The pitfalls and solutions for installing Virtualbox on Manjaro Linux~

Preface

Not long ago, as my Ubuntu installation disk ran out of space, I decided to install another system on a new SSD, which led me back to Manjaro. The KDE desktop is truly excellent to use, though many configuration aspects still require some research, given that my primary desktop experience in the past was mainly with Gtk-based environments～

Getting Started

Installing VirtualBox

VirtualBox is available in Manjaro's official repositories. You can find it by opening Octopi and searching.

Or you can install it by entering the following command:

sudo pacman -S virtualbox

Installing Kernel Modules

The previous step installed VirtualBox, but it cannot be used yet—you need to install and activate the kernel modules first.
The corresponding kernel modules are available in the official repositories, but you should check the correct version first.

How do you check the kernel version? Open the Manjaro Settings Manager as shown below:

Select "Kernel":

You can see the current kernel version is 4.19.32-1. Then you can proceed to install the kernel modules～
When searching for Virtualbox in Octopi, you'll see many kernel modules available. Here, we select the one corresponding to the kernel version Linux419, as shown in the image:

Activating the Kernel Module

sudo modprobe vboxdrv

Add Current User to virtualbox User Group

sudo gpasswd -a [username] vboxusers

Replace [username] with your username. For example, in my case it looks like this:

sudo gpasswd -a dealiaxy vboxusers

Issue: Imported Existing Virtual Machine Cannot Boot

When importing an existing virtual machine, you may encounter this issue. The primary cause is a change in the virtual hard disk's location. This can be resolved by reassigning the correct path in the settings.

However, you might then encounter an error stating that the virtual hard disk's SSID is invalid. In this case, you'll need to reset the SSID.

Navigate to the directory containing the virtual hard disk file and execute the following command:

VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid <file.vdi>

Replace <file.vdi> with the name of your virtual hard disk file.

References

• https://forum.manjaro.org/t/kernel-driver-not-installed-virtualbox/65797
• https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Virtualbox#Install_VirtualBox
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44114854/virtualbox-cannot-register-the-hard-disk-already-exists

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