFlags=0x10000) (rc=-1912)
The VirtualBox kernel modules do not match this version of VirtualBox. The installation of VirtualBox was apparently not successful. Executing '/sbin/vboxconfig' may correct this. Make sure that you are not mixing builds of VirtualBox from different sources. where: supR3HardeneedMainInitRuntime what:4
VERR_VM_DRIVER_VERSION_MISMATCH (-1912) - The installed support driver doesn't match the version of the user.

The virtual machine was created with vdi files. May I know how to port old virtual machines to make them work with newer versions of Virtual Box? Could you build-in a tool that would automatically do so?

[scottgus1]

Virtualbox VMs come up just fine to new versions of Virtualbox, as long as there are no bugs.

Your problem apparently is that the old Virtualbox version wasn't uninstalled completely when the new version was installed, and there's a mix of versions now.

Purge the Virtualbox app off your host (note that this does not include the VM or the config files in "$HOME/.config/VirtualBox".

Then run the prerequisites https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch02. ... nux-prereq then Virtualbox from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

Note that the forks of Virtualbox from the distros are supported by the distros, not here. So if you decide to get Mint's fork from their distro, you'd have to ask them about issues. We only cover Virtualbox from http://www.virtualbox.org.

Also note that 7.0 is still in bug hunt phase, so you might want to back up your VM, just in case.

[NavN]

Problem solved! Thank you. I had to purge the older version and also the version 7 which I installed via dpkg (I had downloaded the package meant for Ubuntu).
Found the installation steps for Mint on the site linuxiac under the topic install-virtualbox-7-on-linux-mint-21

[scottgus1]

Glad you're up and running!