SUNWvbox package missing dependency

[kloczek]

Trying to access to VM console over VirtualBox command on remote system without installed X11 packages I found that X11 frontend was totally broken because all application menu entries and everywhere where is displayed some text are displayed only rows of squares.
Problem was possible to fix by install on system on which remotely been running VirtualBox system/font/xorg/iso8859-1 package.
I think that it would be good to add to VBox Solaris package dependency.

kloczek

[michaln]

Why? VirtualBox doesn't require X11 to run.

[Guyver]

Running the vbox gui does in fact require X to work properly.

The character set requirement is more a matter of what the user has specified as part of their locale.

[michaln]

Running the vbox gui does in fact require X to work properly.

Yes, but running VMs with VirtualBox does not require the GUI.

[Guyver]

Running guests headless and connecting to them via rdesktop is one method that can be used.

However, if you use the gui to start and you don't run headless, then x is required, which I think is what the OP was talking about.

So perhaps a notation "If you intend to use the local gui to manage and run your VMs, you should make certain that X, Y, Z packages are installed." would be beneficial

[kloczek]

Running guests headless and connecting to them via rdesktop is one method that can be used.

Yes indeed.
However in this case of VirtualBox binary providing console output is only part of the functions which this exact application provides.
Main VirtualBox window and menu of the window where is presented VM screen uses X11 fonts.

As long as VBox package is not served in form of IPS package IMO it would be good to group and separate in to package all files which are needed by VBoxHeadless (with VBoxmanage) and put everything else which has X11 dependencies into another package.
If Solaris VBox package would be build as IPS package it would be possible to separate those resources by add facet.X11 and add this facet to all X11 dependent files.

[Ramshankar]

The decision to not require X11 as a dependency was intentional and in fact was fixed deliberately when people started complaining otherwise. Like, "I'm only using VBoxHeadless, why am I forced to install X11 dependencies?" etc.

The 'clean' solution would be for us to have 2 packages, but it's very unlikely we will ever do that. Since it just adds a lot more work for us, and more confusion to end users, who, for the most part have X11. For the minority of more advanced users who run Solaris without X11, I'm sure they are capable of installing the X11 dependencies themselves when the need arises.

[kloczek]

I really don't care about old SysV packages but IMO it would be good to do such separation on provide VBox packages in some IPS repo.
BTW: VBox binaries and kernel modules are still not signed (I saw that few people been already reporting this issue).
So it is more or less general question about any chance to package VBox properly for Sol 11 (?)