Can't start VB not-root - Segmentation Fault

[leoj_senrab]

"sudo VirtualBox" works, but "VirtualBox" alone returns one-line output "Segmentation fault". Every once and a while it also pops up the error dialog :

Code: Select all

"VirtualBox: Error -10 in SUPR3HardenedMain!
VirtualBox: Effective UID is not root (euid=1000 egid=1000 uid=1000 gid=1000)"

VB 4.1.2
Ubuntu 10.04

I've found similar reports on this and other forums but they are all years-old, closed as "fixed in v. 1.x or 2.x or 4.x", or else they are some other root cause for "segmentation fault". I've upgraded from 3.1 to 4.0.12 to 4.1.2 with no change in effect. I saw that someone in another case had done an strace so I tried that but it doesn't tell me anything I'd understand. There are core dumps created when this happens, but I assume they are corrupt

Edit: because the file size is reported as 128 TB.

The output data I could gather is attached plus listing and hardware specs. Help is appreciated.

[Perryg]

Are you a member of the vobxusers group?

[leoj_senrab]

joel@joel-desktop:~$ groups joel
joel : joel adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare libvirtd vboxusers
joel@joel-desktop:~$ VirtualBox
Segmentation fault

I didn't check that output at first. I went to the gui applet and checked Advanced Settings > User Privileges, where I checked "Use VirtualBox virtualization solution". I tried again but it didn't work. Rebooted, same result.

"sudo" still works btw. 'joel' is the only user on the system. This seems like the right track, though I wish I knew how the settings had gone wrong in the first place. Any suggestions?

[leoj_senrab]

I've done a complete removal and reinstall of 4.1.2 after making sure I was a member of vboxusers. No change.

[Perryg]

Where did you get your VirtualBox from?
Have you tried to set the VBox_Users_Home environment to the normal user after you set the login to the vboxusers group?

[leoj_senrab]

Downloading the latest VB from virtualbox.org, for Linux AMD-64 hosts.
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualb ... _amd64.deb

Setting HOME didn't help if this is what you meant:

joel@joel-desktop:~$ groups joel
joel : joel adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare libvirtd vboxusers
joel@joel-desktop:~$ echo $HOME
/home/joel
joel@joel-desktop:~$ export VBox_Users_Home=$HOME
joel@joel-desktop:~$ VirtualBox
Segmentation fault
joel@joel-desktop:~$ export VBox_Users_Home=/home/joel
joel@joel-desktop:~$ VirtualBox
Segmentation fault
joel@joel-desktop:~$ echo $VBox_Users_Home
/home/joel

[valdis]

I was getting bit by this with other stuff that uses GL. You may want to check what release of glibc you're running - apparently the 2.14.90 version has some issues with the NVidia drivers, and dropping back to 2.14-3 or so fixes it.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=165665 discusses it a bit (starting on page 2 or so).

[richinbath]

I too have had this problem "effective uid is not root" after an update, having previously had it working nicely. I tried re-install as suggested to no avail. I resolved the problem as follows:

When VirtulBox loads or, in some cases when updated, there are 5 executable files which have group set to "vboxusers" to allow other than root to run it. Since I have not added myself and other users to this group, I chose to change the group for these files to "users", which has worked up to the latest update. It appears that the "set user ID on execution" flag must also be set for the group, which it was not after the update.

root@: /usr/lib/virtualbox # ls -1l | grep vboxusers
-rwsr-x--- 1 root vboxusers 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxHeadless
-rwsr-x--- 1 root vboxusers 10696 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxNetAdpCtl
-rwsr-x--- 1 root vboxusers 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxNetDHCP
-rwsr-x--- 1 root vboxusers 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxSDL
-rwsr-x--- 1 root vboxusers 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VirtualBox
root@: /usr/lib/virtualbox # chgrp users VBoxHeadless VBoxNetAdpCtl VBoxNetDHCP VBoxSDL VirtualBox
root@: /usr/lib/virtualbox # chmod +s VBoxHeadless VBoxNetAdpCtl VBoxNetDHCP VBoxSDL VirtualBox
root@: /usr/lib/virtualbox # ls -1l | grep users
-rwsr-s--- 1 root users 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxHeadless
-rwsr-s--- 1 root users 10696 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxNetAdpCtl
-rwsr-s--- 1 root users 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxNetDHCP
-rwsr-s--- 1 root users 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VBoxSDL
-rwsr-s--- 1 root users 31320 Oct 3 18:31 VirtualBox

Then I am able to start it from my own user space.

Hope that helps, because as one of the postings stated a search on "effective uid is not root" reported problems dating back to 2009. A brief posting at the bottom of one of these lead me to the "set user ID on execution" flag solution, for which I am very grateful to the person who posted that.

[Chelmite]

I cannot start VirtualBox (VirtualBox-4.1-4.1.8_75467_fedora15-1.x86_64). It issues a segmentation fault.
I am a member of vboxusers, but it still won't run.
I tried changing:
% chgrp vboxusers VBoxHeadless VBoxNetAdpCtl VBoxNetDHCP VBoxSDL VirtualBox
but when I try to run it, I get:

VirtualBox: Error -10 in SUPR3HardenedMain!
VirtualBox: Effective UID is not root (euid=1010 egid=100 uid=1010 gid=100)

VirtualBox: Tip! It may help to reinstall VirtualBox.

I cannot run VirtualBox as root either. I still get the segmentation fault!

[jml9904]

Perryg nailed this one up for me, and it sounds like you have the same problem. If you installed VirtualBox as root, this happens. My solution was to deinstall VirtualBox, then log in as a non-root user, and do "sudo rpm -ivh ..." with the name of your VB rpm. Once that was done, all was well.