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Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in Gnome
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 12:26
by hondaman
Windows 7 64 bit host, Centos 7 guest. Guest additions installed. USB mouse and keyboard.
They keyboard works in the Centos 7 console, but when I launch gnome, neither the keyboard nor the mouse works.
Can someone please offer some pointers? Thank you.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 13:40
by mpack
Why do you say "USB mouse and keyboard"? The VM doesn't have a USB mouse or keyboard - or at least it shouldn't have.
If you have a guest USB filter configured to steal ownership of mouse and keyboard from the host... then that would explain why those devices don't work, and you should undo that immediately. Applications running on your PC do not assign exclusive ownership of shared host devices to themselves.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 14:04
by hondaman
mpack wrote:Why do you say "USB mouse and keyboard"? The VM doesn't have a USB mouse or keyboard - or at least it shouldn't have.
If you have a guest USB filter configured to steal ownership of mouse and keyboard from the host... then that would explain why those devices don't work, and you should undo that immediately. Applications running on your PC do not assign exclusive ownership of shared host devices to themselves.
My host, my windows box, has a USB mouse and keyboard. However it doesn't work in Gnome in the guest. The USB keyboard works at the command line, but either the mouse nor keyboard works in Gnome.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 15:39
by mpack
The type of mouse and keyboard that your host has is not relevant to the VM. All that is required is that host must have a working keyboard and mouse: which is exactly what every other host app requires, so VBox is nothing special in this regard.
Did you note what I said about the USB filter? If so you have not responded.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 15:57
by hondaman
mpack wrote:The type of mouse and keyboard that your host has is not relevant to the VM. All that is required is that host must have a working keyboard and mouse: which is exactly what every other host app requires, so VBox is nothing special in this regard.
Did you note what I said about the USB filter? If so you have not responded.
I have no USB filters setup for the guest VM.
I tried that, but it "stole" it away from the host. I had to turn off my computer to reboot it because I was unable to control it.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:02
by Perryg
Post the guests log file ( as an attachment )
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:05
by mpack
Well, I don't know what else to tell you: VirtualBox does nothing unusual with your host keyboard or mouse (or pretty much any other device for that matter). If the keyboard and mouse work for other apps it should work for VBox, unless there's something unusual going on which you've neglected to mention.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:12
by hondaman
Perryg wrote:Post the guests log file ( as an attachment )
Sure, would be glad to. Which log file do you need me to post?
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:20
by Perryg
Right click the guest in the main manager and then left click on show log. Save and post as an attachment.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:22
by hondaman
Perryg wrote:Right click the guest in the main manager and then left click on show log. Save and post as an attachment.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:37
by Perryg
VirtualBox VM 4.3.12 r93733 win.amd64 (May 16 2014 13:57:11) release log
00:00:00.635841 File system of 'C:\Users\hondaman\Downloads\VBoxGuestAdditions_4.3.15-95180.iso' (DVD) is ntfs
This is not going to go well for you. Either install version 4.3.15 base or remove the 4.3.15 guest additions and install the 4.3.12 additions in the guest.
Come to think of it that probably will not work properly either since the xorg version conflicts due to old drivers. You may get it to work with 4.3.14 and 4.3.15 guest additions, but there are nasty issues with 4.3.14 right now.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:45
by hondaman
Perryg wrote:VirtualBox VM 4.3.12 r93733 win.amd64 (May 16 2014 13:57:11) release log
00:00:00.635841 File system of 'C:\Users\hondaman\Downloads\VBoxGuestAdditions_4.3.15-95180.iso' (DVD) is ntfs
This is not going to go well for you. Either install version 4.3.15 base or remove the 4.3.15 guest additions and install the 4.3.12 additions in the guest.
Come to think of it that probably will not work properly either since the xorg version conflicts due to old drivers. You may get it to work with 4.3.14 and 4.3.15 guest additions, but there are nasty issues with 4.3.14 right now.
The 4.3.12 guest additions wouldn't work. I looked here in another recent thread which said to use the 4.3.15 guest additions. I guess what I did was fix one thing and break another.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 16:56
by Perryg
The mouse is controlled by X in a Linux guest and the guest additions need to be able to talk to the VBox base to work properly. While you can sometimes use an older guest additions, I have never seen where you can use a newer one reliably. 4.3.15 is a test build that was to fix certain issues with 4.3.14. Like I said you might be able to install the 4.3.15 base and see if it will work, or wait for 4.3.16
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 17:29
by hondaman
Perryg wrote:The mouse is controlled by X in a Linux guest and the guest additions need to be able to talk to the VBox base to work properly. While you can sometimes use an older guest additions, I have never seen where you can use a newer one reliably. 4.3.15 is a test build that was to fix certain issues with 4.3.14. Like I said you might be able to install the 4.3.15 base and see if it will work, or wait for 4.3.16
Well I tried 4.3.14 and it wouldnt start. Installed 4.3.15 and it started giving me crap about the state of USB 2.0 drivers in the VM or something or another.
So I uninstalled everything, including my VM and will start from scratch again with 4.3.15 using the matching guest additions and a fresh CentOS 7.
If this doesn't work, I can sleep knowing I tried everything.
Thank you for your input. Greatly appreciated.
Re: Centos 7 guest. USB keyboard or mouse doesn't work in G
Posted: 8. Aug 2014, 10:54
by mpack
hondaman wrote:If this doesn't work, I can sleep knowing I tried everything.
Not quite. You seem to have given up rather easily on getting 4.3.12 to work with the 4.3.12 GAs. All you've said is that the 4.3.12 GAs didn't work, which is odd since they worked for every other 4.3.12 user! Details would be nice, and if they really didn't work then the solution an option would be to try older (more stable) GAs, not newer.