Installation Problem - Driver failed to attach

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Solaris hosts.
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rhcl
Posts: 1
Joined: 7. Dec 2010, 02:12
Primary OS: Solaris
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: N/A

Installation Problem - Driver failed to attach

Post by rhcl »

I have a problem installing VirtualBox on Solaris 10 running on an x4100.

Problem:
# pkgadd -d VirtualBox-3.2.12-SunOS-r68302.pkg
# ...
# ...runs normally, prompts for responses
# ...
## Executing postinstall script.
Checking for older bits...
- Unloaded: Web service
- Unloaded: Zone access service
- Removed: Host module
Installing new ones...
Loading VirtualBox kernel modules...
devfsadm: driver failed to attach: vboxdrv
Warning: Driver (vboxdrv) successfully added to system but failed to attach
can't load module: Protocol error
- Loading: Host ...FAILED!
## Completed but with errors.
pkgadd: ERROR: postinstall script did not complete successfully

Installation of <SUNWvbox> failed.

# uname -a
SunOS cybele 5.10 Generic_118855-33 i86pc i386 i86pc

# isainfo -k
amd64

# tail /var/adm/messages
Dec 6 17:41:40 cybele vboxdrv: [ID 706828 kern.notice] NOTICE: cpuset_t size mismatch. probably too old a kernel.
Dec 6 17:41:40 cybele vboxdrv: [ID 981640 kern.notice] NOTICE: vbi_init failed. rc=22

The patch manager doesn't show any available updates (although I hasten to add my Solaris sysadmin skills are rusty).

Nothing in the ReadMe.txt seems to help. I know this was discussed about 18-24 months ago, but don't see anything there that fixes this problem.

Ideas?
jimklimov
Posts: 83
Joined: 7. Jul 2009, 08:28
Primary OS: OpenSolaris other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linux, OSOL, Windows

Re: Installation Problem - Driver failed to attach

Post by jimklimov »

I believe you're running Solaris 10 update 3 (11/06) which is indeed rather old - current "Oracle Solaris 10" update version is 9 (9/10), last "Sun Solaris" update version was 8 (10/09).

See kernel patch levels here, for instance:
http://blogs.sun.com/patch/entry/solari ... rogression

More info may be seen in your /etc/release file, i.e. for Solaris 10u6 it would be such (note s10x_u6 in version tag):

Solaris 10 10/08 s10x_u6wos_07b X86
Copyright 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
Assembled 27 October 2008

If my guess is true, you may have to update your system, i.e. by "installing over" your current system, or by using LiveUpgrade (clone your system to an empty slice, update that clone, reboot into that clone). After that you may want to use a similar process to change the root FS format to ZFS instead of UFS. This also requires an empty slice - which might be where your current (old) OS lives now, and won't be needed after upgrading and testing the new version.
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