A note on VirtualBox installation in Fedora

I use VirtualBox ^[1] a lot. It's actually one of the first few applications I install after doing a fresh install of a Linux distribution. As I am currently using Fedora, I noted that it's best to do it like so:

    $ sudo yum install VirtualBox kmod-VirtualBox

kmod-VirtualBox is the kernel module for VirtualBox. If for instance, when logged in using, say, for example kernel 3.12.8-300.fc20.x86_64 and doing sudo yum install VirtualBox, then the kmod-VirtualBox-3.12.8-300.fc20.x86_64... will be installed along as a dependency. Now this is fine, as long as you are using the 3.12.8-300.fc20.x86_64 kernel, the kernel module for VirtualBox is useable. But then a new kernel update comes along, say kernel 3.12.9-301.fc20.x86_64 and you log out, reboot the computer and choose this shiny new kernel. Then once logged in, you run (assuming you do things from a terminal emulator, like I do) VBoxManage startvm 'my-virtual-machine' --type headless and the STDOUT spews forth an error telling you that kernel modules haven't been installed for the current kernel (or something like that).

That's where the meta-package kmod-VirtualBox comes in. So when there's a kernel update in Fedora, the specific VirtualBox kernel module will automatically be installed for that kernel. Then you can happily continue using VirtualBox in Fedora.

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^[1] VirtualBox package I used are in the RPMFusion third-party repository which needs to be activated before it can be used.