Bug 768297 – app-emulation/virtualbox-6.1.18 Failed to open "/dev/vboxdrvu", errno=13, rc=VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE

• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Adjudicator Darren 2021-02-02 03:37:48 UTC]

~/.VirtualBox/VBoxSVC.log says:
00:21:49.267355 nspr-8   Failed to open "/dev/vboxdrvu", errno=13, rc=VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE
00:21:49.948916 nspr-3   Failed to open "/dev/vboxdrvu", errno=13, rc=VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE
00:28:35.352981 nspr-8   Failed to open "/dev/vboxdrvu", errno=13, rc=VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE

but it otherwise works.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
As normal user who's part of group 'vboxusers', do these commands:
1. sudo rmmod vboxdrv vboxnetadp vboxnetflt
2. sudo modprobe vboxdrv
3. sudo modprobe vboxnetadp
4. sudo modprobe vboxnetflt
5. VirtualBox
Actual Results:  
~/.Virtualbox/VBoxSVC.log
$ grep vboxdrvu ~/.VirtualBox/VBoxSVC.log
00:00:00.111792 nspr-2   Failed to open "/dev/vboxdrvu", errno=13, rc=VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE
00:00:00.521315 nspr-3   Failed to open "/dev/vboxdrvu", errno=13, rc=VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE


Expected Results:  
no error message

Workaround:
After "modprobe vboxdrv" there will appear:

$ ls -la /dev/vbox*
crw------- 1 root root      10, 60 02.02.2021 04:28 /dev/vboxdrvu
crw------- 1 root root      10, 61 02.02.2021 04:28 /dev/vboxdrv

So manually assigning permissions, gets rid of the error message:
    sudo chmod g+rw -- /dev/vboxdrvu                                                                                                     
    sudo chown :vboxusers -- /dev/vboxdrvu          

Is it odd that only vboxdrvu and not vboxdrv needs this? How come the other ones work?

Note that VirtualBox runs as regular user:

$ ps axuw|grep -v grep|grep -iE '(VBOX|virtualbox)'
user       53588  0.0  0.0   7104   632 pts/4    S+   04:11   0:00 tail -F VBoxSVC.log
root       57078  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        I<   04:28   0:00 [iprt-VBoxWQueue]
root       57082  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S    04:28   0:00 [iprt-VBoxTscThr]
user       57164  0.0  0.0   9476  3992 pts/0    S+   04:31   0:00 /bin/bash /home/user/bin/vbox
user       57175 15.0  0.2 2068484 164464 pts/0  Sl+  04:31   0:00 /usr/lib64/virtualbox/VirtualBox
user       57194  0.0  0.0  65036 11300 ?        S    04:31   0:00 /usr/lib64/virtualbox/VBoxXPCOMIPCD
user       57201  1.3  0.0 548248 22548 ?        Sl   04:31   0:00 /usr/lib64/virtualbox/VBoxSVC --auto-shutdown

app-emulation/virtualbox-6.1.18::gentoo was built with the following:
USE="opengl opus pam pulseaudio qt5 udev vnc -alsa -debug -doc -dtrace -headless -java (-libressl) -lvm -pax_kernel -python -sdk -vboxwebsrv" ABI_X86="(64)" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_8 -python3_7"

[Comment 1 Adjudicator Darren 2021-02-02 03:57:47 UTC]

/** The system device name. */                                                                                                           
#define DEVICE_NAME_SYS     "vboxdrv"                                                                                                    
/** The user device name. */                                                                                                             
#define DEVICE_NAME_USR     "vboxdrvu"

[Comment 2 Viorel Munteanu 2022-08-21 05:56:42 UTC]

I searched and found this:
https://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg1648568.html
https://www.mgreene.org/?p=211

But I also looked in Debian and that patch didn't make it, Debian's rule file is the same as in Gentoo.

So I have to ask: what exactly is not working?  If all the functionality is there, the error message in the log is harmless and I don't see any reason to give access to those devices by default if it is not needed.