Copy/Paste - Drag/Drop ?? XP - Ubuntu

muskoka · Post by **muskoka** » 24. Jan 2009, 17:38

WinXP 32bit host - Ubuntu 8.1 guest VBOX ver. 2.1.2

Everything is working great except the copy/paste feature. Guest additions installed, screen resize works fine, the copy/paste works but not as it should? I made a text file on host (a.txt) and a text file on guest (b.txt). Have bidirectional set in VM, working in seamless mode. When I right click on file b.txt in the guest and copy and paste it to the host it makes a copy of the a.txt thats on the host. If I right click the a.txt file on the host and copy it to the guest it makes a copy of the b.txt on the guest, strange or is it me doing something totally wrong. Any thoughts.

Glen

Atavist · Post by **Atavist** » 24. Jan 2009, 19:04

Try copying and pasting the text within the files instead of the files themselves. Does that work?

muskoka · Post by **muskoka** » 24. Jan 2009, 20:17

Nope. Text editor in Ubuntu,,,type something, select it, right click, copy, open notepad in windows, right click no paste...? Was wanting to d/l stuff in guest and copy to host without the need of shared folder. Sharing works great, no problems there, was just trying to eliminate that physical link to the host.

Glen

Atavist · Post by **Atavist** » 24. Jan 2009, 20:38

After starting your VM, open any old text file in Windows and copy some text to the clipboard (you don't even have to paste it anywhere), then go into your VM and see if you can copy/paste text from the VM to, say, Windows Notepad. For some reason, I always have to go through that initial copy-to-clipboard in Windows before copy/paste from a Linux VM to Windows will work. This only applies to the text within a file, not the file itself - VirtualBox does not support copy/paste of files (vs text) between the host and guest as does VMware.

Post by **Sasquatch** » 24. Jan 2009, 20:39

You do keep the program running from where you copied the text? I noticed when I started with Linux that when I copied some text, the clipboard was cleared when I closed the program it came from.

Now I don't have these issues anymore, because I use a clipboard manager panel applet that can store a configurable amount of clipboard entries (text only). You can only copy/paste text between the VM and Host, or across VMs.

muskoka · Post by **muskoka** » 24. Jan 2009, 20:58

Ok that works, copy some text from xp to ubuntu. After doing that it also works the other way now, ubuntu text to xp.First time I only tried coping text from ubuntu to xp. Unfortunatly its the "file" cut and paste or drag and drop that I was hoping for. No probs, will just keep the file share going.Thanks for the quick and informative help...much appreciated.

Glen

mdurisseau · Post by **mdurisseau** » 25. Jan 2009, 19:18

So, am I understanding correctly that there is no drag-n-drop between the VM and the host? I'm running Windows XP in my VM, on an Intel Macbook...

Atavist · Post by **Atavist** » 25. Jan 2009, 19:49

Drag-and-drop only works to/from a shared folder - Desktop to Desktop, for example, doesn't work - that feature hasn't been incorporated.

mdurisseau · Post by **mdurisseau** » 25. Jan 2009, 19:59

They really need to add that...hopefully, they won't be infringing on Fusion's or Parallel's turf in terms of copyright or patent...

Atavist · Post by **Atavist** » 25. Jan 2009, 20:23

Depends on your point of view. Drag-and-drop introduces an unnecessary security risk by reducing the isolation between host and guest. I personally don't see its omission as a fault but rather as a security enhancement.