UPDATE: Make sure your user account is a member of the vboxusers account. VirtualBox will not start and the error will tell you this, but just want to be explicit. You will have to logout and log back in.
I recently upgraded my Ubuntu to the latest version, as mentioned in a previous post. I'm very excited about it, due to greater support for hardware items that I've had to fight battles with (one of the many reasons people won't make the switch to Linux). I upgraded to Hardy Heron and then upgraded VirtualBox when prompted. It was a fatal hardware recognition mistake. As soon as I booted back up after a restart, I didn't have sound, wireless, etc.
After just not being in the mood of going down the road of trying to get the hardware re-recognized, I reloaded and di my research on the virtualbox upgrade. It seems to be a known issue on the ubuntuforms.
I looked through the forums and got educated on a few things about the ose (open source edition) versions of VirtualBox. 1. no usb support (I will update if I'm proved wrong). 2. the new ose kernel modules hose toshiba satellite hardware detection (at least on my laptop).
To get the gutsy non-ose version of Virtual Box, add this repository to /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian gutsy non-free
then in a terminal:
apt-get update
apt-get install virtualbox
if you get a host key issue, the do the following:
go get the public key.. go to this website and it'll have the
key there just right click anywhere in the page and go to save page as
then save it to your home directory preferably.
http://www.virtualbox.org/debian/innotek.asc
Now to add that key run...
apt-key add innotek.asc
apt-get update
apt-get install virtualbox
This will give you the gutsy version that I've worked with and have had no problems with. The bonus is that you get USB support.
I will get back to code posts next. Just want to share the knowledge with other Linux users.