Oracle virtualbox failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl - resolved

Virtualbox is the virtualization solution from Oracle to virtualize operating systems on your workstation. Used by many to run for example test and development servers locally. I use it on most of my workstations for this purpose, recently I had a new issue on my macbook. When trying to setup an internal network I was presented with the following error:

Error while adding new interface: failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl: No such file or directory

For some reason Virtualbox has gone south. Most solutions presented online involved restarting Oracle Virtualbox to resolve the issue. Restarting Oracle virtualbox under Mac OS can be done by executing sudo ./VirtualBox restart in the /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox directory. For some reason this was causing another issue.

The restart command presented me with the below message instead of a clean restart:

Unloading VBoxDrv.kext

(kernel) Can't remove kext org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv; services failed to terminate - 0xe00002c7.

Failed to unload org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv - (iokit/common) unsupported function.

-v Error: Failed to unload VBoxDrv.kext

-f VirtualBox

After checking I stopped Virtualbox I found out that some background processes where still operational. Killing them and rerunning the restart command resolved all the issues and Virtualbox was able to function again as can be be expected from it. The restart command after killing the background processes presented me with the below:

Unloading VBoxDrv.kext

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxAutostart => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxAutostart-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxBalloonCtrl => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxBalloonCtrl-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxDD2GC.gc => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxDD2GC.gc-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxDDGC.gc => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxDDGC.gc-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxExtPackHelperApp => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxExtPackHelperApp-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxHeadless => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxHeadless-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxManage => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxManage-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxNetAdpCtl => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxNetAdpCtl-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxNetDHCP => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxNetDHCP-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxSVC => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxSVC-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxXPCOMIPCD => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxXPCOMIPCD-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VMMGC.gc => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VMMGC.gc-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VirtualBox => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VirtualBox-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VirtualBoxVM => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VirtualBoxVM-amd64

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/vboxwebsrv => /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/vboxwebsrv-amd64

Loading VBoxDrv.kext

Loading VBoxUSB.kext

Loading VBoxNetFlt.kext

Loading VBoxNetAdp.kext