[Pkg-virtualbox-devel] Bug#635689: virtualbox-ose: Virtualbox guest utils should be installed to match host version, not guest version.

[John Winters]

Package: virtualbox-ose
Version: 3.2.10-dfsg-1
Severity: wishlist


If you use VirtualBox OSE on Debian, with different versions of Debian
on the host and guest systems, then the wrong version of the VirtualBox
guest modules gets installed.

This happened before with Lenny on the host and Squeeze as the guest,
and it's happening now with Squeeze as the host and Wheezy as the guest.
The version of the guest utils installed on the Wheezy guest don't work
with the version of VirtualBox OSE running on the host.

At the very least, could alternative versions be made available in the
Debian repository, so that one can manually install the right version on
the quest with a simple "apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils.version"
Ideally the wheezy repository should include suitable guest modules to allow
a wheezy guest to run on a squeeze host, and so on.

Even better would be if the right version were chosen at installation of the
guest, but that's probably more complicated.  Better still would be to
provide reverse compatibility so newer guests will still work with older
hosts, but that's probably an upstream issue.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.2
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages virtualbox-ose depends on:
ii  adduser            3.112+nmu2            add and remove users and groups
ii  libc6              2.11.2-10             Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcurl3           7.21.0-2              Multi-protocol file transfer libra
ii  libgcc1            1:4.4.5-8             GCC support library
ii  libpng12-0         1.2.44-1              PNG library - runtime
ii  libpython2.6       2.6.6-8+b1            Shared Python runtime library (ver
ii  libsdl1.2debian    1.2.14-6.1            Simple DirectMedia Layer
ii  libssl0.9.8        0.9.8o-4squeeze1      SSL shared libraries
ii  libstdc++6         4.4.5-8               The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libvncserver0      0.9.7-2+b1            API to write one's own vnc server
ii  libx11-6           2:1.3.3-4             X11 client-side library
ii  libxcursor1        1:1.1.10-2            X cursor management library
ii  libxext6           2:1.1.2-1             X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxml2            2.7.8.dfsg-2+squeeze1 GNOME XML library
ii  libxmu6            2:1.0.5-2             X11 miscellaneous utility library
ii  libxt6             1:1.0.7-1             X11 toolkit intrinsics library
ii  python             2.6.6-3+squeeze6      interactive high-level object-orie
ii  python-central     0.6.16+nmu1           register and build utility for Pyt
ii  zlib1g             1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3      compression library - runtime

Versions of packages virtualbox-ose recommends:
ii  libgl1-mesa-glx [libg 7.7.1-4            A free implementation of the OpenG
ii  libqt4-opengl         4:4.6.3-4+squeeze1 Qt 4 OpenGL module
ii  libqtcore4            4:4.6.3-4+squeeze1 Qt 4 core module
ii  libqtgui4             4:4.6.3-4+squeeze1 Qt 4 GUI module
ii  virtualbox-ose-dkms   3.2.10-dfsg-1      x86 virtualization solution - kern
ii  virtualbox-ose-qt     3.2.10-dfsg-1      x86 virtualization solution - Qt b

Versions of packages virtualbox-ose suggests:
ii  libasound2             1.0.23-2.1        shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libpulse0              0.9.21-3+squeeze1 PulseAudio client libraries
pn  vde2                   <none>            (no description available)
ii  virtualbox-guest-addit 3.2.10-1          guest additions iso image for Virt

-- no debconf information