Virtualbox on Mountain Lion with Mac os x server

Question

Level 1

8 points

Virtualbox on Mountain Lion with Mac os x server

Hi,

Got a problem since migrated to Mac OS X Mountain Lion with in addition OS X Server application installed to replace Mac OS X Lion server on a Mac Mini.

All was working fine until the day after the installation I got the following message when I start VirtualBox:

"

Failed to initialize COM or to find the VirtualBox COM server. Most likely, the VirtualBox server is not running or failed to start.

The application will now terminate.

Callee RC: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)

"

On my MacBook Pro I did the upgrade to ML too, but without the upgrade of the Lion Server to OS X Server.

SInce a number of things have fundamentally changed (X11 removed) I wonder what I need to do to get my Virtualbox working again and what is the **** difference that the installation of the server component causes.

There have been issues with the support of Virtualbox but the testlevel was set to 4.1.15 ... so the version I'm using 4.1.18 should work ... but I don't see any kind of verification against OS X Server.

Been looking for a day now and haven't got a clue anymore where to look.

Are there people out there having the same kind of problems?

Thanks in advance,

Jan

OS X Server

Posted on Aug 7, 2012 10:46 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 22, 2012 10:49 AM in response to jhelling

I am having a similar "Failed to initialize COM" problem on Mac OS X 10.7.5, VirtualBox 4.2.2. I have wasted over six hours alone trying to address the issue, and it's still unresolved. My message:

"

Failed to initialize COM because the VirtualBox global configuration directory /Users/username/Library/VirtualBox is not accessible. Please check the permissions of this directory and of its parent directory.

The application will now terminate.

"

There is no such VirtualBox folder in my user Library folder. It is trying to locate a non-existent directory.

The closest workaround I could find that enabled VirtualBox to open was to create a brand new admin level user, log in to that user account, then install VirtualBox and run under that account. Works great, until I log out and try to run VirtualBox on my primary admin account, which results in the same "failed to initialize COM" error.

I have found no helpful advice geared towards Mac OS X users to troubleshoot or resolve this issue. You can try posting on Oracle's VirtualBox forum. Good luck.

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Answer 2

jhelling Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 22, 2012 12:16 PM in response to Stephen Downs

Hi Stephen,

Thought I posted the solution to my problem over here months ago ... but seems not ...

Seems that through the upgrade a number of premissions are perturbated and they need to be reconciled.

You can achieve this by starting Disk Utility, click on your server hard disk (my mac is a mini server), in the first tab called 'first aid', click the last button of the tab called 'repair disk permissions'.

That solved my problem ... Sincerely I hope it will solve yours too ... ;-)

Keep posted.

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Answer 3

jhelling Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 22, 2012 1:26 PM in response to Stephen Downs

I definitely did the repair after the install. It was still with version 4.1.18 of VBox. The latest version of VBox should give less problems ... only ... It was a problem of 'the system' which for some reason had somewhere the wrong permissions. I was pleased that it helped but in the same way it is disencouraging if you run into that problem. It did not have any problem at all on the macbook pro with server installed in the same way ... it's difficult to troubleshoot things ... Hope you will find a solution .... ;-(

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Answer 4

Oct 22, 2012 12:26 PM in response to jhelling

I've tried this, and it didn't help. I just tried it again, and it didn't help.

Do you suggest to uninstall and reinstall before/after repairing permissions?

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Answer 5

Nov 18, 2012 2:45 PM in response to jhelling

I fixed the issue by manually creating a /Users/username/Library/VirtualBox folder, then setting the mutability of the Library folder back to locked afterwards.

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