[clug] Ubuntu 20.04 kernels and VirtualBox

[Tony Lewis]

Hi Bob,

I've purged and reinstalled a few times, and the results persist.  Your 
result indicates that the package or process is not broken for everyone, 
but only for me.  I might try it in a container to see if it is OK in a 
pristine environment.  If it is, then there is something else weird 
going on.

Tony

On 22/7/20 9:30 am, Bob Edwards via linux wrote:
> Hi Tony,
>
> I have VirtualBox (6.1.10) installed on a number of Ubuntu 20.04
> systems, including on VMware Horizon and on  VMware Player, but
> I haven't tried upgrading anything (yet).
>
> I ran your find command and only got 5.4.0-40-generic and 
> 5.4.0-42-generic.
>
> How did you install VirtualBox?
>
> Something might be wrong with your kernel header file(s). Maybe purge
> and re-install?
>
> cheers,
> Bob Edwards.
>
> On 22/7/20 1:58 am, Tony Lewis via linux wrote:
>> I recently upgraded to (K)Ubuntu 20.04 but there was a problem 
>> upgrading the VirtualBox kernel modules. After much head scratching 
>> in shell scripts and makefiles, it appears that VirtualBox was trying 
>> to build modules into /lib/modules/5.4.44 rather than 
>> /lib/modules/5.4.0-42-generic. After more head scratching, I find 
>> that the kernel.release file contains '5.4.44'.  This appears to be 
>> the same for other variants for 5.4.0 Ubuntu kernels, but a sample 
>> 5.3.0 kernel I installed has the expected '5.3.0-62-generic' contents:
>>
>>     $ find /usr/src -name kernel.release -exec grep . {} \; -print
>>     5.4.41
>> /usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-39-generic/include/config/kernel.release
>>     5.3.0-62-generic
>> /usr/src/linux-headers-5.3.0-62-generic/include/config/kernel.release
>>     5.4.44
>> /usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/include/config/kernel.release
>>     5.4.44
>> /usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-40-generic/include/config/kernel.release
>>
>> What's really weird is that the native package that I downloaded and 
>> extracted manually has '5.4.0-42-generic':
>>
>>       $ dpkg -x
>> /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic_5.4.0-42.46_amd64.deb 
>>
>>     lh42
>>       $ find lh42 -name kernel.release -exec grep . {} \; -print
>>     5.4.0-42-generic
>> lh42/usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/include/config/kernel.release
>>
>> Even more weird is that if I then check the package against the 
>> checksums, some 17 files have been changed:
>>
>>     # md5sum -c
>>     /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic.md5sums| grep 
>> -v OK
>>     usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/.config: FAILED
>>     usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/.config.old: FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/include/config/auto.conf: FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/include/config/auto.conf.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/include/config/kernel.release:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/include/config/tristate.conf:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/include/generated/autoconf.h:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/basic/.fixdep.cmd: FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.conf.o.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.confdata.o.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.expr.o.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.lexer.lex.c.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.lexer.lex.o.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.parser.tab.h.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.parser.tab.o.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.preprocess.o.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>> usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.0-42-generic/scripts/kconfig/.symbol.o.cmd:
>>     FAILED
>>     md5sum: WARNING: 17 computed checksums did NOT match
>>
>> But for the 5.3.x headers, there were no mismatches:
>>
>>     # md5sum -c
>>     /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-headers-5.3.0-62-generic.md5sums| grep -v
>>     OK | wc -l
>>     0
>>
>> Is something broken here?  I can't understand what could be changing 
>> the files upon install (the .postinst file doesn't appear to do much).
>>
>> My baseball bat fix was to copy the manually extracted files across 
>> over the installed files, and then my VirtualBox would build its 
>> kernel modules and run.  But I'm keen to try and figure out what the 
>> issue is here.
>>
>> Any clues?
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
>>
>>
>