VirtualBox modules not loading in Arch Linux after upgrade to Linux 4.4.3

Note: this page is hidden from the main index, likely because it is out of date. Please bear that in mind while reading.

UPDATE: Due to this debacle, Arch has actually now totally removed the virtualbox-modules package (and its virtualbox-guest-modules subpackage) and replaced it with virtualbox-guest-dkms, which builds at install time and on kernel upgrades using DKMS instead of using pregenerated modules. This should hopefully avoid things like this happening again.

I just saw this on two of my machines after upgrading to 4.4.3. Since many people load these modules by default on system start, you'll likely get dropped into an emergency shell. :-(

Once there, symptoms include:

% systemctl --state=failed
  UNIT                         LOAD   ACTIVE SUB    DESCRIPTION
* systemd-modules-load.service loaded failed failed Load Kernel Modules

and (replace "vboxvideo" with "vboxsf" or "vboxguest" as needed)

% modprobe vboxvideo
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'vboxvideo': Exec format error

Some posts on the Arch forums suggest downgrading the kernel back down to 4.4.1. While that might work for a time, you'll be running a partial upgrade that could break at any time when others upgrade their modules for 4.4.3.

Instead, you should rebuild virtualbox-guest-modules — or more specifically its parent package, virtualbox-modules — from ABS. Here's how to do it.

NOTE: These steps must be run from the emergency shell after rebooting into kernel 4.4.3. If you do them before upgrading/rebooting, you will be building for the wrong kernel version, and it won't work.

  1. Enter your root password at the emergency mode prompt to enter a root shell
  2. Get a network connection. Since the system didn't start up properly, systemctl's process management functionality just results in permission errors ("error getting authority"). You can call dhcpcd directly to get an IP address with dhcpcd <interface>.
  3. Install the abs package if you don't already have it.
  4. Run abs community/virtualbox-modules as root to sync the package source from the upstream ABS tree.
  5. Change to your normal user with sudo -i -u <user>.
  6. Copy the package ABS downloaded to a new directory (to keep ABS clean) by doing mkdir ~/abs && cp -a /var/abs/community/virtualbox-modules ~/abs/ or similar.
  7. Install deps for the package, build it, and then install the package. This can be done with makepkg -si inside the new ~/abs/virtualbox-modules directory. Side note: makepkg used to have a --pkg option to indicate you only wanted a subset of packages from a split package, but it seems to have gone missing… oh well.
  8. Reboot. Everything should be golden now!