VirtualBox GuestAdditions 5.2.18 installation failure in RHEL7.5

Question

I'm hitting the following issue when trying to install VirtualBox GuestAdditions 5.2.18 on my RHEL7.5 guest image (my host machine is on Windows 10):

Copying additional modules ...
Installing additional modules ...
VirtualBox Guest Additions:Building the VirtualBox Guest Addition kernel modules.  This may take a while.
This system is currently not set up to build kernel modules.
Please install the Linux kernel "header" files matching the current kernel for adding new hardware support to the system.
The distribution packages containing the headers are probably:
    kernel-devel kernel-devel-4.4.136-4.NSN.el7.x86_64
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Starting.
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules.  This may take a while.
    This system is currently not set up to build kernel modules.
Please install the Linux kernel "header" files matching the current kernel for adding new hardware support to the system.
The distribution packages containing the headers are probably:
    kernel-devel kernel-devel-4.4.136-4.NSN.el7.x86_64
Press Return to close this window...

But, for sure, package kernel-devel-4.4.136-4.NSN.el7.x86_64 is already installed (and reinstallation of this package changes nothing).

Log of /var/log/vboxadd-install.log gives the following:

grep: Unmatched ) or \)
chcon: can't apply partial context to unlabeled file 'opt/VBoxGuestAddition-5.2.18/other/mount.vboxsf'
grep: Unmatched ) or \)
modprobe vboxguest failed
The log file /var/log/vboxadd-setup.log may contain further information.

Log of /var/log/vboxadd-setup.log gives the following:

Building the main Guest Additions module.
Error building the module:
modprobe vboxguest failed.

I don't really know where to look at next. If anyone has some clues, I will be very glad to hear from him.

Update: Hello all, I'm still stuck with this issue. Does anyone has some ideas to investigate this issue ?

Update 2: I've switched to VB5.2.20 but I still have this issue. I've made myself sure having the kernel header files 4.4.136-4.NSN.el7.x86_64 at correct location (usr/src/kernels/4.4.136-4.NSN.el7.x86_64). To me this error message has nothing to do with root cause of the issue. Please help because I have really no clues on how to investigate this.

Thanks Regards

Answer 1

After further investigations, it turns out that the symbolic link build from /lib/modules/ to the kernel source was broken:

total 2080
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 42 Jan 14 16:32 build -> /usr/src/kernels/4.4.136-4.NSN.el7.x86_64/

By restoring it manually, it works again!
Note that the original target path was correct, so the link was broken for a mysterious reason....

Answer 2

Slightly off from the original question, but I encountered the same issue when installing Guest Additions 5.2.18 on a RHEL 8 beta VM. Upgrading to VirtualBox 6 with Guest Additions 6.0.4 fixed the issue.

Answer 3

I have the vbguest plugin installed, and was encountering this error when attempting to run 'vagrant up' on a new vagrant box. The box still booted up fine and I was able to ssh into it; I'm not sure that was the case here for the OP though. My solution was to uninstall virtual box guest additions manually on the box. There is a shell file in the /opt directory that will uninstall it. I then did a vagrant reload and the plugin automatically installed the latest version of guest additions without encountering any errors. Hope this helps anyone else that comes here looking.