virtualbox.org

Hi. Trying to uninstall my existing 5.2.27 on Ubuntu 16.04. Tried to upgrade to 6.0.16 but deb installer demanded I manually uninstall. Obviously, I want to maintain my existing configuration and vdi files. Trying to uninstall with:

sudo dpkg -r virtualbox-5.2.27 (which is the correct installed version, I checked About)

And I get:

dpkg: warning: ignoring request to remove virtualbox-5.2.27 which isn't installed

I also tried the command specifying virtualbox-5.2

with the same result.

All suggestions appreciated. Thanks very much!

I'm no Linux guy, but when Windows users have issues with installing or uninstalling Virtualbox we point out that the Virtualbox installer is really made and installed via the Microsoft MSI installer system, which is a Microsoft program, not a Virtualbox program, and a Microsoft guru needs to scan the MSI logs to tell what has gone wrong with their MSI system, which is jacking up Virtualbox.

In your case, the Linux package manager and your own recollections & troubleshooting are confused with each other about exactly what you have installed. You'll probably need to Google how to find out the exact thing to enter in a 'dpkg -r' command. We don't know what's really on your computer, unfortunately.

When you do get your old Virtualbox cleared off, use the official Virtualbox from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads. We don't know how the forked repositories act and can't support the forks.

5.2.27 is an odd version number, so it looks like you installed from a .run file because testbuilds are not provided as .deb. Production releases have been 5.2.26 and 5.2.28.
From https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds

Test builds for Linux hosts are generally packed up in a shell script installer with the extension ".run". To install them, you first need to remove your existing VirtualBox installation (but not your virtual machines - they will continue to work with the test build) and then execute the installer. To remove the test build again, execute the installer with the parameter "uninstall" on the command line.

There was a buggy version of VB around that time, and the recommended procedure was to install this version to fix it. I was just following orders! But I do need to uninstall it to upgrade now. Thanks.

I should add, I no longer have that installer to run uninstall with it as noted above -- or I don't know WHERE it is in the existing installation.

Martin wrote:5.2.27 is an odd version number

Good point Martin! Odd, therefore a test version, therefore no longer available for download. I tell Windows users to keep test downloads to fix installing problems, because the test downloads disappear when the next even-number version comes out.

Unless a Linux guru comes along to walk you through this, you should approach this as 'program X won't uninstall, how do I purge it?' through the available Ubuntu forums.

I found a standalone uninstall.sh in the directory structure. I'll give it a try.

Actually, I *am* a Linux "guru" -- but if someone more experienced with a given application knows the answer to an issue, I'd rather chat with them then go digging around in the Linux package management systems unnecessarily and risk (what's the technical term? Oh yes!) breaking stuff.