"Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Linux hosts.
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milverton
Posts: 48
Joined: 17. Apr 2022, 22:25

"Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Post by milverton »

I seem to recall until recently being able to switch any VM in and out of full-screen mode with no difficulties: in particular, the VM window always retained focus. That has changed recently and it seems focus is passing away from the VM window - sometimes to the VM Manager window, but possibly to some other window - whenever switching between window modes. It seems to be associated with "Is ready" notifications in Linux Ubuntu Jammy (22.04). The notifications cause an interruption of a few seconds and seem quite impossible to turn off. I seem to get the same results with VB 6.1.38 as with 6.1.36. There might be a simple explanation which I'm missing; and I would be grateful for any help with this.

As a slightly aside comment, which I realize could be a breach of forum rules, it would be nice if there could be a special manual - or some special sections of a manual - written for VirtualBox when its host is Ubuntu Jammy (22.04): the combination seems such a different experience in a number of ways from how it was with previous versions of Ubuntu.
scottgus1
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Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: "Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Post by scottgus1 »

No breach of rules, anyone can ask anything they want. Whether it'll happen, well..... :lol:

Please check if your Ubuntu host is using Wayland, and if it is, try X, and see if the trouble still happens.
milverton
Posts: 48
Joined: 17. Apr 2022, 22:25

Re: "Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Post by milverton »

Thank you, scottgus1. Disabling Wayland in favor of Xorg has seemed to fix that issue. I need to spend a bit longer with it to be certain. It created another issue: one that I need to address on an Ubuntu forum. Until this change, using a USB mouse turned off my touchpad, but now both are running together. I think this will be possible to solve, but I need to come back to it later. Thank you again!
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: "Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Post by scottgus1 »

Great! Glad you're up and running. Virtualbox has had trouble supporting Wayland. I'm not certain what to do about it.
milverton
Posts: 48
Joined: 17. Apr 2022, 22:25

Re: "Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Post by milverton »

Up and running, but not a happy camper, sorry to say. I'd really like to revert to enabling Wayland in order to solve the touchpad issue. I've uploaded a list of the installed packages which include "wayland" (as it was before disabling Wayland). Any thoughts on which, if any, might cause the VirtualBox focus-switch issue with Wayland enabled? I'm wondering if it might be possible to narrow down the issue which causes it.
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Appearances of Wayland in installed-package list.zip
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milverton
Posts: 48
Joined: 17. Apr 2022, 22:25

Re: "Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Post by milverton »

It seems possible the title of this topic needs to be adjusted slightly. I think I'm right in saying now that the notification appears because the (not full-screen) window it's referring to as being "ready" is not the one with focus, whereas the title of this topic suggests it's the other way round. To be clear, I'm now thinking that the cause of focus passing away from the VM window is not the notification.

Also, there's another thing that's just curious enough to be mentioned here: the notification can appear with two different headers, namely as follows: (The first line is the header of the notification, and the second line is its body)

VirtualBoxVM
"{VM Name} [Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox" is ready

VirtualBox Machine
"{VM Name} [Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox" is ready

I've tried to come up with a way of predicting which of the two it will be, but so far haven't had luck with that. It does highlight that there are two different message headers "at the ready" - something I think is a bit strange and might even be a partial clue as to what's happening.

Also, for clarification, I have reverted to Wayland rather than X.
milverton
Posts: 48
Joined: 17. Apr 2022, 22:25

Re: "Is ready" notification in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) seems to cause focus to pass away from VM window

Post by milverton »

I'm delving a bit into possible reasons why these notifications are impossible to turn off - and observing that the headers they use don't appear in the Applications list of the Settings->Notifications panel in Ubuntu 22.04. There is a header for VirtualBox, one only, and it reads"Oracle VM VirtualBox". When the VM Manager window opens, it has the name "Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager" - i.e. not a match. Per my last post the notifications for VM machine windows use different names again in their headers - and two not just one consistently. So it looks as if there could be some pieces missing which, if present, might enable getting control of these notifications via. the Ubuntu 22.04 Settings. For the moment, though, all VB notifications seem entirely unaffected by the Settings. Just a thought, which might help someone with more understanding of how the notifications occur to take this a step further!
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