Install VirtualBox 6.1 on Fedora 33

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install VirtualBox 6.1 on Fedora 33. VirtualBox 6.1 is available for installation in most Linux platforms package repositories.

Install VirtualBox 6.x on Fedora 33

Download VirtualBox 6.1 RPM

To begin with, download VirtualBox 6.1 for Fedora 32 from their official site;

wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.16/VirtualBox-6.1-6.1.16_140961_fedora32-1.x86_64.rpm

If you try to install, you will get an error as shown below;

Last metadata expiration check: 0:19:24 ago on Tue 12 Jan 2021 10:41:01 PM GMT.
Error: 
 Problem: conflicting requests
  - nothing provides python(abi) = 3.8 needed by VirtualBox-6.1-6.1.16_140961_fedora32-1.x86_64
(try to add '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages)

As the error denotes, Python3.8 is tied to this rpm package (=3.8) and it can’t be found on the system.

You can check the available Python version as follows;

ls /usr/bin/python*

    /usr/bin/python
    /usr/bin/python2
    /usr/bin/python2.7
    /usr/bin/python2.7-config
    /usr/bin/python2-config
    /usr/bin/python3
    /usr/bin/python3.9
    /usr/bin/python-argcomplete-check-easy-install-script
    /usr/bin/python-argcomplete-tcsh

The latest version is Python 3.9. Downgrading to Python 3.8 would affect other packages relying on version 3.9.

You therefore need to rebuild the package to use Python 3.9 and above.

Install Required Build packages

Install the following packages required in the next steps;

sudo dnf -y install rpmrebuild binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel dkms qt5-qtx11extras libxkbcommon

Rebuild VirtualBox

Now you can use rpmrebuild edit Python 3.8 requirement. Navigate to where you downloaded the rpm file, in my case is the current working directory;

ls

 VirtualBox-6.1-6.1.16_140961_fedora32-1.x86_64.rpm

and run the following command;

sudo rpmrebuild --change-spec-preamble='sed -e "s/32/33/"' --change-spec-requires='sed -e "s/python(abi) = 3.8/python(abi) >= 3.8/"' --package VirtualBox-6.1-6.1.16_140961_fedora32-1.x86_64.rpm

The command will run for some few minutes. When it completes, you will see the last line similar to the following;

result: /root/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/VirtualBox-6.1-6.1.16_140961_fedora33-1.x86_64.rpm

Install VirtualBox 6.1

The new rpm is found in the directory shown by the above line.

cd ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/

sudo dnf -y install ./VirtualBox-6.1-6.1.16_140961_fedora33-1.x86_64.rpm

The installation will progress to completion.

You also need to rebuild kernel modules for this new package;

sudo /usr/lib/virtualbox/vboxdrv.sh setup

Add Users to vboxusers Group

The final step is to add the current user to vboxusers group;

sudo usermod -aG vboxusers $USER

Running VirtualBox 6.1 on Fedora 33

VirtualBox 6.1 is now successfully installed on Fedora 33. You can launch from desktop application or run the following command in terminal;

VirtualBox

That marks the end of our tutorial on how to install VirtualBox 6.1 in Fedora 33.

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