Terminally Incoherent

Ever since I updated my Windows box to Firefox 3.0 I’ve been having issues with the Google Notebook plugin. I actually use it a lot to “clip” interesting quotes, links or snippets of code and have them accessible from any machine. The plugin makes this easy because I can just highlight something, right click and choose “Note This” to send a copy, complete with formatting and any included images to the notebook.

Lately however instead of the notebook mini-window I have been seeing this:

I tried googling this error message, but I found absolutely nothing other than some random thread full ow “LOL, I have the same problem” comments, and few forum threads in Chinese. Trying Google translate on these threads revealed that they were also full of pointless messages along the lines of “with great justice I have the sadness with such problem also”. It appears that this issue is extremely rare, and that I was on my own. So I started troubleshooting.

1. Removing the notebook plugin and reinstalling it did not work
2. Transfering the folder plugin from the Firefox profile on another computer where it worked did not work
3. Disabling adblock did not work
4. Creating a new Firefox profile, and installing the plugin there worked

This meant that the issue had something to do with my profile. Just for shits and giggles I copied all the plugin files from my old profile to the new profile, and restarted the browser. The Notebook plugin broke again. So the culprit was one of the plugins. But which one? Try a wild guess. I tried guessing but failed miserably, so I disabled all plugins and started switching them on one by one. Do you know which one broke Notebook?

It was TorButton - the one that actually ships with the Vidalia Bundle. Yep, it was literally the last plugin I expected to be responsible for the issue. But disabling it make the Notebook spring back to life for me. Go figure. That button was rather ugly anyway, and I don’t really use Tor that often so I think I’ll survive without it. Living without Notebook was more of a pain.

As usual, I’m putting it up here so that Google can pick it up and people running into this issue in the future can actually get some constructive advice. It is likely one of your plugins. Do what I did, disable them all, and then start enabling them one by one testing the Notebook after each. For me it was the TorButton, but one of the foreign language threads out there mentioned skype plugin a lot so I assume that it can cause this problem too. And if there are two conflicting plugins out there, chances are there are more. So I hope this post will be helpful, and will point you in the right direction.

Cue in comments about how Google is stealing my privacy.

I still have Gutsy on my work computer. I should really upgrade it to Hardy but unfortunately “dist upgrade in progress” is not really an acceptable excuse for not doing actual work so I keep putting it away. Ideally I could probably just run dist-upgrade during my lunch break, and then come back to a fully upgraded system. But every single dist-upgrade I did in the past required some babysitting so I’m not expecting this one to be any different. So for the time being I will stick with Gutsy - at least until I carve out a good chunk of time to devote to upgrading it, and potentially fixing anything that broke in the process.

Then again, maybe if I have upgraded earlier I wouldn’t have this VirtualBox issue today. At work I’m usually running a Windows XP instance inside VirtualBox so that I can access and use various Windows specific apps. Yesterday it just stopped working - it simply wouldn’t boot telling me that a wrong kernel module is installed. I wish I took a screenshot of the error message but I didn’t. Instead I started troubleshooting. First I needed to find out which version of kernel was installed on my machine:

lmaciak@malekith:~$ uname -a
Linux malekith 2.6.22-15-generic #1 SMP Tue Jun 10 09:21:34 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

It seems that my Kernel is 2.5.22-15. I vaguely remember pulling down some updates on Friday morning. A new kernel was among them, I believe. Next I took a quick peak on my VirtualBox installation:

lmaciak@malekith:~$ aptitude search virtualbox-ose-modules
i   virtualbox-ose-modules                   -
i   virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.22-14-generic - virtualbox-ose modules for linux-image-2.6.22-14-generic
p   virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.22-14-server  - virtualbox-ose modules for linux-image-2.6.22-14-server

It immediately became clear - there is a mismatch between my kernel and the installed modules. Unfortunately the only VirtualBox kernel modules in the repositories were the 2.6.22-14 ones. A 2.6.22-15 version simply doesn’t exist. Not for Gutsy at least and the Hardy release has to many unresolved independecies. So if you are still on Gutsy for some reason (like me) and you just updated your kernel (like me) you are now totally screwed (like me). The OSE version of VirtualBox just won’t work and there is no solution for this yet - and there may never be since Gutsy is on it’s way out.

There is a quick workaround though. Ditch the OSE version, and use the non-free binary under the PUEL License. I believe that my use of the software falls uder the “Personal use or Evaluation” clause since I’m not using it for hosting, and not sharing or distributing it. And I will likely only keep it only until I upgrade to Hardy.

If you are in the same boat, here is what you do. First get rid of your current VirtualBox installation:

sudo aptitude remove virtualbox-ose

Next, head over to the sun download page and grab yourself an appropriate deb file (pick Gutsy from the pull-down list). Install it via dpkg:

dpkg -i virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_gutsy_i386.deb

It will go through the motions, and you may need to acknowledge one or two prompts as it configures appropriate kernel module. Once it is done, you should be all set. Please note that /usr/bin/virtualbox is unlinked replaced by /usr/bin/VirtualBox (note the camel case) which means any old aliases, shortcuts and key bindings will no longer work. You will have to manually adjust them. Other than that, the difference between the two versions in minimal. They use slightly different icons, and a different splash screen but for the most part it is the same software and you can easily use your regular VirtualBox images.

I hope this will help any potentially pissed off VirtualBox users who are still clinging to Gutsy for whatever reason.