Get VirtualBox working in Ubuntu Linux

VirtualBox is a very useful way of trying out other operating systems or to use Windows apps on a Linux computer without trying to get them working with Wine. In theory installation should be as simple as typing VirtualBox in the Software Centre and clicking on Install but once installed it doesn't always work properly.

In this case the problem was an error message that read:

WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. 
Either there is no module available for the current 
kernel (3.0.0-15-generic-pae) or it failed to load. 
Please recompile the kernel module and install it by
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
You will not be able to start VMs until this problem is fixed.

This problem happened when VirtualBox was installed through the Software Centre and when installed by the download from the virtualbox.org website.

The solution is easy to follow but requires the terminal. Click on the Dash button, type terminal and click on Byobu Terminal. Type the command from the error message, entering your password when prompted:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

This will probably display an error message but you need to find out which kernel version to use. In our case the error message reported that we needed to install linux-headers-3.0.0-15-generic-pae. Yours will probably be different depending on when you read this article and the computer you are using. Now type the following into the terminal window.

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.0.0-15-generic-pae

You will need to adjust this to the linux-headers version reported in the error message. We got some error messages but they didn't seem to be serious. Now type:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

You should see the following message

* Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules
...done.
* Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules
...done.
* Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS
...done.
* Starting VirtualBox kernel modules
...done.

You can mow close the terminal window and use VirtualBox.