DISCLAIMER: I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 32bit, though I've seen this problem in previous releases as well.
I just wanted to make a quick post because I couldn't immediately find any information about this problem out there anywhere. This problem arises if you have both KVM and VirtualBox installed at the same time, VirtualBox refuses to start. It will give you the following message:
brutimus@localhost:~$ VirtualBox Headless Interface 2.0.4
(C) 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved
Listening on port 3389
Error: failed to start machine. Error message: VirtualBox can't operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot.
VBox status code: -4011 (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE)
[1]+ Exit 5 VBoxHeadless -startvm dev1
This will likely differ a little from your error message as I'm using VBoxHeadless and also trying to kick it to the background with the trailing ampersand.
The error message is a little daunting, I thought. I need to recompile my kernel?! Turns out, not so. All you need to do is issue:
brutimus@localhost:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/kvm stop
* Succesfully unloaded kvm module kvm_intel
VirtualBox started up fine after this. To keep it this way (if you don't want to completely uninstall KVM) just kill KVM from your startup scripts.
Posted by Sean Stoops on October 28, 2008
Comments
October 28, 2008 at 11:23 a.m.Brian Morgan
Hey Sean,
Great tip. Keep 'em coming.