Clipboard sharing so unreliable

[CarbonPepper]

tl;dr. After some VM uptime, clipboard paste is empty. Re-install additions necessary.

Ubuntu 18.04 host with any client. For example Windows 10 Pro.
frequent copy paste of plain text (e.g. URLs) is done between host and VM.

Additions is installed, bi-directional is enabled.

The virtual machine is often left running overnight. After a time, anything from hours to days. Suddenly clipboard sharing will fail to work. Results in an empty clipboard in both directions. Very occasionally disabling and re-enabling clipboard sharing will make it work again, but only in about 10% of cases. Usually the only thing that will fix is to reboot the VM, re-install additions, and do its required further reboot. Then it will start working again. For a few weeks maybe.

This has been going on for years, across multiple builds and I've sort of put up with it. But now I have many VMs and going through this dance with every VM is such an overhead.

It is possible to improve the code to make it more reliable and sustainable?

[socratis]

It is possible to improve the code to make it more reliable and sustainable?

How are your coding skills? If they're any good, I hear that the developers never turned down a good coding offer.

We need to see a complete VBox.log, from a complete VM run, where the problem occurs:

• Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state) / Observe problem / Shutdown the VM (force close it if you have to).
• With the VM completely shut down (not paused or saved), right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log".
• Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response. See the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form.

[CarbonPepper]

Thank you. Log attached.

This time re-installing vbox additions did not solve. Copy and paste between any host window to host window is working as expected. Copy and paste between client window to client window is working as expected.

Shared clipboard is not working. Toggling settings not effective.

[socratis]

Please re-read the instructions really carefully. Then post the log as instructed, i.e. I don't want you to resume from a saved state, I don't want you re-installing that GAs. I believe the instructions are quite clear. If you see room for improving them, please let me know.

[CarbonPepper]

Instructions were followed. How is the log different from what you expect? Skimming through it it seems to reflect a cold boot, but I am not an expert.

Code: Select all

22:22:44.117671 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=1, bootseq=0231
22:22:44.117817 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from Floppy 0 failed
22:22:44.117978 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=2, bootseq=0023
22:22:44.119524 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: CDROM boot failure code : 0004
22:22:44.119631 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from CD-ROM failed
22:22:44.119766 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=3, bootseq=0002
22:22:44.124024 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Booting from Hard Disk...

VM was started from cold boot. (not from a paused or saved state).
VM was completely shut down from within windows. Your instructions do not differentiate between shutdown from within guest OS or ACPI shutdown from VB menu. it just says "shutdown the VM". Please say if it matters.
Log was taken at this point.

I can't see a point in the instructions that I missed. Is there anything else?

[socratis]

Skimming through it it seems to reflect a cold boot, but I am not an expert.

00:00:01.145042 Console: Machine state changed to 'Restoring'

You restored the VM from a saved-state. The excerpt that you quoted shows that it's 22 hours, 22 minutes of operation when you rebooted. The log takes us to 22 hours, 27 minutes:

22:27:24.858349 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'POWERING_OFF'

VM was started from cold boot. (not from a paused or saved state).

See above.

Your instructions do not differentiate between shutdown from within guest OS or ACPI shutdown from VB menu

There's no difference how the VM shuts down, sometimes you may have to force shut it down. The key in this is to grab the log after the VM process has ended. Which you did.

[CarbonPepper]

Thanks, now I know that figure is runtime, it helps. I must have uploaded the wrong log file. Sorry about that.

I've repeated the exercise - attached.

[socratis]

I don't see anything out of the ordinary in the log. You have installed the matching Guest Additions (GAs), and all the SharedClipboard messages point to a normal operation.

What are you trying to copy/paste? If it's anything more that simple text, it won't work. Only something like non-formatted Gedit to Notepad (for example) would work. Formatted text such as from a browser or a spreadsheet will not.

[CarbonPepper]

I only ever copy / paste plain text. Been using a google doc as a workaround, but it's still painful.