Shared folders failure

[Urhixidur]

After upgrading my Linux guest's kernel to 4.0.5 (Ubuntu 12.04.5), the shared folders from my Windows host (Windows 7 Enterprise Service Pack 1) won't show any content. The Virtual Box extensions have been re-installed, so that's not it. I tried removing and adding the shared folder back in the machine's configuration: no effect. If I revert to a pre-upgrade virtual machine, the shared folder comes back.

What's wrong?

[loukingjr]

Just a guess but perhaps the packages for Ubuntu 12.04 are too old to build the guest addition modules against the 4.0.5 kernel?

Even the latest daily builds of 15.10 versions of 'buntus are still using the 3.19 kernels.

[Perryg]

You should be able to rebuild the additions and see if there are any warnings/errors.

Run the following in the guests terminal

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sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

Note you also need headers that match the kernel so if you did not install that when you installed the kernel there is your issue. Still the rebuild will notify you about that.

[Urhixidur]

Re-installing the virtual box additions from the iso seemed to have worked just fine (right after installing the new kernel, headers included). I can copy/paste with the host, use a larger window size, etc. Does the vbox additions installer generate a log somewhere?

[Perryg]

should be able to find it in /var/log/

[Urhixidur]

I must have not paid enough attention when re-installing the vbox additions the first time:

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$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup
[sudo] password for daniel: 
Removing existing VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
The headers for the current running kernel were not found. If the following
module compilation fails then this could be the reason.

Building the main Guest Additions module ...done.
Building the shared folder support module ...fail!
(Look at /var/log/vboxadd-install.log to find out what went wrong)
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions ...done.

Note that the "The headers for the current running kernel were not found" warning is meaningless, I always get this even though the headers are installed and the vbox additions build succeeds. Here is /var/log/vboxadd-install.log:

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...
  gcc -Wp,-MD,/tmp/vbox.0/.utils.o.d  -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/include -I./arch/x86/include -Iarch/x86/include/generated/uapi -Iarch/x86/include/generated  -Iinclude -I./arch/x86/include/uapi -Iarch/x86/include/generated/uapi -I./include/uapi -Iinclude/generated/uapi -include ./include/linux/kconfig.h -D__KERNEL__ -Wall -Wundef -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -Werror-implicit-function-declaration -Wno-format-security -std=gnu89 -m64 -mno-80387 -mno-fp-ret-in-387 -mtune=generic -mno-red-zone -mcmodel=kernel -funit-at-a-time -maccumulate-outgoing-args -DCONFIG_AS_CFI=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SIGNAL_FRAME=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SECTIONS=1 -DCONFIG_AS_FXSAVEQ=1 -DCONFIG_AS_SSSE3=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CRC32=1 -DCONFIG_AS_AVX=1 -DCONFIG_AS_AVX2=1 -pipe -Wno-sign-compare -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables -mno-sse -mno-mmx -mno-sse2 -mno-3dnow -mno-avx -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks -O2 -Wframe-larger-than=1024 -fstack-protector -Wno-unused-but-set-variable -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -fno-var-tracking-assignments -pg -mfentry -DCC_USING_FENTRY -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign -fno-strict-overflow -fconserve-stack -Werror=implicit-int -Werror=strict-prototypes -DCC_HAVE_ASM_GOTO -Wno-declaration-after-statement -fshort-wchar -include /tmp/vbox.0/include/VBox/VBoxGuestMangling.h -I/lib/modules/4.0.5-040005-generic/build/include -I/tmp/vbox.0/ -I/tmp/vbox.0/include -I/tmp/vbox.0/r0drv/linux -I/tmp/vbox.0/vboxsf/ -I/tmp/vbox.0/vboxsf/include -I/tmp/vbox.0/vboxsf/r0drv/linux -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -DRT_OS_LINUX -DIN_RING0 -DIN_RT_R0 -DIN_SUP_R0 -DVBOX -DVBOX_WITH_HGCM -DIN_MODULE -DIN_GUEST_R0 -DRT_NO_EXPORT_SYMBOL -DRT_ARCH_AMD64 -DVBOX_WITH_64_BITS_GUESTS  -DMODULE  -D"KBUILD_STR(s)=#s" -D"KBUILD_BASENAME=KBUILD_STR(utils)"  -D"KBUILD_MODNAME=KBUILD_STR(vboxsf)" -c -o /tmp/vbox.0/.tmp_utils.o /tmp/vbox.0/utils.c
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c: In function ‘sf_init_inode’:
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c:101:21: erreur: ‘struct address_space’ has no member named ‘backing_dev_info’
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c: In function ‘sf_init_backing_dev’:
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c:874:31: erreur: ‘BDI_CAP_MAP_DIRECT’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c:874:31: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c:875:31: erreur: ‘BDI_CAP_MAP_COPY’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c:876:31: erreur: ‘BDI_CAP_READ_MAP’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c:877:31: erreur: ‘BDI_CAP_WRITE_MAP’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/tmp/vbox.0/utils.c:878:31: erreur: ‘BDI_CAP_EXEC_MAP’ undeclared (first use in this function)
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vbox.0/utils.o] Erreur 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vbox.0] Erreur 2
make: *** [vboxsf] Erreur 2
Creating user for the Guest Additions.
Creating udev rule for the Guest Additions kernel module.

[Urhixidur]

Pages like https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/426816/ suggest backing_dev_info has been removed from kernel 4.

[Perryg]

Unless you build and compile your own kernel to also build the headers, the headers are not included (normally) and are in fact a separate download. So without a lot more information it would be impossible to tell you exactly why you are having issues.

Also if you look closely at the code you will see that a lot of what most people see thinking they are errors are just normal echo code. I would suggest that you install dkms so external modules are built when the kernel changes. This would help so you would not have to run around trying to figure out why ( just a suggestion ).

[loukingjr]

well that was easier than I thought. and since I had dkms installed I didn't have to reinstall the GAs.

[Urhixidur]

Unless you build and compile your own kernel to also build the headers, the headers are not included (normally) and are in fact a separate download. So without a lot more information it would be impossible to tell you exactly why you are having issues.

Also if you look closely at the code you will see that a lot of what most people see thinking they are errors are just normal echo code. I would suggest that you install dkms so external modules are built when the kernel changes. This would help so you would not have to run around trying to figure out why ( just a suggestion ).

Yes, I know. I had downloaded and installed linux-image-4.0.5-040005-generic_4.0.5-040005.201506061639_amd64.deb, linux-headers-4.0.5-040005_4.0.5-040005.201506061639_all.deb, and linux-headers-4.0.5-040005-generic_4.0.5-040005.201506061639_amd64.deb from kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa (pursuant to an unrelated glibc bug, #1463553 on bugs.launchpad.net).