virtualbox.org

For a project I use one main VM which is cloned 30 times. Often the main VM requires an update, so I run a script to delete all the clones, update the main VM, and then recreate the clones. The problem is that my project requires mouse integration to be disabled. After recreating the clones and starting them, I have to manually disable mouse integration on all of them. Click a VM window, hit CTRL+I, repeat 30 times (with the unfortunate possibility of forgetting or misclicking one). The host and guests are running on Windows.

Is there a way to automatically disable mouse integration on startup? Or can it be disabled in a different way, for example with VBoxManage? Or is there a way to permanently disable mouse integration, but use the rest of the Guest Additions?

Is there no solution for this problem? Anyone?

As far as I know, there is no "programmatic" way to turn on/off the mouse integration. It's one of the things that bothered me since day one in VirtualBox, so much so that I'm thinking of opening a bug report (if one is not there already). There are some options that are accessible only via the runtime menu, mouse integration being one of them. Others include pretty much anything under the "View" menu. I'll search if there is a bug report and if not I'll file a new one. I'll keep you posted in any event...

Just wondering... what precisely is the point of disabling mouse integration?

socratis wrote:As far as I know, there is no "programmatic" way to turn on/off the mouse integration. It's one of the things that bothered me since day one in VirtualBox, so much so that I'm thinking of opening a bug report (if one is not there already). There are some options that are accessible only via the runtime menu, mouse integration being one of them. Others include pretty much anything under the "View" menu. I'll search if there is a bug report and if not I'll file a new one. I'll keep you posted in any event...

Awesome, thanks. I wonder why these options aren't accessible in another way. It's funny that VBoxManage has very powerful features but can't disable the basic mouse integration. I'll write a program for the host which highlights the VMs one by one and simulates the CTRL+I key combination to work around this for now. Nasty but necessary.

michaln wrote:Just wondering... what precisely is the point of disabling mouse integration?

If you disable it you can't move the cursor on the VM directly. In my project the VM moves its cursor to control a third party program. If I don't disable mouse integration the VM can't move its cursor efficiently. Also being able to inspect the VM without disturbing its cursor is nice.

For a bit of background, internally there is no setting for mouse integration permanently disabled or enabled - it is enabled by the front-end sending an absolute event to the guest and disabled by sending a relative one. If it isn't too fiddly for you then a reasonably reliable way to disable integration would be to remove the guest mouse driver (and make sure that the USB tablet integration is not enabled). Afraid that I can't tell you without investigation how to do that as my main working areas are very heavily tilted towards Linux.

I'm new to this forum so not sure if this has been answered to everyone's satisfaction.

Not sure what version that this started on but on Virtual Box 5 you can go to settings then use interface and under input uncheck mouse integration and that will be the Default setting when you start you Host.

That would simply disable the option in the GUI to turn it off/on. I don't believe it sets the option at all. See michael's answer just above your post.