Hi Ozi, list,

Ozi Traveller writes:

> Has anyone installed virtualbox from jessie-backports? There is a systemd
> dependency, but not sure whether it's functional or just a stub.

I don't see where the systemd dependency is. Here's what I get

$ apt-cache -t jessie-backports depends virtualbox | grep systemd
$

Yup, no hits at all so virtualbox does not have a *direct* dependency on
systemd. BTW, this is for an APT cache that was last updated a couple
of minutes ago.

A for using virtualbox on jessie, I just had occasion to try that out at
the office when using vagrant. Here's what I found for the linux-image
and virtualbox combinations on jessie w/ and w/o backports.

Using the virtualbox package from either jessie (4.3.36-dfsg-1+deb8u1)
or jessie-backports (5.1.8-dfsg-6~bpo8+2) with a stock linux-image-amd64
(3.16+63) from jessie works fine. That is, it installs without errors
and virtualbox images start fine (based on my provisioning Debian jessie
images and ssh-ing into them).

Using either virtualbox package with the stock linux-image-amd64 from
jessie-backports (4.9+80~bpo8+1) however does *not* work. Installation
fails with a compile error of the vboxdrv kernel module. It looks like
the kernel API has changed (unsurprisingly when going from a major
version of 3 to 4). Neither virtualbox package seems to deal with this,
not even the one from backports.

Next move is checking whether things work in ascii because my laptop at
the office doesn't really work with a 3.16 kernel.

# FTR, my test were done on old, decommissioned laptop where that 3.16
# kernel works like a charm :)

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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