Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
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cooldevo
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. May 2022, 15:15

Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Post by cooldevo »

I was running the previous Ubuntu LTS (Focal Foss I think?) with Guest Additions (6.1.34) installed and everything was working beautifully on VirtualBox Version 6.1.34 r150636 (Qt5.6.2) running on Windows 11 host OS.
  1. I received a notification through Ubuntu that Jammy Jellyfish was released, so I did the upgrade through the OS.
  2. On reboot the screen was not working correctly, but it did load. The left and top menu bars worked perfectly and take up the screen as expected, but the desktop itself was cut-off and any menu, except for a terminal, does not work (reference image:
    Desktop broken but toolbars working
    Desktop broken but toolbars working
    ubuntudesktop.jpg (111.51 KiB) Viewed 3882 times
    ). Not sure why a terminal works, but no other window does. If I open the "start" menu, it works perfectly (reference image:
    Main Menu working nicely
    Main Menu working nicely
    ubuntumenu.jpg (60.78 KiB) Viewed 3882 times
    ).
  3. I tried rebooting, checking for APT updates, and nothing.
  4. I uninstalled Guest Additions and rebooted, and the desktop returned to working perfectly (albeit much smaller resolution).
  5. I reinstalled Guest Additions via mounting the CD/DVD and rebooted and it went back to the cut-off desktop as the first image above.
Log file for the VM can be found here:
VMLogs.zip
VM Log file
(34.4 KiB) Downloaded 4 times
fth0
Volunteer
Posts: 5668
Joined: 14. Feb 2019, 03:06
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linux, Windows 10, ...
Location: Germany

Re: Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Post by fth0 »

FWIW, there's a similar report here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=105879.

Are you using X11 or Wayland with or without XWayland? Can you try if using X11 solves the problems?
cooldevo
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. May 2022, 15:15

Re: Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Post by cooldevo »

Apologies I scrolled through the list and didn't notice anything. I must have missed it.

Ok, this is really weird. The VM is a temp dev image, and it's set to auto-login to a standard user account. When I power it off it reverts back to a baseline snapshot. I deleted the snapshot for the upgrade so it didn't get downgraded.

I powered it up it logged me it and the image was the exact same as per the above post. I logged out using the GUI, and the screen went black and then after a couple of seconds it refreshed to show me a fully working desktop. I didn't get sent to the login screen or change from Wayland to X11 or anything.

I then logged out again, and this time it took me back to the login screen. When I logged into the account keeping it on Wayland it all seems to be working.
I logged out again, switched it to X11 and on logging in it all looks good.
I logged back out, switched it to Wayland and logged back in, and it still seems to be working very well.

Not sure if any of that helps diagnose what may have happened....

I powered off the VM and attached the VM log just in case there might be something useful to see what might have happened.
VM-working.zip
(35.67 KiB) Downloaded 5 times
cooldevo
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. May 2022, 15:15

Re: Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Post by cooldevo »

Ok, I may have lied. It worked through a reboot or two, and then started doing it again. When I Log Out from Ubuntu (after the auto-login) it does NOT take me back to the login screen, but goes black for 2-3 seconds and then an error pops up in VirtualBox and the desktop refreshes and is working. It never actually logs me out. But after the refresh, everything works as well as it did before I upgraded. And after the refresh, a logout actually takes me back to the login screen as I would have expected.

A screengrab of the error that is thrown on trying to log out is here:
vboxclient.jpg
vboxclient.jpg (26.97 KiB) Viewed 3853 times

I did not find this text in the VM Log file, so if additional information would be helpful, let me know.
cooldevo
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. May 2022, 15:15

Re: Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Post by cooldevo »

Updated to the latest kernel and packages as of what was available this morning, and nothing on the Ubuntu side fixed this from happening on first boot with auto-login. It seems to happen just about every boot, where it has the broken desktop that doesn't respond except for a terminal. If I log out it kicks the desktop into gear and after spitting out the above error everything starts to work perfectly.
arQon
Posts: 228
Joined: 1. Jan 2017, 09:16
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Ubuntu 16.04 x64, W7

Re: Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Post by arQon »

It's actually a bit more complex than just what you've encountered so far. For at least as long as I've been using 6.1, and AFAICT as long as the VMSVGA driver has existed, the early paints don't happen properly. That's what you're seeing here: the VM starts with an 800x600 window, draws into that *with clipping*, then doesn't recover correctly once the resize gets processed because (again, AFAICT) there's an issue with it either failing to mark those sections as damaged or failing to recognise that they are.

Search my posts, find one of the other threads on this, and try the Stupid Hack I posted in them. It's not great, and it's not 100% reliable, but it's the best anyone seems to have managed so far.
Data Dale
Posts: 1
Joined: 10. Oct 2022, 01:48

Re: Upgraded to Jammy Jellyfish and desktop is unusable with Guest Additions

Post by Data Dale »

I encountered the same problem with my upgrade to Jammy. I resolved the issue by reconfiguring GNOME. Use

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3
to reconfigure the display manager and then reboot. Alternatively, you could install lightdm as an alternative display manager. Install lightdm using

Code: Select all

sudo apt install lightdm
and configure using

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
, then reboot.
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