opensuse 12.2 x86_64 guest display too small after update of guest additions

[LMHmedchem]

Hello,

I updated my version of vbox to 5.1.18 to address all of my VM network adapters going away. I also updated guest additions in one of my linux guests. The update seemed to go fine, but when I restarted the VM, the display only filled about the middle 1/3 of the window. The font sizes had not changed, so the screen was a mess. The display looked very nice before, so I'm not sure what happened. I was able to make it a bit better by changing the display resolution under Configure Desktop > Display and Monitor > Size = 1280x1024. The display is larger, but several inches of the top of the desktop is above the top of the window, so I have a vertical scroll bar to deal with. It does not help to use the other view modes like full screen or scaled mode.

Also the mouse is slow and lurchy in the guest.

It is annoying when things like this happen when making an update to a perfectly functioning VM. New versions are generally supposed to work better, not worse. Can anyone suggest what I can do to fix this? Should I revert to an earlier version of guest additions?

Suggestions are greatly appreciated,

LMHmedchem

[Perryg]

Should I revert to an earlier version of guest additions?

For opensuse, I believe so. There have been a lot of issues with opensuse and all the changes they are doing and also what vbox is doing to catch up. You may be better off with the opensuse guest additions but not sure about that either. I have also read where opensuse users had to purge the current version of the GAs before they install the update to make them work properly, but you should see what if anything is failing in the /var/log/vboxadd-install.log

[LMHmedchem]

Thanks for the advice. I reverted to the version of GA that was there before and now my appearance is back to normal and the mouse works better.

The only glitch is that my shared folder has gone away. I get "the file or folder /media/sf_shared_data does not exist". If I look under devices > shared folders > shared folder settings, my shared folder is there and the path is correct. I closed the VM and opened the VM manager. I deleted the shared folder and then added it again set to auto mount. This doesn't change anything and I still get the folder does not exist.

I looked under the yast paritioner and none of my hard drives appear, just the VM files. I can't really use this without my shared files, so I need to get this fixed. As you mentioned, should I have removed the GA version that I installed before trying to revert? I know that the earlier version worked, so I'm not sure what has happened here. I looked for a process for removing GA, but I didn't find one.

LMHmedchem

[socratis]

I reverted to the version of GA that was there before

You never mentioned what "before" was (you should do that every time you report an issue), but try to go to 5.1.14. Both for the main program and the GAs. 5.1.16 had a rather sever issue with the shared folders, but I can't tell if you're affected or not...

[Perryg]

Run the install again ( from the terminal ) with uninstall at the end, or you may be able to just run the uninstall.sh from its location, not sure since I don't have an actual opensuse guest right now. You should also make sure that your user name is still in the vboxsf group on the guest since it looks like you are using the auto-mount feature.

[LMHmedchem]

I reverted to the version of GA that was there before

You never mentioned what "before" was (you should do that every time you report an issue), but try to go to 5.1.14. Both for the main program and the GAs. 5.1.16 had a rather sever issue with the shared folders, but I can't tell if you're affected or not...

Sorry, this guest had GA 4.3.8_92456. Vbox was 5.1.2 installed on windows xp 32-bit.

The linux installer in GA is called VBoxLinuxAdditions.run. There is no uninstaller that I can find.

I ran VBoxLinuxAdditions.run as,

./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall

but that doesn't do anything. Running ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --help shows some options, but none of them say anything about uninstall.

I did check and my username is still under the vboxsf group.

I would like to roll back to 5.1.14 as socratis suggests, but I would like to uninstall GA first if possible.

I have never had much luck downloading from http://download.virtualbox.org/. Files will download for a bit and then stop. Sometimes a combination of pause and resume will get the file, but sometimes that also crashes my browser. I usually have to use wget.

These are the links for 5.1.14,
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualb ... 24-Win.exe
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualb ... ox-extpack

I never can find the guest additions links in the same place as the other download links. Is there some reason why they are not included with the other files under https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds?

LMHmedchem

[Perryg]

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/

Pick the version you want from here and you will see the stand alone GAs. The reason they are not included with the older builds section is they are included with the actual install.

Since opensuse is somewhat of a different beast you may need to ask them how to remove the installed GAs.

Given you are running XP as a host I would find a combination that works and stay with that build for as long as you can. XP went dead a while ago and while the DEVs do not try to break things it does happen and support for a dead ( EOL ) host is not on the top of their list to fix regressions.

[socratis]

According to the manual "Support for Windows XP was removed with VirtualBox 5.0." That doesn't mean that it's not going to work, it means that it's not actively tested, and if it fails it fails. Not that they're not going to fix something if they can, but they won't bend over backwards to do it...

[LMHmedchem]

Rolling back to 5.1.14 just landed be back with my very small display and the shared folders still didn't work. I decided to just reinstall the original VM from an ova file and get back to where I started. I always export new ova files before doing an update just in case.

Anyway, I now have 5.1.14 for vbox and the extension pack, but my VMs have GA 4.3.8. Everything seems to work now. The display is what it was before and my shared folders work. The reinstall of vbox fixed the issue with my network adapters disappearing. I wish that would stop happening, but next time I will just re-install 5.1.14 instead of updating to the latest version.

I had to re-do some of the changed I had made to the guest but I think that was easier then trying to fix everything that had gong wrong.

Thanks again for the help.

LMHmedchem

[Perryg]

Remember that XP is no longer a supported host so any updates might leave you with issues again.