Kernel Driver Not Installed (rc=-1908) on OpenSUSE 12.3

By
Roy s

If you have difficulties starting your virtual machines under OpenSUSE 12.3, we will show how hou can solve the issue.

This is the normal way to install Oracle VM VirtualBox on a OpenSUSE 12.3 system using Zypper (as root):

# zypper in virtualbox

Everything will work initially, but after some updates it might reach a point where VirtualBox will not be able to start your virtual machines and will give the following error:

Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module available for the current kernel (3.5.0-18-generic) or it failed to load. Please recompile the kernel module and install it by
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

So, we do the following:

# /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

If it still fails, perform the following:

# zypper in make gcc gcc-c++ kernel-source kernel-syms

And now run:

# /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Now you should be able to start your virtual machines in VirtualBox. 😉