Issues with VirtualBox on Ubuntu 12.10

Problem:

Are you having issues starting virtual box after installing updates?  Annoying isn't it?  Errors like the following:

Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) is either not loaded or there is a permission problem with /dev/vboxdrv. Please reinstall the kernel module by executing'/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup'as root. If it is available in your distribution, you should install the DKMS package first. This package keeps track of Linux kernel changes and recompiles the vboxdrv kernel module if necessary.

Maybe you have an issue with the networking card when operating in bridged mode and get an error similar to the following (note might also say HostInterfaceNetworking-wlan0) :

Failed to open/create the internal network 'HostInterfaceNetworking-eth0' (VERR_PERMISSION_DENIED). Failed to attach the network LUN (VERR_PERMISSION_DENIED)

Solution:

VirtualBox recommends you run sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup but unfortunately this is not available on most Ubuntu installations.  I would recommend running the following:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get --reinstall install virtualbox virtualbox-dkms 
sudo modprobe vboxdrv
sudo modprobe vboxnetflt
sudo modprobe vboxnetadp

Good luck!

Suppress or Hide Network Error Dialog Boxes

If you are like me, you often work with a portable computer and sleep your computer between commutes from the office, home, and road.  If you wake up your computer on a different network than the one you were on previously, you might be in for quite the annoyance if you had bunch of Explorer windows with UNC paths open.  Suddenly those paths are not found and potentially dozens of "Network Error Windows cannot access \\serverfoo\some\path\bar" messages. Of course, they cannot be accessed, that network is no longer available.  Clicking Cancel on each dialog is annoying.  This is where AutoHotKey can step in.

This nifty program allows you to script all sorts of "macros" to automate various tasks on your computer.  In many ways its similar to AppleScript but more powerful.  You can create shortcuts, remap keys, or in this case, eliminate pesky dialog boxes.

In this script, we are going to create a persistent script, one that will stay running and continue to refire the timer using the interval we specify:


#Persistent
SetTimer, CloseNetworkErrorDialog, 20000
return

CloseNetworkErrorDialog:
SetTitleMatchMode, 2
WinGet, id, list, Network Error
Loop, %id%
{
    this_id := id%A_Index%
    WinGetTitle, this_title, ahk_id %this_id%
    PostMessage, 0x112, 0xF060,,, %this_title%
}
Return


As you can see, this is a really simple script that has a function named CloseNetworkErrorDialog that is called every 20 seconds.  CloseNetworkErrorDialog loops through the open windows whose title contain the phrase "Network Error", gets the exact title of the window, and sends it a Close Window command.  You can read more about creating AutoHotKey scripts here.

Peace at last and it only took 5 minutes to write.