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I am running debian 7 and trying to install virtualbox using:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

and getting this output:

Selecting previously unselected package virtualbox.
Unpacking virtualbox (from .../virtualbox_4.1.18-dfsg-2+deb7u1_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package virtualbox-dkms.
Unpacking virtualbox-dkms (from .../virtualbox-dkms_4.1.18-dfsg-2+deb7u1_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package virtualbox-qt.
Unpacking virtualbox-qt (from .../virtualbox-qt_4.1.18-dfsg-2+deb7u1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for menu ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ...
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Setting up libvncserver0:amd64 (0.9.9+dfsg-1) ...
Setting up virtualbox (4.1.18-dfsg-2+deb7u1) ...
insserv: script virtualbox: service vboxdrv already provided!
insserv: exiting now!
update-rc.d: error: insserv rejected the script header
dpkg: error processing virtualbox (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of virtualbox-dkms:
 virtualbox-dkms depends on virtualbox (>= 4.1.18-dfsg-2+deb7u1); however:
  Package virtualbox is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing virtualbox-dkms (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of virtualbox-qt:
 virtualbox-qt depends on virtualbox (= 4.1.18-dfsg-2+deb7u1); however:
  Package virtualbox is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing virtualbox-qt (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 virtualbox
 virtualbox-dkms
 virtualbox-qt
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

can anybody help?

1
  • I'd try the following commands (in that order and of course with sudo: dpkg -P virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-qt (removes the packages incl. config), apt-get clean (cleans the cache), apt-get update (fetches packages info), apt-get install virtualbox-dkms, apt-get install virtualbox.
    – mpy
    Oct 13, 2013 at 8:44

2 Answers 2

28
+50

This (french) article describes the same error on Debian : Virtualbox & vboxdrv.
The solution there was to delete two files and reinstall Virtualbox as follows

rm -r /etc/init.d/vboxdrv
rm -r /var/lib/update-rc.d/vboxdrv 
apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-additions virtualbox-qt

The article also lists a solution that works for Fedora :

/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

A comment later remarks that apt-get purge virtualbox should have been used instead of apt-get remove, which would have also removed the init script, so maybe this is the real cause of your problem, that can be solved simply by doing purge.

2
  • That actually worked for me. ty much
    – mawburn
    Oct 13, 2013 at 14:46
  • After trying almost everything else, I found this and it worked. Thank you very much! Nov 29, 2014 at 13:07
-1

After you get that error, try apt-get -f install to force an install of the files that didn't get loaded because of the error. Then try apt-get upgrade again, apt-get -f install back and forth until only the package that has the error is left.

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