On 23/11/25 at 15:41, Fernando Cassia wrote:
Oracle/VirtualBox knows this and has deliberately chosen notto let udev
control the group of /dev/vboxdrvfor security reasons.The correct and
supported way to fix thisYou have two proper options (pick one):Option 1
– Add your user to the vboxusersgroup (the official way)This is what
VirtualBox has always recommended and is the simplest:
bash
|sudousermod-aG vboxusers $USER|
my user belongs already to the group "vboxusers" but starting VM from
the CLI fails:
~$ groups
frank cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev users netdev vboxusers
Then log out and log back in(or reboot).
After that, even if /dev/vboxdrvis owned by root:root, the group
permissions are rw(0660) and you are in the vboxusersgroup → you have
access.This works from GUI and CLI without any udev hacking.Option 2 –
Force the kernel module to chown the device to vboxusers (works even
without being in the group)VirtualBox provides a module parameter
exactly for this case:
bash
|sudomodprobe vboxdrv drv_group=vboxusers|
To make it permanent, create or edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/
virtualbox.conf(or any .conf file in that directory):
bash
|sudobash-c 'echo "options vboxdrv drv_group=vboxusers" > /etc/
modprobe.d/virtualbox.conf'|
Then reload the modules or reboot:
I created a /etc/modprobe.d/virtualbox.conf file that contains:
~# cat /etc/modprobe.d/virtualbox.conf
options vboxdrv drv_group=vboxusers
but sadly, this version of vboxdrv driver ignore the "drv_group" parameter:
~# dmesg | grep vboxdrv
[ 11.883202] vboxdrv: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 11.883209] vboxdrv: module verification failed: signature and/or
required key missing - tainting kernel
[ 11.930308] vboxdrv: unknown parameter 'drv_group' ignored
[ 11.930479] vboxdrv: Found 8 processor cores/threads
[ 11.952794] vboxdrv: TSC mode is Invariant, tentative frequency
4013630157 Hz
[ 11.952798] vboxdrv: Successfully loaded version 7.2.4 r170995
(interface 0x00340001)
and after reboot the group owner of "/dev/vboxdrv" is still root:
~# ls -l /dev/vboxdrv
crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 123 24 nov 15.15 /dev/vboxdrv
the permissions (rw-) on group is due to my udev rules customization.
Looking at vboxdrv driver information it doesn't provide any parameter
suitable for changing group owner:
~# modinfo vboxdrv
filename: /lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/misc/vboxdrv.ko
version: 7.2.4 r170995 (0x00340001)
license: GPL
description: Oracle VirtualBox Support Driver
author: Oracle and/or its affiliates
srcversion: 093FA893C2464C5DFBB82FD
depends:
name: vboxdrv
retpoline: Y
vermagic: 6.12.48+deb13-amd64 SMP preempt mod_unload modversions
parm: disabled:Disable automatic module loading (int)
parm: force_async_tsc:force the asynchronous TSC mode (int)
maybe an issue when it was built the Debian 13.2 package. Here
VirtualBox VM doesn't start from the CLI using the "virtualboxvm"
command. From the GUI (virtualbox command) all works nicely.
Thanks again, cheers
--
Franco Martelli
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