Virtualbox error Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)

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VirtualBox just not working with Secure Boot enabled is a big problem, so I’ll put this on my todo list and hopefully find a solution soon.

Edit: This turns out to be a VirtualBox limitation; VBox upstream doesn’t use DKMS, whereas the VirtualBox Debian packages that were available to us in Bookworm did. Debian also doesn’t have the tool VirtualBox tries to use to automatically sign its kernel modules. Thus fixing this will require either Debian or VirtualBox to do something different. Filed a feature request:

Edit 2: I’ve found a workaround! In the sysmaint session, run:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/shim-signed/mok
sudo ln -s /var/lib/dkms/mok.key /var/lib/shim-signed/mok/MOK.priv
sudo ln -s /var/lib/dkms/mok.pub /var/lib/shim-signed/mok/MOK.der
sudo apt reinstall virtualbox-7.2

This makes it so that VirtualBox can find the signing keys the wiki directs you to enroll. It then signs its kernel modules with them, and things work. I was able to successfully get VirtualBox working on Kicksecure 18 with Secure Boot enabled by doing this.

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