Full screen corruption with Gnome 3. Unity problems

[ArthurDent]

Hello,

I am having issues with gnome 3 and the latest version of VB. Unity doesn't draw well at all anymore (it worked fine in previous versions) and I am getting full screen corruption with gnome 3. The full screen corruption on gnome 3 (or cinnamon) occurs when I mouse over anything that creates an animation. Upon doing so, the entire screen goes blue and white. Some icons are visible, some aren't. This worked fine in previous versions of VB as well.

As far as unity not drawing well, to clarify, what I mean is that the animations no longer work properly, as a matter of fact, they don't work at all anymore. Nothing has changed on the host, the only change has been updating VB.

All machines have the video memory set to 128MB, enable 3d ticked and most machines are set to run with 2048mb of RAM. The host system is windows 7 ultimate 64 bit with an i7-720 and 8GB of RAM. What further information can I provide to help resolve this issue?

[ArthurDent]

anyone?

[Twisted Lucidity]

Patience - your post was up for just over 9 hours and at the weekend.

I assume you are running 4.1.8 (you never actually mention the version).
Have you upgraded the guest additions?
If the screen corruption make this difficult, try from a TTY (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-F1)

Do the problems only appear when you are in full screen? (Host-F) What happens in windowed mode?

Did you search the forums? Does this post describe the same issue?

You say nothing has changed on the host, but MS will have installed various updates; was one of those the video driver?

You don't say what the guest distro is, but as you mention "Cinnamon" I assume you mean Linux Mint 12.
I have seen parts of the Mint desktop fail to render randomly under VBox, but not the corruption you refer to. Is it possible to get a screen shot?

I've not seen this corruption myself, so I really don't know what's wrong and I doubt I can help but hopefully more complete information will give someone else a clue.

[UncleBen]

Turn off unity.

Dont ask me how though. I tried, and now I have no desktop menu.

No worry, just installed xubuntu instead

[ArthurDent]

Turn off unity.

Dont ask me how though. I tried, and now I have no desktop menu.

No worry, just installed xubuntu instead

Not a solution, sorry.

[Perryg]

@ArthurDent,

It would help to see the guests log file (as an attachment). One thing I can tell you is 128MB vRAM is massive overkill for Linux. 32MB is more than enough especially since this is really system RAM and not GPU memory.

It would also help if you answer the questions that Twisted Lucidity asked. Right now all we know is you are having issue. We need some information to see if there is any help that can be given.

[ArthurDent]

Patience - your post was up for just over 9 hours and at the weekend.

I assume you are running 4.1.8 (you never actually mention the version).
Have you upgraded the guest additions?
If the screen corruption make this difficult, try from a TTY (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-F1)

Do the problems only appear when you are in full screen? (Host-F) What happens in windowed mode?

Did you search the forums? Does this post describe the same issue?

You say nothing has changed on the host, but MS will have installed various updates; was one of those the video driver?

You don't say what the guest distro is, but as you mention "Cinnamon" I assume you mean Linux Mint 12.
I have seen parts of the Mint desktop fail to render randomly under VBox, but not the corruption you refer to. Is it possible to get a screen shot?

I've not seen this corruption myself, so I really don't know what's wrong and I doubt I can help but hopefully more complete information will give someone else a clue.

Thank you for your response, and sorry for not posting that information when I made the post as I was not at the host computer that was having the problem.

So, to answer your questions. I am using version 4.1.8 with the latest version of the guest additions.

The link you provided does not refer to the same problem I am having. Although I do sometimes see what when I force close a machine.

There have been no changes to my video driver through MS updates. This happens regardless of being in full screen mode or windowed mode.

The distros being used are Ubuntu for unity, Linux Mint for cinnamon and for gnome 3 I have tested it on numerous distros, always having the same issue (arch, ubuntu, fedora, openSUSE, etc).

Oddly enough I reinstalled mint 12 and now it will not display the cinnamon UI, it is only displaying the fallback classic mode. Here are some screenshots of the issue from OpenSUSE 12.1 running gnome 3. Three different colors, but the corruption is all the same. The same exact thing happens in mint when cinnamon works.

[Perryg]

But still no guests log file (as an attachment).

[ArthurDent]

@ArthurDent,

It would help to see the guests log file (as an attachment). One thing I can tell you is 128MB vRAM is massive overkill for Linux. 32MB is more than enough especially since this is really system RAM and not GPU memory.

It would also help if you answer the questions that Twisted Lucidity asked. Right now all we know is you are having issue. We need some information to see if there is any help that can be given.

No problem, where can I access the log file? The only place I see a place for a log file is on the main window under machine -> show log. Is this the log you are talking about?

Also, it may be overkill, but I did not have these problems until more recent versions. I believe on 4.1.0 (I can't remember the exact version) I was not having this screen corruption issue. Now when I try to reinstall the guest additions on the SUSE machine, it will not install them, saying that it cannot build the guest additions module. I also get a message about installing kernel-desktop-devel-3.1.0-1.2, however when I try to install this package, it says it is not found.

Anyhow, I have pasted a copy of the log file for OpenSUSE from the machine -> show log. please let me know if this is the information you were looking for.

[ArthurDent]

Here is a screenshot of the problem in ubuntu. You can see a black line running across the top. I have attached the log as well. Any thoughts?

[Perryg]

Run the following in a terminal on the Ubuntu guest and post the results here.
/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

Make sure that you have the latest drivers for the hosts graphics card. This is very important.

[ArthurDent]

Run the following in a terminal on the Ubuntu guest and post the results here.
/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

Make sure that you have the latest drivers for the hosts graphics card. This is very important.

My video card driver is the latest driver from my computer MFG. I have attached a log with the data you requested. Any thoughts on the gnome 3 issue as well?

[Perryg]

We should deal with the Unity issue first. If that will not work there is no way Gnome3 will.

I need to see the /var/log/Xorg.0.log from the Ubuntu guest. (as an attachment)

[ArthurDent]

We should deal with the Unity issue first. If that will not work there is no way Gnome3 will.

I need to see the /var/log/Xorg.0.log from the Ubuntu guest. (as an attachment)

That makes sense. Here is the log you requested

[Perryg]

Everything in the VBox log file and the guests Xorg file show that everything is happy so here again this points to the hosts graphics adapter. I looked up yours and found something interesting. See below.

• NVIDIA is the pioneer in advancing low power visual computing for notebooks. NVIDIA® HybridPower™ technology unleashes graphics performance when you need it, or switches to a lower power integrated GPU for longer battery life.

I mention this because I had another user that was having the same issue and all they needed to do was force the GPU to use the high graphics mode. Seemed that it would go into the low graphics mode and that will not work for Unity or Gnome3 especially for a virtual guest.

See if you can change this and if it fixes your issue.