VirtualBox 3.1.x - Guest Additions bugs

[michael]

Update: X.Org works in Fedora 9 after I apply all updates.

[Technologov]

Michael: Any progress here? I would like another spin before 3.1.2 (and finally hope to get this right)

[michael]

Status update Fixed the openSUSE 11.0 mouse issue and the openSUSE 11.1 keyboard one locally, but not yet committed them. Leonid fixed the OpenGL SELinux one as far as I know. No experience of VirtIO, so I can't immediately help you there. I can reproduce the RHEL 3.9 64bit issue - it is a driver crash, not a configuration thing, and I suspect it may have been there for a long time, as that particular driver hasn't been changed much over the years - but was unable to debug it properly as CentOS 3.9 does not provide debugging packages. Just downloaded 4.8 (I noticed to late that you used 4.7, but I will see if it occurs here too) and will try that.

[Technologov]

Thanks for quick response,
Don't bother with RHEL 4.7.... I will upgrade to RHEL 4.8 pretty soon. (next week) ...and RHEL 5.3-->5.4 correspondingly...
The changes between RHEL point releases are minor (unlike openSUSE).

RHEL 4.8 has good news: it supports VirtIO. (but not tested by me yet)

One additional note: OpenGL with openSUSE 11.1 guest did not work even with 3.1.0-BETA1 additions. This needs attention.

Windows Guest Additions: DirectDraw issue was fixed in 3.1.0, but I found OpenGL regression. Celestia OSS application renders textures incorrectly on XP guest. Was fine with 3.0.10. Bug #5710

As for CentOS 3.x debug packages: maybe CentOS community have them on a separate repository... worth asking them on IRC/mailing-list.

As for Fedora 9/VirtIO: You can't help because the buggy drivers come with F9 kernel. But it is worth documenting this issue.

[michael]

If I can't reproduce the mouse driver crash with 4.8 I will have to try 4.7 It is a shame about the missing debug packages for CentOS 3 though.

[Technologov]

I have a new idea about architecture unification...

Guest Additions for Linux could have a single installer... just use $(uname -p) to auto-choose correctly the CPU arch.
Usually it returns i686 or x86_64.
NOTE: this may fail on some systems (Debian) where it may return amd-k7 for Athlon CPUs.

But we can allow the old behavior via parameters to force install 32 or 64-bit version of GA.

[Technologov]

Found another bug: OpenGL module segfaults in Fedora12/x64 guest. (after disabling SELinux, with SELinux it just fails to start)

And another serious bug: In Windows Guest Additions/Shared Folders module this time... Bug #5732

Found another bug: copy-paste (Host<->Guest) in X11 doesn't work on RHEL 3 guest. (and openSUSE 10.0)

==========

I decided once in a while to make a serious Wide-Scale testing of VirtualBox to discover rough edges.
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... 35&start=0

This test covers a lot of possibilities.

-Technologov

[Technologov]

Michael: how is the progress ?

[michael]

Just got the new laptop set up and got used to working under OS X (for working on Linux code!). I have a number of fixes pending, but they will probably need a few days to get in.

[michael]

A number of the problems should be fixed now. The problem with 64bit RHEL 3.9 and 4.8 guests is not yet. That will take me a little bit of time to track down, but I can safely says that this has never worked, as we have been building the mouse driver for those guests with header files from XFree86 4.2 from the start (pre VBox OSE times), and amd64 support was only introduced with XFree86 4.3.

[Technologov]

Yes, openSUSE 11.0, 11.1 (32/64-bit) all work now. Seamless Mode+MI+Shared Folders+Copy Paste.

Good job !

[Technologov]

Re-Test with 3.1.2 Guest Additions.
Host: Windows XP SP2, 32-bit, Core 2 Q6600, VBox 3.1.0. VT-x = on

All Guests were reverted to "Clean Install" Snapshots, and installed the new GA.
All capable Linux guests were run with VirtIO network.

Testing additions: (3.1.2.iso)
(mainly testing GA installation and X.org integration with legacy Linux distros)

Status: (continuously updated)
-RHEL 3.9, 32-bit - 3/5 - mostly work, but if MI=off, the mouse goes crazy. [3] copy-paste doesn't works.
-RHEL 5.3, 64-bit - 5/5 - Works (inc. shared folders)
-openSUSE 11.0, 32-bit - 5/5 - Works
-openSUSE 11.0, 64-bit - 5/5 - Works
-openSUSE 11.1, 32-bit - 3/5 - Works, but OpenGL fails. [4]
-openSUSE 11.1, 64-bit - 3/5 - Works, but OpenGL fails. [4]
-Fedora 10, 64-bit - 4/5 - Works ! OpenGL fails [12]
-Fedora 11, 64-bit - 4/5 - Works ! OpenGL fails [12]
-Fedora 12, 64-bit - 3/5 - Works ! OpenGL fails and segfaults [12] Resolution problem. [11]

5/5 = perfect, works as designed. (doesn't means excellent from user's point of view)
1/5 = serious breakage of the VM, of VirtualBox, or of Host.

Notes:
-Autorun doesn't work on all tested systems.

[1] Seamless mode is now correctly grayed out in GUI.
[2] VM starts only in Text-mode.
[3] I don't like the very architecture that I cannot disable MI completely on the host side. (GDM/KDM/whatever) I would like to have a way to disable MI 100% of the cases on the host side no matter what guest does. This allow for potential security hole where virus in guest takes control of host's mouse pointer. Actually pressing Host key (Right Alt for me) saves me here.
[4] glxgears work, but starting any screensaver makes screen black. I am running KDE3. This works if OpenGL acceleration disabled.
...
[11] xrandr doesn't see any resolutions below the current one. This means, that I can't use any utilities to setup standard resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, ...)
[12] OpenGL fails, due to SELinux policy. Disabling SELinux made glxgears work with OpenGL. Tested on F11/64. Bug #5690

[michael]

-Fedora 12, 64-bit - 3/5 - Works ! OpenGL fails and segfaults [12] Resolution problem. [11]

I suspect that this resolution problem is probably related to the Fedora 12 Guest Additions failures that some people have been reporting, where X fails to start. My feeling is that the single "preferred" resolution from VBox doesn't work for them for some reason.

[michael]

I don't like the very architecture that I cannot disable MI completely on the host side. (GDM/KDM/whatever) I would like to have a way to disable MI 100% of the cases on the host side no matter what guest does. This allow for potential security hole where virus in guest takes control of host's mouse pointer.

This shouldn't be a problem. We don't allow the guest to warp the host mouse cursor position (the host simply provides no way for it to do this), so you can always move the cursor out of the guest. Think of mouse integration like a graphics tablet - no matter where the system moves the mouse cursor (in this case the guest cursor) to, if you continue moving your finger it will return to where it was.

[Technologov]

Michael : Are you sure it is impossible to do seamless mode and dynamic resizing on old Linux guests ? Randr extension you say ?

I just tested VMware 7, and it does both Dynamic Resolution Resizing and Seamless mode (Unity) perfectly with ancient RHEL 3.9 guests !!! It adds new custom resolutions to the randr table on the fly !

I think it is worth looking at this product to at least understand how do they do that !