Drag and Drop Not working with any virtual box guest

[Chintan Dave]

Hi,

I have tried everything but Drag and Drop does not work. I have made it bidirectional by setting Clipboard and Drag and Drop as bidirectional in Settings > General > Advanced. This applies for all the guest OS i have on my virtual box. There are many updates which have come all this time, but none of them even after re-installation have fixed the issues. I did a work around for windows OS by opening the shared folder and then transferring the files, however for other linux based operating system and a android emulator I am running, this does not work. Guest addition installation has not fixed the issue either.

I am stuck - I can't do a fresh reinstallation now as other licensed OS will be gone and will take me a lot of time to get all the VM's up.

Request your help and support on this matter.

PS: Drag and Drop does not work even if I share the folder and then try using drag and drop.

Thanks,
Chintan

[socratis]

From the User Manual, Chapter 3.3.2, Drag and Drop:

This feature is currently only implemented for Linux guests and only for copying files from the host to the guest.

And please do not ask why it's not disabled since it's not working. It has been discussed in length in the past. Search the forums.

[Chintan Dave]

The guest in question is a linux system. So technically it should work.
My problem is this is not working for a linux system either.

[socratis]

...This applies for all the guest OS i have... I did a work around for windows OS... for other linux based operating system and a android emulator... as other licensed OS will be gone...

From your description it didn't sound to me like "The guest in question is a linux system". In that case, we'll need to know what the host and guest OS are (exactly), any error messages during the GA installation (exactly), a VBox.log of said guest attached (zipped) and an example of a failure. In short, read: Minimum information needed for assistance.

[loukingjr]

For whatever reason Drag n Drop does not work with Linux distros that are using LXDE. Not sure why. Drag n Drop does work for my other Linux guests.

Can you attach the vbox.log (compressed) file for the guest if it's not using LXDE?

[Chintan Dave]

Hi,

My problem is more generic, i can't get it to work on any linux system. I got couple of installations on my virtual box - ubuntu, backtrack, kali to name a few.
I am attaching the log for current OS issue.

PS: I am raising this issue as I see others are able to do a drag and drop but am not able to. I want to get it fixed so i am able to do it atleast for linux systems.

[loukingjr]

You know Genymotions and Genymotions mobile are not supported here?

edit: you need guest additions installed to have drag n drop.

[socratis]

To add to what Lou said, Drag'n'Drop requires Guest Additions to be installed in the guest. You didn't install them because they do not exist for all clients (and more specifically for Android). And you don't install them for "Linux". You install them for specific OS implementations that use the Linux kernel. Big difference.

[Chintan Dave]

Yes I know it is not supported, but as I said, the issue is more generic in nature.

I am attaching a log for backtrack linux - same problem, drag and drop doesnt work.

[Chintan Dave]

Forgot to mention that i have guest additions installed for backtrack, but somehow this feature just doesnt seem to work for me - yes not even for linux operating system.

[loukingjr]

As we both said, you need the guest additions installed which you don't from your log. You just have the .iso attached. You need to install them.

[loukingjr]

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#idp54932560

[Bartszu]

Well maybe so called Drag`n`Drop is not working but common clippboard does, which is essencialy same thing, instead of draging you just `right click and copy/paste`.

[loukingjr]

Well maybe so called Drag`n`Drop is not working but common clippboard does, which is essencialy same thing, instead of draging you just `right click and copy/paste`.

1. Copy n Paste is not the same thing as Drag n Drop.
2. The only files you can Copy and Paste is from a guest to a shared folder, or the host to a shared folder.

[WanosDLanos]

This is old, but still relevant. I solved my issue (can't drag/drop between host/VM) by uninstalling the guess additions, rebooted, reinstalled guess additions, reboot. BAM worked!