Saturday, December 26, 2015

Clean removal of Virtualbox on a Mac

Some questions came on how to remove Oracle Virtualbox from a Mac. Not that the person who asked the question was unhappy with Virtualbox, however, due to some issues and some manual fiddling they damaged the installation. Removing software from a Mac is quite easy as an application is (should) be a self contained package. You can remove Virtualbox this way, however to be completely sure it is done in the right way you can also use the official removal tool that is shipped with the installer.


When you run the installer script you will be shown what will be removed, something I personally always like…. knowing what is going to happen.


Welcome to the VirtualBox uninstaller script.

The following files and directories (bundles) will be removed:
    /Users/parmakat/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist
    /usr/bin/VirtualBox
    /usr/bin/VBoxManage
    /usr/bin/VBoxVRDP
    /usr/bin/VBoxHeadless
    /usr/bin/vboxwebsrv
    /usr/bin/VBoxBalloonCtrl
    /usr/bin/VBoxAutostart
    /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox/
    /Library/Extensions/VBoxDrv.kext/
    /Library/Extensions/VBoxUSB.kext/
    /Library/Extensions/VBoxNetFlt.kext/
    /Library/Extensions/VBoxNetAdp.kext/
    /Applications/VirtualBox.app/

And the following KEXTs will be unloaded:
    org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB
    org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv

And the traces of following packages will be removed:
    org.virtualbox.pkg.vboxkexts
    org.virtualbox.pkg.vboxstartupitems
    org.virtualbox.pkg.virtualbox
    org.virtualbox.pkg.virtualboxcli

Do you wish to uninstall VirtualBox (Yes/No)?
Yes

The uninstallation processes requires administrative privileges
because some of the installed files cannot be removed by a normal
user. You may be prompted for your password now...

Please enter parmakat's password:
unloading org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB
unloading org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv
Successfully unloaded VirtualBox kernel extensions.
Forgot package 'org.virtualbox.pkg.vboxkexts' on '/'.
Forgot package 'org.virtualbox.pkg.vboxstartupitems' on '/'.
Forgot package 'org.virtualbox.pkg.virtualbox' on '/'.
Forgot package 'org.virtualbox.pkg.virtualboxcli' on '/'.
Done.
logout


[Process completed]


Removing Virtualbox by using the uninstaller script makes sure you will have a more clean environment for a doing the installation again. Also, it has been known that in previous versions of VirtualBox some strange issues have been occurring when you upgraded to the next while using a Mac. Some internal network cards and internal network settings are not always picked up correctly. Meaning, doing a clean removal and a clean installation of Virtualbox on your Max might in some cases be saving you a lot of time.

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