Discuss the 3.1.6 release

[qkb]

All runs fine after upgrade, but 3.1.4 (or earlier) bug is still there, but different. Try this:
* start a machine which has a snapshot, current state same as snapshot; no .ISO attached to machine
* attach .ISO while VM is running and access it (e.g. browse in guest with Explorer)
* power off VM with option 'restore current snapshot'
The results I see afterwards:
* VM settings do not show any attached .ISO, but...
* Virtual Media Manager shows the .ISO as still attached to VM
* hitting 'release' in manager does not change anything (but 'release' is not disabled as it was the case in 3.1.4)
* the .ISO is not attached in VM when it starts again
The problem does not -- of course -- occur when .ISO is detached before 'power off + revert'.
The problem can be 'fixed' after it occurred by running the VM, attaching and detaching the same .ISO before power off.
Does this happen only for me or is it a known bug or should I open a new ticket for it?
Host: XP SP3, guest: XP SP3, Ubuntu, Win7 -- happens in all of them.

[frank]

Update to my previous post. I looked back at some notes and realized that my previous installation had been rolled back to 3.1.4 to resolve an issue. I was easily able to reinstall that version. Should I just settle for that version for now or is there something about the 3.1.6 installer that could be adjusted?

Can you try again? The installer of VBox 3.1.6 should not have significantly changed. In doubt try to completely uninstall the current VBox version, then reboot the host, then install the (not broken) version 3.1.6.

[qkb]

Maybe I was too quick with the first post (I've forgot to update GA in VMs), but after upgrading host & guests to 3.1.6, the bug is still there: ISO image attached while VM is running stays attached in Media Manager, but not in VM settings after 'power off + restore snapshot'. The weird difference after upgrading GA to 3.1.6 is that now -- fortunately -- Media Manager allows the half-attached .ISO to be released from VM, so not a big issue.

I also noticed that in the Win XP guest with auto-hiding taskbar it is impossible to force the taskbar to show after it gets hidden, but that bug is already filed elsewhere.

[OldeFoxx]

I'm sticking with Ubuntu 9.04 as my host OS rather than upgrading at present. Just works and looks better. So delighted that there is a VirtualBox download available for it.

Not quite as happy with recent releases of VirtualBox. Manner of designating Storage devices and what goes where is more confusing. Also, while itis understandable that devices have to first be mounted under the host to be relayed to the client by VirtualBox based on settings, there is a probem with locking up if you attempt to unmount and eject a CD on the guest side. You get a message that it can attempt a force unmount, but it always fails. Once you act on the client side, you cannot unmount or eject a CD on the host side. That is what I mean by lockup. You can do a sudo eject /dev/sr0 to get the CD out, but use of the CD Drive is now inhibited until you start over. Sometimes starting VirtualBox over is enough, other times you have to do a complete shutdown and reboot.

Sound works under VirtualBox, but I only get half volume as heard from Ubuntu host. That is with volume setting on client set all the way up. Also oticed on one occasion that sound from both host and cleint were heard at the same time.

Some backups and restores take terribly long when dealing with client side, about ten times longer than expected. Need some way to have client get more timeslots to do certain tasks when needed.

Use of USB drives has not improved. Actually gotten worse. You get a one tme shot at recognizing an attached USB device with client, because Ubuntu will open a page with foloders displayed, and then cease acting with it. That page has been noted to go away without help after awhile. If you have to reboot the client, it cannot find the USB device again, but you can unplug or shut off the device then connect it again, which gets Ubuntu to recognize it again and it again is seen by the client. No real good way to cope with this problem came to light.

I did work out one thing with the above problem. Instead of enabling VirtualBox to give the client access to the USB drives, I left the USB devices under Ubuntu, and just used Shared Folders to give the client access to some or all of the content. That worked because Ubuntu kept control and access to the USB device to itself.

Comes to mind that USB could be used for. Lots of printers, scanners, all-in-ones and videocam make use of USB, but there may be a lack of available drivers for Linux (or Ubuntu). Still, it the client software has access to available drivers,
why not make it possible for the host to send and receive content for these devices via the client? There is a time penalty involved, but if it works, it works.

Not sure what is going on in either the Ubuntu or VirtualBox worlds. We look at what was so great before which only needed a bit of sprucing, to how things change and put into question what we had taken for granted at one time. Must be something to do with management stated goals or the loss of key personnel. What I mean is, keep it simple. How do I know if the setup for Virtualbox on Storate involves either a primary or secondary master or slave, or what type of connection it is, or how to get back my virtual drive if I mark "empty" there instead. On the last, I had to delect the client entirely and begin again from scratch.

Oh yes, the keyboard lockup syndrome. Set up Ubuntu + VirtualBox + Windows, the last either 2K or XP, leave the keyboad untouched for a few minutes, and it quit responding. Might be linked to a screen goes to sleep problem with Ubuntu which requires mouse movement or a keyboard press to get past. Coulc be something else entirely. With the client, you have to somehow use the mouse to get a response from VirtualBox, and you are back in business with the keyboard, until it happens again. Gets tiresome.

As to setting up Windows 2K or XP, I have found that these can be troublesome, especially 2K..But there is a way to make it go much better, which is to slipstream SP4 into Win2K and SP2 into WinXP first, burn the CD, and use that for getting it up and running. You can have a max of 4 GB or RAM in use with 32-bit OSes, and if you have 6 GB or 8 GB in your machine, the extra is not getting used as far as I can tell. Now VirtualBox allows you to designate up to 2500 MB
pf RAM for each cleint, but with only 4 GB usable, you get a warning if you go past the 50% mark for a client, which would be just 2038 MB. Sounds fine, right? But I found that too much RAM is another way to cause Windows 2K or XP to crash, and that 1024 MB is sufficient. Nobody warns you of these little getchas, and it takes a lot of trial and error to run some of them down.

Oh, abut slipstreaming. The SP packages themselves probably support it, but I know that you can get a package by that name for Win2k at no cost which soes a smooth and simple job of it. For WinXP, there is BartPE and Nlite, two other choices, and it works pretty good on its own. Incidently, BartPE lets you effectively make a LiveCD for Wondows XP, which can be real handy sometimes.

One more thing about slipstreaming. Someone else worked out how to take an original install disk for Office 2000 and work SP3 into it easily, which deals with problems related to SR-1, SR-2, and SP2 at the same tme.

Might interest some to know that packages like Windows are able to fetch and install updates on their own, even if just set up as a client. But you have to start this process yourself the first go around. Click on Start in the lower left, and somewhere near the top of the column that appears you should see Windows Update. That's it. Now Windows Update is not automatic, and you have to follow instructions for getting Microsoft Update instead, and that can be set to act automaticaly. On top of which Windows 2000 only came with IE5, and you are requried to download and install IE6 with SP1 for the update process to work at all. Not too hard to do. Search on something like "IE6 SP1 download", and go from there.

Something else to note: The update process shows two buttons, Express and Custom. Most peole pick Excpress, wich is fine, and that is what you get with the auto update process as well. But this is only for critical patches, and you need to use Custom if you want to get all the others, including getting Microsoft Media Player installed.

You see all these steps that Windows owners and users have to take just to get up to a reasonable point of service with the software? Now notice the difference and ease of working with Ubuntu and VirtualBox, then adding a client:

Download Ubuntu, burn a CD, Boo the LiveCD, choose to install. Only tricky pary is how to partition hard drive, because you have to make a decision or two.
Boot up Ubuntu. Explore Applications/Places/System menus briefly. That next icon is FireFox, which gets you on the internet. With Win2k, you had to define and create a network connection first.

Wiat a bit, and Update Manager will advise you to get and install updates. Or remember that System/Administrative/Update Manager pointer right to it, and start it yourself. At this time, Ubuntu 9.04 will be subject to 284 updates, which it does on its own. You try the same thing with Win2K, you have to start with Windows Update, get and install IE6 SP1, got back through Windows Update, fetch and install Microsoft Update, configure it, have your PC scanned for needed updates, which will vary in number from the 70's to 90's. You can only download and install the critical ones to start, and several crtical updates demand an immediate restore before you go any further. Then you start with Microsoft Update again and get another scan. This takes quite a while, and of course you are involved in every step of the way. Someone may have told you that you also get patches to Office and other Microsoft products in this manner, but don't believe it. You get done here, which takes hours to complete, you ned t run down any other patches or updates by product. Lookl at the update page until you find a link to Home, and go there. Form there, find your product line, then your version, then which part of your product that is listed and has updates or whatever listed for it. This is link by link, and page by page you understand, not all together. You should finally be shown a list of updates. For office 2000, the list was three pages long. You start at the back of the list, work your way up, then come forward a page, and continue until done. Each updates has to be manualy selected, chased through two links, downloading and installed by the Windows Installer, then you go back through three pages and find the next link in the list and repeat. Nothing automatic abut any of this.

Point I am trying to make is that Ubuntu + VirtualBox is simple and diirect. But when you get to the client level, and you decide to include Windows, that is not going to be near as clean and easy. But that is the way Windows is, and has always been. You were spared it initially because you probably got a PC with Windows and stuff already installed.

Okay, try to go the other way. Cut out Ubuntu, or VirtualBox, or both. Does that make it somehow better? No, in fact it just makes it worse. Now you are stuck with tryng to get an old version of Windows on much newer hardware, and that can make things really bad. There may not be drivers out there to make the connection between software and hardware.
See, Ubuntu did that automatically for you. Windows may not even begin to recognize some of the things attached to it,
including to video circuits and LAN adapter. VirtualBox provides a cushion between Ubuntu and Windows, since neither was really designed to run with the other.

I have found the combination of Ubuntu + VirtualBox + Cient, where client is either Windows 2K or XP, to be virtually ideal, and much more so than trying to remain on Windows alone in the face of new hardware considerations. I mean, this is good stuff, and I am not kidding. I have an in-law's PC that is essentially new, but I added in a spare EIDE drive, and that has caused lots of grief. The BIOS wants the EIDE drive to be first, but the cabling puts it behind the SATA hard drive. And thus the boot order is confusing. Windows' reliance on drive letters gets messed up as well. After days and days of trying to get two FAT32 partitons, one on each drive, to load and run Windows, but the boot order was unstable, because at times either partiton could be C: or D: I finally fixed the problem. how? By installing Ubuntu on an unused partition, at which point Grub became the boot manager. Grub has no problem keeping track of which partition or drive does what, and everything works now.

Works, yes. But I don't run from either FAT32 install. Reason bing that together Ubuntu and VirtualBox provide a whole lot of surround protection for the client, and to me, that is just a whole lot better. So why have Windows installs sitting out there by themselves? In case my in-law gets put off by Ubuntu or VirtualBox, and that gives me a place to tell her where t go next. I just want the matter off my hands.

Not that there is much additional effort with Ubuntu and VirtualBox involved. Four eash steps to get the client up and running, and about four steps to shut down the client, close VirtualBox, and shutdown Ubuntu. And the sharing between Ubuntu and the client that VirtualBox enables, adds some remarkable capabilities along the way.

[mpack]

Skimming (no way I'm actually going to read all that), I reckon you could have said everything of importance in three sentences. Man, you need to learn to self-edit.

[Erik_FL]

So far the only problem that I've had with the 3.6 release (also in previous releases) is the failure of mapped network drives to work properly with shared folders. If I map a drive letter to "\\vboxsvr\sharename" then a large percentage of the time a folder view refresh, attempt to rename or delete a file, or open a file using the right-click context menu results in an error. The error message says "The request is not supported".

The work around posted by another user is to assign drive letters with SUBST. When I use SUBST to assign the drive letters to the same shared folder names "\\vboxsvr\sharename" then it always works properly. That does solve the problem but it can't be done during logon. I've found that during logon, attempts to access the shared folders will fail. After many seconds following starting up and logging in I can access the shared folders. To do that I use a batch file, that I must run manually some time after booting, before I attempt to access the shared folders. After mapping the drive letters with SUBST they appear in "My Computer" but with no identifying name or other information.

This problem would not be noteworthy except that it has been a problem for a very long time, through many releases, and still has not been fixed. It is essentially a minor problem since there is a good work around. Perhaps it has something to do with when the Virtual Box shared folder service starts versus when Windows attempts to reconnect the drive letters. I have not tried remapping the drives with "NET USE" but I may do that as an experiment to see if the problem happens only after a reboot with drives mapped. The interesting thing about SUBST is that it does not remember drive mapping after a reboot. In essence that forces the drives to always be remapped after the OS has booted and the VirtualBox services have started.

There have been a few bug reports for this problem and I'm not sure of the official status. Hopefully they haven't all been closed.

[franl]

The mouse coordinate off by -1, -1 bug is supposedly fixed in 3.1.8. See the Changelog at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

[ingo2]

The mouse coordinate off by -1, -1 bug is supposedly fixed in 3.1.8.

It is definitely fixed in 3.1.8, I have already tested!