Virtualbox 4.2.12 installation breaks Ubuntu 13.04 Desktop

Question

I recently installed Ubuntu 13.04 on my PC, and then got to downloading Virtualbox 4.2.12 from the official link.

After installing Virtualbox 4.2.12, when I reboot my PC, the desktop is gone, as I described in this question.

I found a fix to that problem, by typing in tty1 sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop, but this involves uninstalling the Virtualbox.

The issue is fully reproductible, so I can provide you with any details you might wish for.

My computer is a Samsung Series 3. It runs only this version of Ubuntu, has no other partitions or OS's.

Thanks ahead.

Solution 1

Download the latest deb package for your 64 bit machine from here. Unpack the package and do...

dpkg -i filename.deb

...and you are ready to go.

Solution 2

To install Virtual Box from a .deb package we need to make sure we chose to download the appropriate architecture of our host OS, i.e. for a 64-bit host we need the 64-bit package. Because we can do multiarch now installing 32-bit packages is possible, but it will lead to unnecessarily installing or removing package due to dependencies.

A much better way to make sure the Virtual Box insallation meets our host architecture is adding the Oracle repository to our sources as depicted in the following question:

• How do I install the VirtualBox version from Oracle to install an Extension Pack?

Note that you will still install an Open Source version but you will get regularly updates of your Virtual Box with recent bugfixes. This version can be updated to a closed source PUEL version when needed.

The Virtual Box Open Source Edition from the software center usually is some versions behind, and can not be upgraded to a closed source (PUEL) version in case we need USB2.0 support.

Comments

[gosalia]

Just a suggestion. Why dont you try to install it from Ubuntu Software Center?

[Takkat]

What architecture is your host Ubuntu?

[MonsieurPoivron]

@thefourtheye Yeah that works. I feel silly now. When I tried using the USC in the first place, I did not find Virtualbox. Still weird that the install did not work though.

[MonsieurPoivron]

@Takkat If I understand your question correctly, my computer has an intel core i3-3110M CPU, and the Ubuntu version is 64-bit.

[Takkat]

You need the 64-bit, not the 32-bit .deb then

[Javier Rivera]

There is no open and closed version anymore, their closed source code, including USB 2.0 support has been moved to the extension pack. The repositories version and the official version are the same but for the version difference.

[MonsieurPoivron]

There is a note on the website "The package architecture has to match the Linux kernel architecture, that is, if you are running a 64-bit kernel, install the appropriate AMD64 package (it does not matter if you have an Intel or an AMD CPU). Mixed installations (e.g. Debian/Lenny ships an AMD64 kernel with 32-bit packages) are not supported. To install VirtualBox anyway you need to setup a 64-bit chroot environment." I got confused and downloaded what I thought was the intel version instead of AMD64 for my 64-bit PC. Thanks :)

[meawoppl]

Above link is broken. Try this one: download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian