Oracle Pushes VirtualBox 5.2 Into Public Beta

[FuturePilot]

We used to support DKMS, but since we still had to support systems which did not provide it, and since we regularly had to deal with bug reports when something in DKMS went wrong, we decided that it was additional work for no good reason. If it turns out that DKMS is now a good way to get secure boot compatibility that might be a reason to bring it back.

Ah, thanks for the info!

[michael-vb]

Third party dynamic kernel modules are a tricky area with secureboot. Ubuntu is working on something to automatically sign DKMS modules. However VirtualBox doesn't appear to use DKMS (why I still don't know!). The modules seem to get rebuilt in the background when you boot a new kernel. I wrote a couple scripts to automate the signing of these modules on my system. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done quickly.

We used to support DKMS, but since we still had to support systems which did not provide it, and since we regularly had to deal with bug reports when something in DKMS went wrong, we decided that it was additional work for no good reason. If it turns out that DKMS is now a good way to get secure boot compatibility that might be a reason to bring it back.

[AnassAhmed]

Do you use the Oracle package? It doesn't register in DKMS

dkms status
bbswitch, 0.8, 4.10.0-26-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.8, 4.10.0-28-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.8, 4.10.0-30-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-375, 375.66, 4.10.0-26-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-375, 375.66, 4.10.0-28-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-375, 375.66, 4.10.0-30-generic, x86_64: installed

I use the official Oracle repo. I'm on Mobile right now.. When I get back I'll check the package that adds DKMS configuration.

[FuturePilot]

I use fedora 24/25/26 and it uses DKMS with virtualbox modules.

Do you use the Oracle package? It doesn't register in DKMS

dkms status
bbswitch, 0.8, 4.10.0-26-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.8, 4.10.0-28-generic, x86_64: installed
bbswitch, 0.8, 4.10.0-30-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-375, 375.66, 4.10.0-26-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-375, 375.66, 4.10.0-28-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-375, 375.66, 4.10.0-30-generic, x86_64: installed

[AnassAhmed]

Third party dynamic kernel modules are a tricky area with secureboot. Ubuntu is working on something to automatically sign DKMS modules. However VirtualBox doesn't appear to use DKMS (why I still don't know!). The modules seem to get rebuilt in the background when you boot a new kernel. I wrote a couple scripts to automate the signing of these modules on my system. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done quickly.

I use fedora 24/25/26 and it uses DKMS with virtualbox modules.

[timofonic]

Third party dynamic kernel modules are a tricky area with secureboot. Ubuntu is working on something to automatically sign DKMS modules. However VirtualBox doesn't appear to use DKMS (why I still don't know!). The modules seem to get rebuilt in the background when you boot a new kernel. I wrote a couple scripts to automate the signing of these modules on my system. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done quickly.

I use Archlinux and it uses DKMS for modules....

[FuturePilot]

I just had a few support cases where VirtualBox 5.1 stopped working on Ubuntu with secure boot enabled because the vbmodule isn't signed. Maybe they should look into that for the next release

Third party dynamic kernel modules are a tricky area with secureboot. Ubuntu is working on something to automatically sign DKMS modules. However VirtualBox doesn't appear to use DKMS (why I still don't know!). The modules seem to get rebuilt in the background when you boot a new kernel. I wrote a couple scripts to automate the signing of these modules on my system. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done quickly.

[horizonbrave]

please, when is kbm/GnomeBoxes preferable compared to VirtualBox?

[andre30correia]

virtualbox 3d drivers are crap, opengl 2.1 only works with windows 7 not in 10 but is enough for some proposes, vmware is only for nvidia drivers, but works well in dx9 and dx10 and use llvm for opengl 3.3 and work well for example with autocad 3d and 3ds max and adobe produts, virtualbox not so really but is better support than vmware, the only thing they miss is a rework of 3d drivers

[timofonic]

Yes but it's not as fast or as advanced as VMware's and now that Wine is starting to support DX 11, Wine is more advanced compared to both of them.

It would be nice if more development effort was made in VM guest drivers but I think a lot of the development drive behind implementing Direct3D was for the customers using Macs and wanting to virtualize Windows for 3D purposes. Due to the stagnant nature of OpenGL support in macOS (not supporting newer versions), a Direct3D 11 to OpenGL mapping used for the vGPU driver would be very difficult without compute shader support and a re-write for Metal would apparently be too much work.

macOS has OpenGL 4.1, as you can see in this official developer document. Wow, I wouldn't be able to imagine it. How Wine developers deal with this crap? Are they translating to Metal instead? :O

How's the VMware one works? I did read some VM used wine code for Direct3D, not sure if it was Parallels or WMware. If yes, why not happening in Qemu too? Why VirGL only? :/