Screen transparency problem

[greguric]

Hi to everyone!

I have an unusual problem. I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 and Vbox 2.2.2. Everything worked fine until upgrading to nvidia drivers v.180. Now, whenever I start any of my virtual machines screen of a virtual machine is transparent and is not showing correct picture, thus making any further work impossible. I have reinstalled Vbox, nvidia drivers, deleted all previous virtual machines, googled the internet and still can't figure out what is wrong. The rest of the system works flawlessly, but Vbox gives me a headache.

Please if anyone can help.

[Sasquatch]

Can you attach a screenshot of what you see? It might be that your VM runs in Seamless mode, escape it by hitting Hostkey+L. Another thing that might be the cause, is your Window Manager. It might have set transparency on the window. Without a screenshot, it's just guessing what's going on.

[greguric]

I would really love to attach a few screenshoots that i've made if only I could figure out how can I do that on this forum?!
Can you give me a hint? Or should I send it to you via e-mail? I mean, it is not as if there is some attach button here somewhere or I can't see it?
I see this "Img" button, but when I press it, it seems like I need to upload that pic somewhere first.

Any help would be really appreciated

[vbox4me2]

it seems like I need to upload that pic somewhere first.

Give that man a sigar

attachpic.jpg (22.16 KiB) Viewed 9253 times

[townk]

Hi guys, I'm experiencing the same problem but there is no option to attach an screenshot to this post. Anyway, I upload one to my personal site and inser it here:


One thing I notice though, is that above a black surface everything seems normal, which makes me think that the problem might be on a alpha chanel using the black color or something like that.

[greguric]

it seems like I need to upload that pic somewhere first.

Give that man a sigar

attachpic.jpg

You can give me two sigars and I still wouldn't have that "Upload attachment" tab I only have an "Options" tab and that's it! So give yourself a sigar and give me a solution to my problem.

[greguric]

Hi guys, I'm experiencing the same problem but there is no option to attach an screenshot to this post. Anyway, I upload one to my personal site and inser it here:


One thing I notice though, is that above a black surface everything seems normal, which makes me think that the problem might be on a alpha chanel using the black color or something like that.

Hi,

yes, that is exactly the same thing that is happening to me. The one thing I do notice is that you also have that Cairo-dock installed! Could it be the trouble maker (it's just a wild guess)? Because all that started at about the same time I've installed new nVidia drivers and the Cairo-dock!

[Sasquatch]

I run the 180 nVidia driver, no issues on my end, so it must be that cairo thingy. Just close it before starting the VM, see how that goes.

[vbox4me2]

You can give me two sigars and I still wouldn't have that "Upload attachment" tab I only have an "Options" tab and that's it! So give yourself a sigar and give me a solution to my problem.

I've contacted the board admin, this option should be available.

[townk]

On a first test, I close Cairo-Dock and launch VirtualBox. Nothing change, I still get the transparent window.

Then I keept Cairo-Dock closed and launch my VM with the following script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
VBoxManage startvm "Windows XP SP3" 

This time I had no transparent window!

What might be causing this? And there is a way to fix it without uninstalling Cairo-Dock and launch VM through this script?

[vbox4me2]

Doesn't Cairo-Dock have any options(ea. SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS) you can set?

See also: http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=Cai ... eken&meta=

[townk]

I ran more tests here and if I start VirtualBox with environment variable XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 and Cairo-Dock, VirtualBox works fine:

Code: Select all

env XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 VirtualBox

I put this on my launcher and it's working, but I still think that this is a workaround not a fix.

[Sasquatch]

Maybe Cairo-dock made a system variable. Check your /etc/enviroment and /etc/profile files. If there is any mentioning of this, try to comment them, reboot and see how Cairo-dock works.

[townk]

Nope, nothing different on those files:

/etc/environment

Code: Select all

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"

/etc/profile

Code: Select all

# /etc/profile: system-wide .profile file for the Bourne shell (sh(1))
# and Bourne compatible shells (bash(1), ksh(1), ash(1), ...).

if [ -d /etc/profile.d ]; then
  for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh; do
    if [ -r $i ]; then
      . $i
    fi
  done
  unset i
fi

if [ "$PS1" ]; then
  if [ "$BASH" ]; then
    PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '
    if [ -f /etc/bash.bashrc ]; then
        . /etc/bash.bashrc
    fi
  else
    if [ "`id -u`" -eq 0 ]; then
      PS1='# '
    else
      PS1='$ '
    fi
  fi
fi

umask 022

[Sasquatch]

Then do an echo on the variable name on a clean boot. What does that say?