error instaling Virtualbox update

[Gilles Gravier]

Hi, Melissa,

On 14/03/2010 22:44, Rev. Melissa Lane wrote:
> Still a noob and getting frustrated daily! I tried to update
> virtualbox today and received an error that says error processing the
> install file /temp/virtualbox-3.1_3.1.4-57640_ubuntu karmic_i386.deb
> (--install) I saved a screenshot of the entire error if anyone can
> help. I also havent been able to use virtualbox for awhile either.
>

Several things can have happened...

First, how did you procede to install the .deb file?

First possible error is that the file was downloaded as text. Some
browsers do things wrong and get some files as text. Make sure your
browser gets it as a text file.

Second possible error is that you got the wrong number of bits. If your
OS is 32 bits... get the 32 bit build. If you're running in 64 bits...
get the 64 bits version.

I'm making the assumption that because your file is a karmic 32 bit
file, that is indeed what you are running.

Sun provides a proper repository for VirtualBox. My recommendation is
that to avoid all of the issues I mention above (and a few more) you
install VBox through the repositories.

You probably want to, in order to start clean, remove the previous
version of VBox (this will not remove your existing VMs, so don't worry).

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free

Then get Sun's signing key for the repository files by running the following line :

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then install VirtualBox from Synaptics

Either fromthe GUI, or from the comman line by typing :

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.1

You might want to install dkms as well to ensure proper updates of VBox kernel modules if kernel is upgraded :

sudo apt-get install dkms

(This may already be installed on your system - but since you say VBox has stopped working, it may be due to lack of dkms when you upgraded your kernel last time).

Gilles.


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