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I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 15:38
by xylus
Hi all,

I'm running Ubuntu Xenial on VirtualBox via my Windows 10 machine. I ran in to an issue where my VM stopped being able to resize the screen for whatever reason and I found this: (askubuntu link)

I followed the instructions and did the following in my VM terminal:

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sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11
After installing this I restarted the VM and the screen could now be resized however I am facing a bigger issue now - I can no longer use my mouse or my keyboard within the VM.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help out with finding the issue.

Edit: It seems that no USB devices are attached to the VM. I have tried attaching my keyboard and can see the following in the logs:
00:00:30.512007 VUSB: Attached '0000000018b338a0[proxy 2516:003c]' to port 2 on RootHub#0 (FullSpeed)

When this is done my keyboard stops working on my Windows machine too so I have to unplug it from the VM for it to re-connect again and work.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 17:24
by mpack
Those instructions you found are for the Ubuntu VirtualBox fork. Not good. You should only use genuine VirtualBox GAs in a VirtualBox VM.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 17:54
by xylus
mpack wrote:Those instructions you found are for the Ubuntu VirtualBox fork. Not good. You should only use genuine VirtualBox GAs in a VirtualBox VM.
Is there anything I can do to undo it?

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 18:17
by mpack
This is not a discussion that belongs in "Windows Hosts". Moving the topic to "Linux Guests".

I am not a Linux expert, so I can't advise on how to uninstall software there.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 19:09
by Perryg
Run the same command but replace install with remove. Standard Linux command structure.

As for the keyboard and mouse, make sure that you do not have a filter enabled in the USB settings. These are shared resources and if you make a filter it will cause issues.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 20:09
by xylus
I would do that but I have no way of navigating the Linux VM without a mouse or keyboard. There are no filters in the USB settings.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 20:49
by Perryg
Post the guests log file ( as an attachment ). Right click on the guest in the Main Manager then click show log. Save and post as an attachment. Compress if it is too large to post.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 21:32
by xylus
It is already attached in the original post? Or do you mean something else?

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 21:40
by Perryg
I was hoping for a new log but never mind. First thing to try is to disable the 3D acceleration in the guest settings -> display and see if you can get it to boot and have keyboard ability. If so then use the host+F1 key combo to drop to a tty window. Then run the statement I suggested above. If that works then install the right guest additions by clicking on the device tab -> insert guest additions and run the install script.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 21:42
by xylus
They keyboard does not work. I have deactivated 3D acceleration when attempting this.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 21:50
by Perryg
Can you tell me what else you did besides installing the repo version of the guest additions? While it might ( and I mean it is very rare ) cause the mouse failure it would not have cause the keyboard failure.

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 22:30
by xylus
Pretty certain I did not do anything else. I was experiencing an issue with resizing the window and came on to the same question which as a solution gave the commands which I ran. The only additional thing I did was install some missing dependencies as I was not able to install the Ubuntu GAs before I also installed whatever it depended on. I can't recall what the dependencies were named exactly.

The keyboard/mouse were working fine after installing the GAs, it only stopped after I had restarted the machine (which I assume activated the GAs).

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 22:41
by Perryg
Well there is something wrong with the guest and unless you have Linux experience it is going to be really difficult to fix since I can not actually touch the machine. It may be faster to start over. If you are familiar with Linux then you could boot to recovery mode and try to fix it that way ( thing dpkg-reconfigure )

Re: I/O does not work after installing guest packages on Linux VM

Posted: 6. Jan 2018, 23:49
by xylus
Thanks. I booted in to recovery and uninstalled all the virtualbox packages however it still did not work. I managed to get it to work after re-installing i/o packages. (not before battling as to why networking did not work. I had to run

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echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" | sudo tee /etc/resolv.conf > /dev/null
for it to work).

To re-install the io packages I ran:

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apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-input-all
A shame, because I've already set up a new linux VM with all the required stuff :(