During VM boot we see an error from piix4_smbus

Problem

During VM boot we see an error from piix4_smbus and in dmesg something like:

piix4_smbus 0000:00:07.3: Host SMBus controller not enabled!

This error is caused by VM having no smbus but Ubuntu always trying to load the module. It doesn’t affect anything but is a bit annoying. Originally this error was reported on VirtualBox and Ubuntu 10.10, but I still see it in Ubuntu 13.10 and Debian 12. It also exist on VMware Fusion and VMware ESXi

Solution

1. Check module is being loaded:

    lsmod | grep i2c_piix4

1. If so, blacklist it in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, by adding the following to the end of the file:

    blacklist i2c_piix4   

1. Update the initramfs

   update-initramfs -u -k all  

Reported on