Jun 25 10:46:42 debian systemd-modules-load[201]: Failed to find module 'vmhgfs' Jun 25 10:46:42 debian systemd[1]: Failed to start Load Kernel Modules. Jun 25 10:46:42 debian systemd[1]: Unit systemd-modules-load.service entered failed state.
Does that make sense to you or anyone ?
For reasons understandable only to systemd, it tried to modprobe vmhgfs and didn't find it in the initramfs.
What Valdis says: I would expect that you can find a 'vmhgfs.ko' file somewhere in /lib/modules that systemd is trying to load, but can't because it wasn't included in the initramfs. *Goes looking for 'vmhgfs.ko' in package manager* Oh, so the vmhgfs.ko module is installed with open-vm-tools, not virtualbox-modules. TIL. Also it appears that vmhgfs is for VMware, not VirtualBox.
Does this configuration actually *need* a vmware shared folder in order to boot? Uh-uh no it does not.
I guess it is looking for that 'vmhgfs' because I installed VirtualBox. And something really interesting, I deleted VirtualBox or so I thought. I recompiled the kernel and checked, same 'bleeping' error. So reinstall VirtualBox and like some Voo Doo magic all my operating systems showed up which tells me Virtual Box keeps its folder and settings in your home folder. One lives and learns :-)
Just so we're on the same page: This module is for VMware, not VirtualBox. So I wouldn't expect (un)installing VirtualBox would affect this module.
If so, you'll need to tell your dracut/ mkinitramfs/whatever command to include it. If not, you'll need to tell it to not look for it.
Exactly. I don't know if/how you do this with systemd, but if you don't need the module at boot, systemd shouldn't be trying to load it.
I am going to keep working on this as and when I have the time I want to know how to fix this. We know it is because I installed VirtualBox, now I gotta find a fix :-(
Silly idea maybe (because I'm no systemd expert): In OpenRC you can blacklist modules in /etc/modprobe.d. Maybe something like this [0]: echo "blacklist vmhgfs" >> /etc/modprobe.d/vmware Looks like you can even add it as a boot parameter. And I would assume that it works with systemd as well, because Arch Linux uses systemd by default. [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel_modules#Blacklisting Best of luck! -- Thomas