VirtualBox 3.1.x - Guest Additions bugs

[Sasquatch]

Are there any fixes for Fedora 12? There are numerous posts here of users that are having problems installing the GA and get the GUI to start again. Either the install script doesn't detect the kernel-devel files (both as Host and Guest), or it breaks Xserver, causing it to fail on start.

[michael]

One for 64bit Fedora 12 guests. It worked here fine with both "bitnesses".

[jkarcz]

The r55442 GA iso worked fine in Arch 32bit.

Arch 64bit failed, however with the following echoed back to the shell:

[root@arch64 Desktop]# ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 3.1.0_BETA3 Guest Additions for Linux........
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Removing installed version of VirtualBox Guest Additions...
tar: Record size = 8 blocks
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
add_symlink: link directory /usr/lib64 does not exist
# Start vboxadd
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd start
# Start vboxadd-service
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-service ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-service start
# Start vboxadd-x11
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-x11 ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-x11 start
:: Removing old VirtualBox vboxvideo kernel module [DONE]
:: Removing old VirtualBox vboxvfs kernel module [DONE]
:: Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules [BUSY]
:: Building the main Guest Additions module [DONE]
:: Building the shared folder support module [FAIL]
(Look at /var/log/vboxadd-install.log to find out what went wrong)
# Start vboxadd-service
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-service ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-service start
# Start vboxadd-x11
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-x11 ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxadd-x11 start
:: Installing the Window System drivers [FAIL]
(Invalid Guest Additions configuration found)



The second to last line in the vboxadd-install.log contains the probably useless warning:

WARNING: -e needs -E of -FCreating user for the Guest Additions

Let me know if you need any other logs or testing.

[michael]

Should be fixed in the final release.

[michael]

Alexey, somewhat late in the day, but if you are interested I believe http://www.virtualbox.org/download/test ... r55617.iso should fix the RHEL 3.9 issues.

[Technologov]

Re-Test.
Host: Windows 7, x64, Core 2 Q6600, VBox 3.1.0. VT-x = on
All Guests were reverted to "Clean Install" Snapshots, and installed the new GA.
All Guests were run with SMP, unless otherwise noted. This is to test SMP conflicts with drivers in GA.
All capable Linux guests were run with VirtIO network.

Testing additions: (r55617.iso)
(mainly testing GA installation and X.org integration with legacy Linux distros)

Status: (continuously updated)
***64-bit OS will only be tested if 32-bit works***
-RHEL 3.9, 32-bit - 3/5 - Mostly works in r55617. [1][4] (+tested Shared Folders) Copy Paste fails. Host<->Guest.
-RHEL 3.9, 64-bit - 2/5 - Xfree config broken. [2]
-RHEL 4.7, 32-bit - 5/5 - FIXED in BETA3 ! [1][4]
-RHEL 4.7, 64-bit - 2/5 - Xorg config broken. [2]
-RHEL 5.3, 32-bit - 5/5 - FIXED in BETA3 ! [1][4] (+tested Shared Folders)
-RHEL 5.3, 64-bit - 5/5 - Works ! [1][4] (+tested Shared Folders)
-Fedora 7, 32-bit - 2/5 - Crashes on resize. (GNOME or Xorg bug?), plus very strange behavior of MI. [3]
-Fedora 8, 32-bit - 5/5 - FIXED ! [4]
-Fedora 8, 64-bit - 0/5 - VMM fails. Bug #5410
-Fedora 9, 32-bit - 2/5 - Can't login graphically, Xorg becomes broken. SELinux problem ? [2][6]
-Fedora 10, 32-bit - 4/5 - Works ! [4] OpenGL fails [12]
-Fedora 10, 64-bit - 4/5 - Works ! [4] OpenGL fails [12]
-Fedora 11, 32-bit - 4/5 - Works ! [4] OpenGL fails [12]
-Fedora 11, 64-bit - 4/5 - Works ! [4] OpenGL fails [12]
-Fedora 12, 32-bit - 4/5 - Works ! [4] OpenGL fails [12] Resolution problem. [11] (+tested Shared Folders)
-Fedora 12, 64-bit - 3/5 - Works ! [4] OpenGL fails and segfaults [12] Resolution problem. [11] (+tested Shared Folders)
-openSUSE 10.2, 32-bit - 1/5 - fails to boot. [5] REGRESSION ! Works fine with v3.1.0 additions.
-openSUSE 10.3, 32-bit - 5/5 - Works. [1][4]
-openSUSE 10.3, 64-bit - 0/5 - VMM fails. Bug #5457
-openSUSE 11.0, 32-bit - 1/5 - has 1.5.6 xorg-vbox pre-installed. Keyboard and mouse went crazy in X11. VBox crashed. [7][9][10] REGRESSION ! Works fine with v3.1.0-BETA1/2 additions. Fails with BETA3.
-openSUSE 11.1, 32-bit - 2/5 - has 2.0.6 xorg-vbox pre-installed. No keyboard input in X11. OpenGL needs test. [7][8][10] REGRESSION ! Works fine with v3.1.0-BETA1 additions. Fails with BETA2.

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.
-I won't proceed testing 64-bit guests, if 32-bit fails.

[1] Seamless mode is now correctly grayed out in GUI.
[2] VM starts only in Text-mode.
[3] In user login stage (GDM), the MI is enabled, but cannot be disabled via menu. In GDM, mouse clicks are ignored. MI works fine after login. Resolution becomes wide-screen. I recommend documenting F7 RTM problem in VBox manual, errata section 11.3.
[4] In user login stage (GDM or KDM), the MI is enabled, but cannot be disabled via menu.
[5] Last line in console shows that it tried to init PcNet-III NIC, but fails. Reverting to "Clean Install" snapshots boots it again.
[6] VM Restart fails with VirtIO network device. VirtIO driver is so-called pre-installed guest addition. This is known bug of F9 kernel, and also happens on Qemu/KVM. Needs to be documented in VBox manual, errata section 11.3.
[7] GA were installed on top of old ones. Old GA were pre-installed by openSUSE itself.
[8] Keyboard responds in console (TTY 1-6), but not in X11.
[9] In X11, both mouse and keyboard sending events like crazy.
[10] Reverting to v3.1.0 GA did not help; results are similar.
[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. Running "glxgears" results in: SELinux is preventing glxgears from loading /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-3.1.1/lib/VBoxOGL.so which requires text relocation. It is still rendered in software mode. Disabling SELinux made glxgears work with OpenGL. Tested on F11/32. Bug #5690

openSUSE 11.0 --- after several minutes of sending a series of crazy keyboard and mouse events, VBox crashed.

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: VirtualBox.exe
Application Version: 3.1.0.0
Application Timestamp: 4b13a361
Hang Signature: e827
Hang Type: 0
OS Version: 6.1.7100.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

-Technologov

[michael]

The changed mouse integration behaviour is due to a change in the way we handle it. We were formerly handling it in the graphics driver, which made it possible to disable it at any time, but that had a couple of problems, as we had to poll on every mouse movement to see if it had been disabled, and sometimes there were problems with doubled or disappearing cursors. We have now moved it into the Guest Additions X11 service, which also handles the clipboard, resizing and seamless. The service can handle enabling and disabling mouse integration much more cleanly, but is only started after the user has logged in, which is the reason for the behaviour you see.

[michael]

The Fedora 7 crash looks like a well-known bug in Gnome, and it also occurs here with the 2.2.4 Additions. I will try updating the guest to see if that fixes it.

[michael]

Update: Fedora 7 works fine here after I apply all updates.

[michael]

openSUSE 10.2 works fine here as well. However it sounds to me like your problem was not related to the Guest Additions, as they do not touch the pcnet device.

[michael]

X.Org fails to start in Fedora 9 because our drivers are built against the final X.Org server 1.5 ABI, and the pre-release X server shipped by Redhat is not. I will try updating the guest tomorrow to see if that fixes it.

[michael]

Re openSUSE 11 - I have never tried installing our Guest Additions on top of their installation, as I always have serious doubts about overwriting a system package. The installer should actually warn the user not to do this. That said, I don't know yet if that is the reason for the problems that you see there. I will test sometime next week.

[Technologov]

updated.
I recommend adding F7 and F9 (about VirtIO) to errata in VBox manual.
openSUSE works great with older additions from BETA1, so we need to find out what breaks it. For me, it is a bit disappointing, that after such a heavy BETA testing, openSUSE support is broken in 3.1.0 release.

[michael]

I'm afraid that, to (mis)quote Douglas Adams, software engineering is "very like a piece of badly put up wallpaper. Push down a bubble somewhere, another one pops up somewhere else". And this unfortunately applies doubly to the sort of work needed for the Linux Guest Additions, as they are a single binary package which is supposed to work on more or less every Linux in existence, some of which require rather strange X server configuration. Fixing one broken guest often means covering a configuration situation we hadn't thought of before, but changing the way we do our configuration always carries the danger of breaking something else in some subtle way. (I'm afraid that SUSE has usually been one of the worst offenders - much of the breakage in 3.1 was a result of trying to finally get openSUSE 11.1 right. They tried to set up the Additions out of the box, but failed in a way which completely defeated our previous xorg.conf hacking script.)

To cut a long story short, that is why I am very grateful for all the testing you have been doing. Hopefully we are pushing some of the bubbles out to parts of the wallpaper where there are no guest Linux distributions for them to upset! Just updating Fedora 9 by the way. If it works after the update, I tend more to detecting this particular case in the Additions installer (we already have at least one detection hack for Fedora 9 there) and refusing to configure the X.Org Additions until the user has updated their system, rather than just documenting it in the manual. The manual is already so large that it is not reasonable (in my opinion) to expect users to find this sort of detail there.

[michael]

The openSUSE 11.1 keyboard issue is reproducible here, will investigate. Note that I saw something similar on another guest (can't remember which) which went away and was never seen again after a couple of hard restarts, while I was trying to track it down.