[Solved] VB VirtualBox-5.2.18-124319 will not start on Mac OSX 10.13.6 (High Sierra)

[dataguy]

I've been having persistent problems getting VirtualBox to run on my Mac running OSX 10.13.6 (High Sierra). Several upgrades to VirtualBox have not changed the symptoms. VirtualBox did at one time work, but seems to have stopped working around the time of the MacOS 10.13.4 update.

Current symptoms:
- Starting VirtualBox from Applications results in a brief flash of the VB Icon in the taskbar and no UI messages. system.log shows the following:

Sep 18 17:21:30 HW14049 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (org.virtualbox.app.VirtualBox.22500[1606]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1
Sep 18 17:21:30 HW14049 systemstats[65]: assertion failed: 17G65: systemstats + 914800 [D1E75C38-62CE-3D77-9ED3-5F6D38EF0676]: 0x40

- Starting VirtualBox from the command line as my user (a member of admin and wheel) throws the following error:

VirtualBox: Error -610 in supR3HardenedMainInitRuntime!
VirtualBox: dlopen("/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxRT.dylib",) failed: <NULL>

VirtualBox: Tip! It may help to reinstall VirtualBox.

- Running VirtualBox from the command line using sudo throws the same error:

VirtualBox: Error -610 in supR3HardenedMainInitRuntime!
VirtualBox: dlopen("/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxRT.dylib",) failed: <NULL>

VirtualBox: Tip! It may help to reinstall VirtualBox.

Remedies attempted:
- Download latest version of VB, run uninstaller, reboot, reinstall (no change)
- Download latest version of VB, run uninstaller, boot to recovery, disable csrutil, reboot, reinstall (no change)
- Verify ownership of /Application and related directories (all ownership looks correct)

$ ls -ald@ /Applications
 drwxrwxrwx+ 74 root  admin  2368 Sep 18 21:31 /Applications
$ ls -ald@ /Applications/VirtualBox.app/
 drwxr-xr-x  3 root  admin  96 Sep 18 21:31 /Applications/VirtualBox.app/
$ ls -ald@ /
 drwxr-xr-x  32 root  wheel  1024 Aug 10 12:27 /

- Repair Library permissions using

Code: Select all

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

per apple support article HT203538 (no change)

[socratis]

1. Your permissions are wrong, that's the only reason you're getting that error, no question about it.
2. No matter how many VirtualBox reinstallations you do, that won't fix your permissions.
3. Your /Applications directory has "drwxrwxrwx+" (other/write) permissions, which is wrong, and most probably your point of failure.
4. You have disabled SIP on your system on purpose. There's no other way that the /Applications directory would have other/write permissions.
5. Running "diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`" will do bupkis to fix your permissions.
6. Post the output of the following command. Note that it's not 9 commands, it's one command that spans 9 lines, so you need to copy/paste all 9 lines:

   ls -laed@ \
     / \
     /Applications \
     /Applications/VirtualBox.app \
     /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxRT.dylib \
     /private \
     /private/etc \
     /private/etc/sudoers \
     /private/tmp
   

[dataguy]

Permissions - got it.

Here's the output of the permissions check command:

drwxr-xr-x  32 root  wheel     1024 Aug 10 12:27 /
drwxrwxrwx+ 74 root  admin     2368 Sep 18 21:31 /Applications
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  admin       96 Sep 18 21:31 /Applications/VirtualBox.app
-rw-r--r--   1 root  admin  5529952 Aug 14 08:04 /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxRT.dylib
drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel      192 Oct  3  2017 /private
drwxr-xr-x  95 root  wheel     3040 Sep 18 21:23 /private/etc
-r--r-----   1 root  wheel     1563 Jul 15  2017 /private/etc/sudoers
drwxrwxrwt   8 root  wheel      256 Sep 19 07:45 /private/tmp

[socratis]

As I suspected it's your /Applications directory that has the problem, it's world(other) writable. The "damage" doesn't seem to be beyond that. You didn't tell me if you've disabled SIP or not though...

In any event, the command that you have to give is:

• sudo chmod o-w /Applications

Then if you do a

• ls -ald /Applications

you should see instead of what you have now

drwxrwxrwx+ 74 root  admin     2368 Sep 18 21:31 /Applications

this appropriate one

drwxrwxr-x+ 74 root  admin     2368 Sep 18 21:31 /Applications

Give it a try...

[dataguy]

SIP is usually enabled on this machine, though I did disable it temporarily when troubleshooting. I probably added W permissions to world on /Applications at some point late at night when attempting one of the fixes I tried!

chmod to /Applications is blocked by SIP, so I disabled SIP via boot to recovery -> csrutil disable -> reboot, then did as you suggested:

$ csrutil status
 System Integrity Protection status: disabled.
$ sudo chmod o-w /Applications
 Password:
$ ls -ald@ /Applications
 drwxrwxr-x+ 74 root  admin  2368 Sep 18 21:31 /Applications

After this process, VB starts successfully!

Thank you!

[Edit: VB continues to work after re-enabling SIP post the steps above!]

[socratis]

After this process, VB starts successfully!

\o/

[Edit: VB continues to work after re-enabling SIP post the steps above!]

Unless you are writing kernel drivers (highly doubtful) no application should be complaining about SIP, because that's the default on 99.999% of the systems.

Glad I could help. Marking as [Solved].