A quick web search later I fell over this repository with a guide on how to get Chromium’s WebHID connection to work to a Keychron Q5 HE under ArchLinux, and I figured that was close enough (and the steps outlined therein logical enough) to adapt. And just so I can easily find this again, I’m replicating the crucial bits here…

Apparently all I needed were some additional udev rules for both the mouse itself (when connected via the USB-C cable) as well as the 2.4GHz dongle (when connected wirelessly). So, first I figured out the relevant vendor and product IDs:

$ lsusb | grep -i keychron
Bus 005 Device 042: ID 3434:d028 Keychron Keychron Ultra-Link 8K
Bus 005 Device 062: ID 3434:d06f Keychron Keychron G5

Those turned out to be vendor 0x3434 and products 0xd06f (wired mouse) and 0xd028 (dongle). So based on the repo linked above I created /etc/udev/rules.d/50-keychron-g5.rules as follows:

# Keychron G5 (WebHID)
KERNEL=="hidraw*", SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="3434", ATTRS{idProduct}=="d06f", MODE="0666", TAG+="uaccess", TAG+="udev-acl"
KERNEL=="hidraw*", SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="3434", ATTRS{idProduct}=="d028", MODE="0666", TAG+="uaccess", TAG+="udev-acl"

then refreshed udev:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

and replugged the mouse and restarted Chromium.

After that, the launcher page could finally connect! 🥳

VirtualBox can’t operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE).

A quick web search for “fedora update virtualbox vboxisomaker” gave me this forum post and consequently this bug report, in which I found the solution: I just had to add the kernel parameter kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0 to disable KVM - which comes enabled by default since Kernel 6.12. I accomplished that with grubby:

sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="kvm.enable_virt_at_load=0"

After a reboot, VirtualBox started again.

Given how often VirtualBox breaks for me on updates, long term I think I really need to find a different solution… And yes, I also really need to upgrade to Fedora 41, I know 😉

$ sudo /sbin/vboxconfig 
[sudo] password for gina: 
vboxdrv.sh: Stopping VirtualBox services.
depmod: WARNING: could not open modules.order at /lib/modules/6.3.8-200.fc38.x86_64: No such file or directory
depmod: WARNING: could not open modules.builtin at /lib/modules/6.3.8-200.fc38.x86_64: No such file or directory
depmod: WARNING: could not open modules.builtin.modinfo at /lib/modules/6.3.8-200.fc38.x86_64: No such file or directory
vboxdrv.sh: Starting VirtualBox services.
vboxdrv.sh: Building VirtualBox kernel modules.
egrep: warning: egrep is obsolescent; using grep -E
vboxdrv.sh: failed: Look at /var/log/vbox-setup.log to find out what went wrong.

There were problems setting up VirtualBox.  To re-start the set-up process, run
  /sbin/vboxconfig
as root.  If your system is using EFI Secure Boot you may need to sign the
kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt, vboxnetadp, vboxpci) before you can load
them. Please see your Linux system's documentation for more information.

A look into /var/log/vbox-setup.log revealed an error along the lines of this one¹:

/tmp/akmodsbuild.bPlgZsDR/BUILD/VirtualBox-kmod-7.0.10/_kmod_build_6.4.10-200.fc38.x86_64/vboxnetflt/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.c: In function 'vboxNetFltLinuxForwardToIntNetInner':
/tmp/akmodsbuild.bPlgZsDR/BUILD/VirtualBox-kmod-7.0.10/_kmod_build_6.4.10-200.fc38.x86_64/vboxnetflt/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.c:1570:40: error: implicit declaration of function 'skb_gso_segment'; did you mean 'skb_gso_reset'? [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]
 1570 |             struct sk_buff *pSegment = skb_gso_segment(pBuf, 0 /*supported features*/);
      |                                        ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      |                                        skb_gso_reset
/tmp/akmodsbuild.bPlgZsDR/BUILD/VirtualBox-kmod-7.0.10/_kmod_build_6.4.10-200.fc38.x86_64/vboxnetflt/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.c:1570:40: warning: initialization of 'struct sk_buff *' from 'int' makes pointer from integer without a cast [-Wint-conversion]
cc1: some warnings being treated as errors

I did some web searching and came across this post on the Fedora forums with someone having the exact same issue, and found a solution in the comments courtesy of Peter Francis:

Adding

#include <net/gso.h>

below the line

#include <linux/inetdevice.h>

in /usr/share/virtualbox/src/vboxhost/vboxnetflt/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.c fixed it for me.

Hopefully when the file gets overwritten on next VirtualBox update the fix will be already added by VirtualBox’s programmers.

And what can I say, it also fixed it for me! And should this not get fixed in the next update, now I’ll know where to find the solution again - my own TIL post 😉

PS: Something tells me this won’t be the last VirtualBox related TIL post I’ll write…

Jun 13 10:23:50 draper kernel: traps: Missing ENDBR: 0xffff9b688c308f30

After some searching I came across this thread on the VirtualBox forums which explained the issue and also includes the solution. Apparently the VirtualBox kernel driver triggers Intel’s IBT (indirect branch tracking). The solution is to disable that¹ by passing ibt=off as a kernel parameter:

sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="ibt=off"

After a reboot I could rebuild the vbox kernel driver via /sbin/vboxconfig, which ran through without issues, and after that the VM started up just fine.

Something that got annoying quickly is that the package manager command dnf defaults to “no” when asking if you really want to install a package plus its dependencies. I’m very used to apt’s behaviour here that allows me to type sudo apt install <package> and then just hit Enter on the sanity check. I wanted the same for dnf, but without bypassing the sanity check altogether. I did some digging together with my buddy Ben and we found the answer.

Edit the file /etc/dnf/dnf.conf and add the following line to the [main] section:

defaultyes=True

And once that’s done, the sanity check now is Y/n instead of y/N and you can just hit Enter to install the package.

(This is btw the first post written on the new laptop and I’m really enjoying it so far!)