This morning, I tried to run VirtualBox on my workstation–running Slackware64 Current–at work and found that the kernel modules were not installed. Knowing that I had upgraded the kernel (to 4.14.24) this morning, I tried to build the modules:
cd /usr/src/vboxhost-5.2.8
make
and got a horrible message (and feeling -):
/opt/VirtualBox/src/vboxhost/vboxdrv/Makefile.include.header:141: *** Error: unable to find the headers of the Linux kernel to build against. Specify KERN_VER= (currently 4.14.24) and run Make again. Stop. make[1]: Leaving directory '/opt/VirtualBox/src/vboxhost/vboxdrv' make: *** [Makefile:49: all] Error 2
I tried replacing the kernel source (the Slackware package) with source from kernel.org. I still got the same error. As of yet, I have no idea what the exact issue is, but I’ll keep poking around (when I get the time). For now, I’m back to running Slackware 14.2.
Update: The answer to this is on Linux Questions: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/virtualbox-5-2-8-cannot-find-the-kernel-source-slackware64-current-4175625211/!!
So, kudos to mralk3! (I guess this could be viewed as a bug in the Slackware package: kernel-modules-4.14.24-x86_64-1, but I won’t say that out loud -)
I did have to replace the new Kernel source I downloaded with the Slackware Package: kernel-huge-4.14.24-x86_64-1
UPDATE 2018-03-09 — Well, the good folks at Slackware have released an updated kernel-modules package with the links fixed: /kernel-modules-4.14.24-x86_64-2.txz! Happy Daze!
UPDATE 2018-03-12 — Both the superseded Linux-modules-4.14.25 and the (as of now) current Linux-modules-2.14.26 have the correct links and the VirtualBox modules build with no errors. Yay!
UPDATE 2018-03-16 — Today linux-modules-4.14.27 landed and it, too, works jest fine with VirtualBox.
Happy Slacking!
Stu…