virtualbox.org

Host Centos 7 KDE, guest Win XP 32bit.

I start the VM as Detacheble start from GUI, but the VM only gets 3 options for shutdown:
'Save state' 'ACPI shutdown' and 'Power OFF'

The option to detach the window are gone.

You're lucky! I was trying to find out what's going on with your report, only to discover that mine won't even start. Nothing. Instant death. Since it seems to be different than in your case, I opened a new thread.

There is an option "Detach GUI" under the Machine menu that works. The option on the Poweroff screen is missing here, also.

I can add, that I just rebooted the host, and a VM is autostarted during boot (headless of course).
This headless VM can be brought to foreground with a GUI; but the shutdown menu for this window
still doesn't have the option "continue in background".

The GUI button "continue in the background" moved to another place, in VM menu.

Technologov wrote:The GUI button "continue in the background" moved to another place, in VM menu.

Gee, you are right. Why on earth did they do that ?

in fact I agree. Better to have in the previous location, in the window's X button (or in both).
it's much more natural, and easy to discover feature the old way.

-Technologov

Yoda wrote:Gee, you are right. Why on earth did they do that ?

Because users complained, of course. The problem is that the close dialog pauses the VM execution which is necessary for saving states and irrelevant for hard power off. But it is a problem for detaching the GUI.

In other words, saving state and detaching the GUI can't be part of the same dialog.

Could you do it in both places, please?
It is much more discoverable in close VM dialog.
-or- pause VM only whe "save state" is chosen, not when dialog appears.

I just explained why it can't be in both places.

Pausing the VM after "save state" is selected makes no sense either. The reason why the VM is paused right away is to give users control over when exactly the VM state gets saved. Requiring an extra click throws that out of the window.

It can be in both places; Just if users use "close dialog", they will detach GUI from a paused VM (only 1 second pause, mind you! ). This is fine for most applications ( dev environment or Linux container). And easier to discover this feature.
If using the VM menu, VM will get detached without micro pause.

michaln wrote:

Yoda wrote:Gee, you are right. Why on earth did they do that ?

Because users complained, of course. The problem is that the close dialog pauses the VM execution which is necessary for saving states and irrelevant for hard power off. But it is a problem for detaching the GUI.

I see. I always thought this pause was something Vbox needed to do, just to do the switch, I was never aware, that
the VM is paused, the second you press the X button (Is that documented ? )
Anyway, it never caused me any problems - and I guess a lot others never noticed.

michaln wrote:In other words, saving state and detaching the GUI can't be part of the same dialog.

Sure it can, as long as there are a 'better' option for people who _really_ need it, and that option is there now;
but I guess I can learn to live with it - but that would at least require, it has got a short-cut (HOST - D ? )

Another thing about this is, I really miss an option to make a double-click on a VM a detachable start, as
I really liked that to be more or less default. I know not all agree, therefore an option to select it (either global
or pr box or both )

Anyway, thx for the explanation.

I would just like to weigh in on the "Detach GUI under a different menu than Close" crowd. (as it is now).

While personal environments may be paused tolerably, production-class servers shouldn't. Servers in use by clients need to be available constantly, and the more important the server, the more important it not pause.

I am looking to use 5.1 for our office server, so I don't have the domain controller and antispam and l.o.b. guests' windows hanging about to get killed with a spurious mouse click or three. Accidental pauses would not be desired either.

scottgus1 wrote:I am looking to use 5.1 for our office server [...] Accidental pauses would not be desired either.

Seems like you shouldn't be using the GUI frontend in the first place then. At least that's how it ends at the end of the day: virtually nobody would use the VM running with a GUI front-end for critical services.
You would have the VM started in headless mode and connect via VRDE and use management tool to control the VMs.