Issues from Imbedding VBox GA in the Host OS

[richb]

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and then add myself to the vboxusers group

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And the vboxsf group if you want shared folders, that has always been essential for me. That is done automatically if you use MXPI.

[asqwerth]

And the vboxsf group if you want shared folders, that has always been essential for me. That is done automatically if you use MXPI.

I only started using shared folders after I began to use MXPI to install Virtualbox, and it was nice and easy to set up. And the VMs remember their settings and stay permanently mounted. No wonder.

[dolphin_oracle]

I'm not sure what the OP is going to think when the vbox guest additions drivers hit the main line kernel.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/vir ... nux-kernel


The VB Guest additions shouldn't be doing anything if the system is not loaded in a VM. But who knows, he says his video problems cleared up on removal of the guest addtions, and I'll take that on face value.

For anyone finding this thread later, they are removable thru synaptic.

[richb]

This caught my eye and may explain the OP's problems.

That approach is commendable, and provides a better first impression. But it’s also a bit of a hinderance; some users find the ‘preinstalled’ versions lacking in features, and then encounter errors and issues when trying to install the regular version of guest additions.

[Stevo]

I would bet that the problems come from mixing the Oracle Vbox with the Debianized version. We ship the Debianized version of the guest modules on the ISO, because that's the way to do it. Many other distros also do the same thing and have no complaints from their users.

If you go outside of the repos to download and install a deb from a website, when the recommended method is always try the repos first:

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sudo apt install virtualbox

do you have the right to ask that we change the entire distribution to match the "outside" method you have used to install the application?

Steve (hoping that the package installer installs from the repo now instead of Oracle now...)

[dolphin_oracle]

I would bet that the problems come from mixing the Oracle Vbox with the Debianized version. We ship the Debianized version of the guest modules on the ISO, because that's the way to do it. Many other distros also do the same thing and have no complaints from their users.

If you go outside of the repos to download and install a deb from a website, when the recommended method is always try the repos first:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install virtualbox

do you have the right to ask that we change the entire distribution to match the "outside" method you have used to install the application?

Steve (hoping that the package installer installs from the repo now instead of Oracle now...)

it does.

we used to install from oracle's debian repo, but that would not build correctly on the 4.15 kernel so we changed it in mx-packageinstaller. that took place before release of 17.1

[Stevo]

So the whole problem probably resolves to "Won't Fix--install Virtual Box from the repo or with Package Installer", then.

[dolphin_oracle]

So the whole problem probably resolves to "Won't Fix--install Virtual Box from the repo or with Package Installer", then.

I'm more interested in the graphics problems that the OP says were cleared up when he removed the guest-additions from the installed system.

[BitJam]

I'm more interested in the graphics problems that the OP says were cleared up when he removed the guest-additions from the installed system.

My guess is it was related to mixing versions of the guest-additions and Virtual Box. If we knew the version of Virtual Box the OP is using and if it is different from the one everyone else is using then we could try to replicate the problem. I had tried to explain this clearly in my previous post:

Most of the time when only one person has an issue and many many others don't have that issue it is because that one person did things differently than the others [...] I keep asking myself: what did I do differently? ... what did I do differently?

I realize this seems unlikely since the guest-additions on the host shouldn't make any difference. but it may be the least unlikely answer. It hit me when I saw that the OP used Gdebi to install Virtual Box. For all I know they installed the same version everyone else is using. If so then we will need to look elsewhere for the answer.

BTW: the first hit from Google(virtualbox guest additions on host) is Installed Virtualbox guest additions on host where the most informative reply said:

No harm done. [...] What may have happened however is that as a dependency you also had installed the OSE edition of Virtual Box from the repositories. This will override the installation of Virtual Box from the Oracle repository or a downloaded DEBIAN package. You will have to remove the OSE version again

This is obviously not what happened to the OP and it does not indicate there will be any adverse interaction by having guest-additions on the host system. It says the opposite. Since, as far as we know, only one person has the problem and everyone else does not then ISTM either:

1. it was a coincidence that the graphics problem stopped after they removed guest-additions, or
2. they changed something by trying to remove guest additions in a non-standard way, or
3. the problem was due to how they installed Virtual box via Gdebi, or
4. it was due to some other non-standard thing they did

Again, when only one person has a problem then you've got to look for what they did differently (or look for a hardware problem but in this case that seems extremely unlikely).

BTW: it is very easy to detect if your system is running inside of Virtual Box:

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lspci -n | grep -iq " 80ee:beef"

The 80ee prefix ensures that only one vendor controls this pciid so there can't be unintentional collisions. Of course Oracle knows about this since the Virtual Box devs created it, so it is trivial for them to make sure the guest-additions do nothing if they are not running inside of Virtual Box.