virtualbox.org

I just came from VirtualBox 5.2 to 6.0 and immediately ran into this bug. Everything was working perfectly prior to the upgrade, and suddenly when VirtualBox changes (all other variables remain the same) - suddenly the mouse has disappeared completely. Switching to VboxSVGA appears to fix this as others have mentioned, and gives the expected result.

AcquaCow wrote:I just tab through the installer.

This is definitely do-able, but (and this is not a VBox problem) the installer for CentOS/etc really does not make it that intuitive to complete with keyboard input only. It's near impossible to see what's selected or in focus, at least for me it is. So yes it's possible, but at least to me it's incredibly annoying. But that's an aside as mentioned.

@boktai1000
So, if you try with an earlier CentOS version, like 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, you still have that issue? Please confirm or refute that assertion...

I just tried with 7.5 which can be downloaded from the Kernel archive website (I can't post URLs unfortunately as I'm a new user - but it's easy to find and CentOS website does link to it, its a bit hidden though) and had the same exact issue.

So to confirm:

• VBox 5.2.x + CentOS 7.5 = Works
• VBox 5.2.x + CentOS 7.6 = Works
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.5 = Bug
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.6 = Bug

The variable that changed here is VirtualBox, I could download 7.2 - 7.4 and test those but I just reformatted and decided to roll with VirtualBox 6.0 this time around, so I kind of don't want to reinstall 5.2, but if it's for science + possibly actually more stable (as in, not include this bug) and would provide more information to go off of, it may be worth it.

Edit: I did a few more tests for science, and the results are not good. Here's what I've got:

• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.5 = Bug (Graphics Controller: VMSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1804.iso)
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.4 = Bug (Graphics Controller: VMSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1708.iso)
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.3 = Bug (Graphics Controller: VMSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1611.iso)
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.2 = Bug (Graphics Controller: VMSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1511.iso)
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.5 = Working (Graphics Controller: VboxSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1804.iso)
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.4 = Working (Graphics Controller: VboxSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1708.iso)
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.3 = Working (Graphics Controller: VboxSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1611.iso)
• VBox 6.0.4 r128413 + CentOS 7.2 = Working (Graphics Controller: VboxSVGA) (filename: CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1511.iso)

All the files can be grabbed off the Kernel archive I mentioned above. As my memory serves, I did try CentOS 7.4 with VBox 5.2 in the past and do not recall any issues with that either, so the trend continues with VBox 5.2 not having any issues with 7.6/7.5/7.4 and VBox 6.0 having problems with CentOS 7.2 - 7.6.

My test is simply with the default Red Hat (64-bit) OS presets when creating a VM in VirtualBox, so all these tests I'm doing are with the Graphics Controller set to VMSVGA. When I hit the installation screen, I would either immediately see the black mouse cursor and be able to use it as expected, or not see anything at all and thus have the issues as described.

boktai1000 wrote:I just tried with 7.5 ... and had the same exact issue.

Then you shouldn't be here, in this thread. This thread and its accompanying ticket have a very, very specific reason for existing; a well known issue in the RHEL/CentOS 7.6. kernel.

What you might be experiencing is completely different. And since this issue has been covered to death, and the only thing that's going to do is to attract more "me too", or false positives, I'm going to lock this. Please feel free to open a new thread where we can discuss the specifics of your issue.


@toracat
Since you're the only user that has the "clearance" to follow this in the RHEL bugtracker, if you need to post an update to this issue, please feel more than free to send me a PM, and I'll post the updated status. Thanks for understanding...


PS. I'm not sure how many times I have to repeat that if you want to switch from a bug that was found in the VMSVGA (Linux guests default), you do *NOT* go for the VBoxSVGA (Windows guests defaults), you go for the VBoxVGA one, the old trusted one. Until the bug is addressed.

Apparantly Socratis has not responded to pms for the last couple of days, so following a pm from "Toracat" I've unlocked the topic so he can post.

Please stick to the topic, i.e. if you aren't using RHEL 7.6 then don't post.

Hello everyone,

I would like to post the news I just read about in the Red Hat Customer Portal Community. Red Hat had announced a kernel update that fixes the issue discussed here: https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:0512.

Thanks @Toracat for taking such effort in solving this issue.

Regards,
JoergK

Thanks, @JoergK , for breaking the news! :

I meant to post here a couple days ago but was not able to. So, the forum users here were the last to get to know the good news. But, yes, the long wait is over!

CentOS users have to wait a bit longer. Their kernel is in the build queue and will be published fairly soon.

To CentOS users: the updated kernel is not out yet. I don't know what's causing the delay. I will update this thread as soon as I hear something ...

Finally!! The CentOS kernel update (kernel-3.10.0-957.10.1.el7) has just been released. It is sync'ing to mirrors.

Beautiful - I can confirm it installs and VBoxAdditions builds cleanly. All good.
Thanks to everyone who got this patch through!

Glad that this loooong thread has finally come to an end.