Upgrading to VirtualBox 3.0

Today, as sometimes happens, I ran into a situation where I needed to run a Windows-only app. Having recently moved over to a new laptop, I didn't have an existing virtual machine to use. What I did have was an old installation of VirtualBox 2.1

Having recently read about the release of version 3.0 of the venerable VM host, I figured now was as good of a time as any to upgrade. After modifying sources.list and importing the apt-secure key, I initiated the download:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.0

I checked back a few minutes later and much to my shagrin, I was greeted with an error message about the kernel module failing to compile due to the kernel headers not being present.

This, I realized, was the first snag I had run into due to upgrading to the upstream 2.6.30 kernel to fix issues I had been having with poor 2D acceleration in Jaunty (reference).

Not prepared to give up, I headed over to the Ubuntu kernel repository where, thankfully, the 2.6.30 kernel headers were available. I grabbed and installed the appropriate deb, and ran the familiar:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

And was greeted with another error:

* Stopping VirtualBox kernel module
* done.
* Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module
* Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong

The log gave me this:

Error! Your kernel source for kernel 2.6.30-020630-generic cannot be found at
/lib/modules/2.6.30-020630-generic/build or /lib/modules/2.6.30-020630-generic/source.

Silly mistake on my part this time. I had downloaded the kernel headers, but not the kernel source. I grabbed and installed the kernel source deb, and this time the kernel module compiled without a hitch.

I am installing a WinXP guest machine now.