[Invalid] Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

As noted by JeanR earlier, the problem is indeed related to the kernel version. Here's my finding:

(1) I have a guest OS running EL 7.5, which has no mouse issue. I updated it using the 7.6 kernel but no other packages were updated. The guest now exhibits the mouse problem.

(2) On a guest running EL 7.6, I installed ELRepo's kernel-ml (4.19.x) and kernel-lt (4.4.x). No mouse problem with either kernel.

Another thing I found is that, on a guest exhibiting the issue, just log out and then log back in and the problem seems to go away.

In either case, the GuestAdditions are not involved.
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diegoC
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by diegoC »

Hi guys,
the kernel 957 is not working with GA at all.
I have performed a rollback to 862 and have installed GA 5.2.23 and now it is stable:

Change to old kernel:
CantpostURL https://www.thegeekdiary.com/centos-rhe ... ld-kernel/
Installed GA 5.2.23:
CantpostURL https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds
Downloaded old kernel-devel package (nota available with yum install):
CantpostURL http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/centos/upd ... 86_64.html
Changed KERN_DIR directory:
CantpostURL https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/ ... -hat-rhel/
Mounted 5.2.23 (you have to create a CD drive on VB)
Installed GA 5.2.23
reboot

I hope this helps. It was difficult because there are many errors and it took me a lot of try and error to get it up and running again.
I cant post URLs bacause I am a new member, so please replace | with . and % with /
Last edited by socratis on 9. Dec 2018, 20:03, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Fixed obfuscated URLs.
toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

diegoC wrote:Hi guys,
the kernel 957 is not working with GA at all.
I have performed a rollback to 862 and have installed GA 5.2.23 and now it is stable:
Before rolling back to the 862 kernel, did you have a chance to try the workaround I posted? That is, just log out and log back in. That "fixed" the mouse problem when I tested.

Also for CentOS users, 7.5 packages have been moved to vault.centos.org. For RHEL users yum should be able to find older versions.
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diegoC
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by diegoC »

Log out and Log In?
I did not exactly do that but I rebooted 100 times and it did not work. I also had clear errors on the Geust Additions logs. Inam pretry sure that GA and 957 are not working prperly in combination. With 5.2.22 it was worse (1024 screen problem) and with 5.2.23 it was „only“ the mouse problem but it made any work on common GUIs impossible.
toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

Just log out of a GUI and log in again. Rebooting will not help. It will bring back the mouse issue again. In my testing I did not install the GuestAdditions. So I don't think GuestAdditions are the source of the problem - at least in my experiments.
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diegoC
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by diegoC »

Ah, yes log out of the GUI worked temporary but only until you use again a complex GUI then it freezes again. For very simple GUIs this may be a Workaround but not if you are developing with webtools. 957 and GA are unstable, do not recommend to use it until someone really fixes it. I will keep my 862 until the end of my project, I already lost 3 days with this yum install update.
toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

Thanks for testing and the comments.

I've been trying to gather as much info as I can so the virtualbox devs can figure out what's causing the issue. The changes made in the kernel code going from 3.10.0-862 to 3.10.0-957 are enormous. It may not be easy to track down the patch(es) that triggered the mouse problem.
Last edited by toracat on 12. Dec 2018, 02:14, edited 1 time in total.
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JoergK
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by JoergK »

@toracat: Is there anything someone could do to help?

I have the same problem at home. At the moment I cannot confirm nor deny wether the workaround helps in my case or not. But I will check that asap. Is there anything else I could do? Gather logs an attach them here?
toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

@JoergK

If I'm not mistaken, you had opened a ticket about this mouse problem but it was closed. Can you reopen it? If not, can you submit a new one? The forums may not be the best place to get the problem solved. We need active participation from the developers.
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toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

Ah, it was @rconde01 that opened the ticket:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18124
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michael
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by michael »

I repeat that "the devs" think that this is a timing-related problem in X.Org which happens to occur in a virtual machine with Enterprise Linux 7.6. I furthermore think that it will disappear again with the next kernel. I have seen what I am pretty sure is the same problem on physical systems with VirtualBox completely out of the picture. See my posts further up for more information. I do not think that the relevant X.Org maintainer is likely to look at this, though he provided suggestions about how to debug it. However this is a very sporadic phenomena in a now legacy code base and he has lots of other work.
toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

Thanks, @michael, for the notes.

I forgot to mention this but RHEL 8 beta (kernel 4.18.0-32.el8) does not show this problem. This is in addition to the two kernels I tested (4.4.x and 4.19.x). So, all kernels other than 3.10.0-957.x.el7 work fine as far as the mouse input goes. Looks like RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux users have to wait for the release of 8.0.
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michael
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by michael »

I suspect that the next 7.6 kernel will also make the problem go away again (I was going to write "fix the problem", but caught myself in time). That will probably happen before 8.0, and hopefully before 7.7 too.
piters
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by piters »

Hi there,

as a temporary workaround one may want to get a newer 4.X kernel from ELREPO as nicely described in
http://jensd.be/814/linux/install-a-new ... n-centos-7

I tried with kernel-lt (I also needed to add the kernel-lt-devel package to have the guest additions compile), and so far it works pretty well with kernel 4.4.166-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.
I recommended reading the instruction till the end to make the new kernel the default in grub.
toracat
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Re: Mouse only usable within single application after mouse click on RHEL 7.6 (#18124)

Post by toracat »

As I noted in my earlier post, both kernel-lt and kernel-ml seem to work. kernel-lt will be a better choice because kernel-ml is a moving target. In either case, if you decide to go this route, I recommend you also read the ELRepo's kernel-lt page.
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