Double Cursors

[shore guy]

I have a case of a visible cursor that should be invisible. When I move the cursor between the Guest desktop and the Host desktop, only one cursor should be visible. For example, when I move the cursor from the guest area up into the VirtualBox menu area, the guest cursor should disappear. It doesn't. Granted, this is only a nuisance. Anyone solved this problem?
System details: VirtualBox is 5.1.10 r 112026 Qt5.6.2. Guest Additions 5.1.10 is installed. Host is Windows 10 Home 64 bit Version 1607 Build 14393.447 12GB RAM Intel i7-4970. Guest is OpenSUSE Leap 42.1 64 bit 2 processors 2GB RAM KDE 5.5.5 Linux 4.1.34-default.
Note, the problem started in VBox 5.1.8. It does NOT happen in an OpenSUSE 13.2 guest in the same environment. It does happen on my Windows 7 Host.

[jjforums]

I have the same issue with Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 host, it happens with Lubuntu 16.04, Lubuntu 14.04 and Xubuntu 16.04 guests.

[socratis]

@jjforums:
As I mentioned in ticket #15610, you'll have to provide more details about this. The ticket that you chose to report it as well in for OSX hosts, and here's the discussion that has some examples that show the problem. Are you seeing something like that?

With the VM shut down completely (not paused or saved), right-click on the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log". Save the "VBox.log" (just the first one), ZIP it and attach it in your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form).


@shore guy
I took a look at your logs and there was nothing strange. From your description I couldn't figure out exactly what is the problem. Can a screenshot capture the essence of the issue?

Also, you have the following in your description, please verify that I've understood the situation correctly:

• Host: Win10, Guest: OpenSUSE 42 => Problem.
• Host: Win10, Guest: OpenSUSE 13 => NO problem.
• Host: Win7, Guest: OpenSUSE 42 => NO problem.

[jjforums]

I apologize if I posted in the wrong place and lacking details, I saw that discussion before and the screenshots looked the same or similar with my problem, then I commented to the ticket platform, as it could be something on other hosts too, thought other users could relate, and it started happening in previous versions, I'm not sure which one.

About the trembling thing I mentioned, looks like guest and host cursors are fighting for the position sometimes, then I deactivate the Virtualbox driver in guest settings and it seems to fix. It also happens that the cursor starts to blink.

I've noticed is that it seems to happen when I restore the guest from a saved state. When I restart the guest, it works perfectly.

I don't have a screenshot or a video for this behavior right now, but when I see it again I will attach to this post. But it's very similar to this (download/file.php?id=22079), both cursors show with guest style (white).

Another thing I noticed is that sometimes the cursor keeps in the guest screen even when I put it out of the guest screen. When this happens it feels like the guest cursor is not perfectly synchronized with host cursor, example (the guest cursor is white, the host cursor is black):

After restore session (weird behavior):

https://gfycat.com/FavoriteUnlinedIridescentshark

Note that guest cursor keeps on the top edge of the screen when the cursor leaves the guest screen.

After closing guest window and restarting (expected behavior):

https://gfycat.com/BackRedFlyingfish

Note that the guest cursor disappears with it's out of the guest screen.

Host: Ubuntu 16.04 GNOME
Guest: Xubuntu 16.04
Virtualbox version 5.1.12 r112440 (Qt5.5.1) - I installed Vbox through the amd64 .deb from Virtualbox website.

This also happens in other Ubuntu based guests, I tried with Lubuntu 16.04 and Lubuntu 14.04, I did no test in other distributions or other Ubuntu-based guests. Also, haven't tried in other hosts.

Thanks.

[socratis]

@jjforums, thank you for posting the videos. They helped a lot to understand the situation!

You do not have the same problem. You do not have a problem at all. The double cursors do not appear within the guest itself, like it was the problem in the ticket #15610. What is shown in the videos is that once you reach the end of the virtual monitor, your mouse continues to your host and the guest cursor stays at the edge of the virtual monitor. That's just perfectly acceptable for some guests.

IF you had the same problem, here is what you would see, inside the guest. The following picture is a composite of two pictures.

Magnified by 3x.

DoubleCursors-Win7.png (21.02 KiB) Viewed 14483 times

On the bottom part you can see clearly that there are TWO cursors, one the host's (black) and one for the guest (white). What's more, when the cursor is in a field that's supposed to change (like the password), you see the host's black cursor on top of the guest's I-beam. You're not seeing that, are you?

If you were seeing double cursors WITHIN the guest, you would see something like what user "nfolken" posted at the ticket: https://gfycat.com/MilkyWeepyBoilweevil

[jjforums]

@socratis thanks for the reply.

The videos I posted were about another issue that could be related, so I posted because it was what I could reproduce at that time. That' why I said, "Another thing I noticed [...]".

Maybe you missed this part of my previous post?

What I've seen (and could not reproduce again) was almost the same thing you posted in your two images. It was the something of the video (https://gfycat.com/MilkyWeepyBoilweevil). The difference was it wasn't one host cursor and one guest cursor, both cursors were 'styled' as guest cursors, both were white, both from the guest. Was like both cursors were from the VM.

I could record the cursor "blinking" though. After starting the VM from the saved state, the cursor starts blinking and get less responsive, less smooth. Maybe it's related?

https://gfycat.com/SlushyGreedyDeviltasmanian

[jjforums]

@socratis here you go: https://gfycat.com/PhonyDismalIrishwolfhound

Edit: now it happened on Lubuntu 14.04 too: https://gfycat.com/EasyImpartialArachnid

If I disable mouse cursor integration it shows only one cursor, though.

[shore guy]

I have some new information since my original post. I've uploaded a screen shot of the upper left portions of my Virtual Box desktop on my Windows 10 desktop. The upper cursor with the black outline is the result of using my mouse to move up out of the Linux desktop. That action should have changed the Linux cursor to "not visible". When I return, the Windows cursor will become invisible and the Linux cursor will become active.
Today I installed updates provided by openSUSE since 20 JAN 2017. This fixed the double cursor problem but I could not use View/Virtual Screen 1 to resize the guest desktop. When I reinstalled the 5.1.14 Guest Additions, the screen resize is OK but the double cursors have returned.

[jjforums]

Since I could not find the solution for my issue, I uninstalled the VirtualBox from the virtualbox.org website and reinstalled the version from Ubuntu official repository 5.0.32, which works without this problem.

[shore guy]

In the last few days I have upgraded to VBox 5.1.16 and installed the openSUSE Leap 42.2. The cursor works correctly in this combination. My original openSUSE Leap 42.1 still has the cursor problem using VBox 5.1.16. The obvious conclusion has to be that the problem is somewhere in the O/S or the X Server and not in VirtualBox. In a few days I expect to close this topic.

[rastriffler]

I had been seeing the same double cursor issue after upgrading to VB 5.1.6. I uninstalled it and re-installed VB 5.0.2 and the problem is resolved. Seems like a regression in the 5.1.6 release, or at the very least, an intermittent issue.

[joemeier]

IF you had the same problem, here is what you would see, inside the guest. The following picture is a composite of two pictures.

That's exactly the same what I can see here: The Host-Cursor didn't disappear after moved to the Guest and is over the Guest-Cursor. So very often it is a problem to see what type of Cursor the Guest has.

Host: Windows 7 with VirtualBox v 5.1.22, Guest: openSUSE Tumbleweed

When I shut down the Guest completely, at the next restart everything works fine.
I have a four Monitor-System, with four Monitors for the Guest too. When I now suspend to Disk while I am in the Seamless-Mode (HOST-L), at the next Restart the problem occurs.
When I go to the Fullscreen-Mode (Host-F) before suspending to Disk, the next restart works fine, so I think this is a combination with Seamless-Mode, Suspend to Disk and SuSE-Guest. With my other Guests (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Windows 2000,...) I havn't seen that Problem.

[socratis]

SuSE-Guest... four Monitors... suspend... Seamless-Mode

That's not easily reproducible now, is it?

You might have a point when you say that this specific combination may cause something to go out-of-sync in the Guest Additions. As a first step you *do* have several workarounds, from what it seems like, no?