Errors with VMWare Player and Virtualbox

[akd]

Hello,

I'm running Debian 10.4 on a Toshiba Portege notebook.
Before doing that, I virtualized the original SO with wmvare converter, and now I have my virtual machine ready.

I install both VmWare Player 15 and Virtualbox 6.1.6, but neither of them allow me to load my virtual machines, for different errors.

I googled a lot on this, but always get stuck in a dead end road: once I cannot obtain modinit, then have some errors on wifi drivers not installed, and so on.

Can anybody help with debugging please?

This is VMWare Player error when tried to load the vm:

Could not open /dev/vmmon: File o directory non esistente. Please make sure that the kernel module `vmmon' is loaded.

 

[dos2unix]

VMware Knowledge Base

kb.vmware.com

 

[akd]

Too easy, it was the first tutorial I followed.

Trouble is that I get this error:

modinfo: comando non trovato

which is "command not found" in english.

I already looked for it and installed "module-init-tools_18-3_all.deb", but get another error:

Estrazione di module-init-tools (18-3)...
dpkg: problemi con le dipendenze impediscono la configurazione di module-init-tools:
 module-init-tools dipende da libkmod2 (= 18-3); tuttavia:
  La versione di libkmod2:amd64 nel sistema è 26-1.

dpkg: errore nell'elaborare il pacchetto module-init-tools (--install):
 problemi con le dipendenze - lasciato non configurato
Si sono verificati degli errori nell'elaborazione:
 module-init-tools

That is "there are some problems", not detailing which dependencies are missing.

 

[dos2unix]

modinfo usually comes from the kmod pkg.

looks like module-init-tools can't load because it can't find libkmod2.

This is probably the wrong version for you debian. but it's the pkg you need.

https://debian.pkgs.org/10/debian-main-amd64/kmod_26-1_amd64.deb.html

 

[akd]

Installed and resolved all dependencies for kmod_26-1_amd64.deb, but still bash is still complaining about modinfo not found:

$sudo /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n vmmon)
bash: modinfo: comando non trovato

 

[akd]

After reinstalling both VmWare Player and Oracle Virtualbox, many errors were solved.
But I still couldn't boot the machine.

It turned out it was a problem with Secoure Boot in UEFI of the notebook.
This requires digitally signed drivers to boot anything, virtual machines included.
I still could not sign vmware nor virtualbox files due to problems discussed above, but disabling secure boot, I managed to start the machine both with Vmware Player and with Virtualbox.

I would like to be able to sign the correct files so to re-enable UEFI secure Boot, though...

 

[gvisoc]

I run Debian 10.4 and I don't have problems signing modules. I can't see why you would have such problems starting with a stable release of it.

Three questions I have for you:

1. Did you enroll the MOK.der key in the UEFI before trying to sign the module?
2. Did you enable the testing or unstable software sources? What's the story of your current Debian installations, regarding software sources, and upgrades?
3. Did you enable backports? If so, what did you install from backports exactly?

 

[akd]

Hi gvisoc, thanks for your reply, but I cannot provide you many information... I mean:

1) no idea: what does it do?
2) Clean installation, with standard definitions, and suggested software sources
3) not aware if I did

 

[dos2unix]

It turned out it was a problem with Secoure Boot in UEFI of the notebook.
This requires digitally signed drivers to boot anything, virtual machines included.
I still could not sign vmware nor virtualbox files due to problems discussed above, but disabling secure boot, I managed to start the machine both with Vmware Player and with Virtualbox.

I would like to be able to sign the correct files so to re-enable UEFI secure Boot, though...

I have to say, I have never had this problem. VirtualBox has it's own "Virtual" BIOS
and never sees your computers BIOS. (Hence "virtual"). I run VirtualBox on 4 different computers
right now. Some have Legacy BIOS's, but I can boot GPT/EFI images.
Some have UEFI, but I can boot legacy MBR/BIOS images.

I boot homemade Linux (I.e. Linux from scratch) that have no secure Key, and I boot OS's
that have secure Keys (i.e. Redhat, Windows)

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I will say it's very unusual.

 

[akd]

It is for me as well, never happened anything like this, and I'm using Virtual Box / VMWare Workstation and Player in many machines in the last 15+ years...

 

[Tolkem]

Installed and resolved all dependencies for kmod_26-1_amd64.deb, but still bash is still complaining about modinfo not found:

Try with sudo

sudo modinfo module_name

modinfo pkg isn't on users path by default and that's why you need sudo, otherwise you get the "command not found error".

 

[gvisoc]

Hi gvisoc, thanks for your reply, but I cannot provide you many information... I mean:

1) no idea: what does it do?
2) Clean installation, with standard definitions, and suggested software sources
3) not aware if I did

1) For the module to work after signing, as you did in post #5, there has to be a key enrolled in the UEFI. You do that with sudo mokutil --import MOK.der and a reboot. Check this post I dumped recently about the Secure Boot, section "Manually signing binaries".
2) I am not aware of manually have installed anything related to the modinfo utility, but according to dpkg -S, it's provided by the kmod that you were struggling with

➜  ~ which modinfo
modinfo not found
➜  ~ ls /sbin/modinfo
/sbin/modinfo
➜  ~ dpkg -S /sbin/modinfo
kmod: /sbin/modinfo

The fact that you have installed it and it doesn't show makes me suspect about the path variable for the root / sudoers. Try to see if you have it under sbin (ls /sbin/modinfo), and before executing your commands do sudo export PATH=$PATH:/sbin/ to see if it helps.

3) If you don't know whether you enabled backports, then you didn't.