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Terrible error messages

Posted: 13. Jun 2012, 14:20
by PhilKMills
Yesterday I got VirtualBox installed with a XP guest, followed by a lot of installing and configuring. All went quite well and I'm impressed by what the program can do.

This morning, my first attempt to start a VM resulted in:
Failed to load VMMR0.r0 (VERR_SUPLIB_OWNER_NOT_ROOT).

What??

After a bit of searching, I found reference to a possible fix by changing the owner of my Applications folder and did that, which resulted in a much clearer error:
Failed to load VMMR0.r0 (VERR_SUPLIB_WRITE_NON_SYS_GROUP).

Well, no, I guess it didn't.

This time I figured it out by finding the source code on-line...special case for the "admin" group on a Mac. (Lucky for me that I've been a programmer for 30+ years.)

I'm not sure whether I'm more bothered by an application that fails for reasons that have nothing to do with its functionality, error messages that are designed for programmers rather than the users who have to deal with them, or a software installation (probably new M-Audio drivers) that chown system files. But why choose; there's a lot to dislike about all those things.

Re: Terrible error messages

Posted: 13. Jun 2012, 14:54
by mpack
In fact, having a unique term for an error message makes it very easy to search for. I suppose additional words could be issued, though I doubt that any form of words would suit everyone. Still, if you feel strongly then by all means contribute relevant code improvements.