MX 17/18 Repository: The Virtual Box Thread

[richb]

I also installed the test repo version 6. I only have Linux guests and did not to have install guest additions per guest. I set up shared folders on a Manjaro KDE Linux guest but could not see shared folders. In the past they appeared in a /media folder, but no such folder exists. To be honest I have not used VBox for some time so maybe another mechanism exists to see shared folders.

[Stevo]

Manyroads, you don't need to install the guest packages on the host machine, only in MX versions running as guests (and they come with those anyway.)

The only thing extra you need that's not in the metapackage on the host is virtualbox-ext-pack to automatically get and install the matching extension pack. Dependency issues prevented me from adding it to the metapackage.

[Stevo]

I also installed the test repo version 6. I only have Linux guests and did not to have install guest additions per guest. I set up shared folders on a Manjaro KDE Linux guest but could not see shared folders. In the past they appeared in a /media folder, but no such folder exists. To be honest I have not used VBox for some time so maybe another mechanism exists to see shared folders.

You do have do set up/build guest additions on the guest if they don't come with them already, like MX does. I suspect that's the problem with Fedora, since the guest additions are non-free, and they don't ship with any non-free stuff at all.

[manyroads]

Manyroads, you don't need to install the guest packages on the host machine, only in MX versions running as guests (and they come with those anyway.)

The only thing extra you need that's not in the metapackage on the host is virtualbox-ext-pack to automatically get and install the matching extension pack. Dependency issues prevented me from adding it to the metapackage.

I forgot when I found this out... old, bad memory. Time for some new RAM, I guess. :lipsrsealed: But anyway, I have noticed that previous versions of VB seem to get all the privs correct (magically) when the whole boat is loaded. So I just install everything.

[manyroads]

I have to say... VBox 6 works nicely with 4.20 of the kernel.

[asqwerth]

We now have Virtual Box 6.0.4 in the test repo, with 5.2.24 moving to main.

The new version seems to be ignoring theme colors--you can have any GUI color you like as long as it's stark white.

If you are using a dark theme and get white text on that white background, right-click the menu entry, click "Edit Application", and use one of these strings for the command to get black text:

Code: Select all

VirtualBox -style gtk %U

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VirtualBox -style qt %U

UPDATE:
Previously (within the last 7 days) the text was white on white on my Arch-based distro when I used a dark gtk theme.

But I just upgraded my Fedora 28 (formerly Korora 27, so I'm not sure if they had previously added some theming/environment tweaks) to Fedora 29 yesterday, and a few hours ago I installed Virtualbox 6.0.4 directly from Oracle's virtualbox.repo. Had to manually download and install the Extension Pack from Oracle.

I didn't use the Virtualbox -style commands above. The VB theme doesn't follow the system's dark theme but now at least the text displayed in the VB Settings window is black on white background, rather than white on white. Shimmer effect is still present but that's not an issue if the text is now legible.

Dark theme: Ant-Dracula, also tested fine with Arc-Dark,
Kernel: 4.20.5-200.fc29.x86_64

Virtual machine was an MX17.1-beta, and the Shared Folder within continued to automount and work.

Virtualbox version: see screenshot



https://imgur.com/9rK6248

[Stevo]

Weirdly enough, after fiddling around with qt5ct and setting it to follow the gtk2 theme also, the VBox 6.04 GUI now is mostly dark:



Go figure.

[Stevo]

The test repo packages have been updated to the latest 6.0.6 release, backported from Sid, along with the -ext-pack and -guest-additions-iso packages.

[Stevo]

We now have the newest release of the 5.2 series, 5.2.28, in the experimental repo. We did this to avoid the conflict with 6.0.6 in the test repo. This version will build on 5.0 kernels, and still follows the GTK theming. We also have matching versions of virtualbox-guest-additions-iso and virtualbox-ext-pack there.

I had to go out and generate the sources for this release myself, since Debian and Ubuntu have jumped from 5.2.24 to the 6.X series. Maybe antiX would be interested in this release for the Stretch and Buster versions, though I'll have to re-enable some disabled patches for the upstream version.

The line to add to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list for the experimental repo is

Code: Select all

deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/experimental/ stretch test \

We'd really like to get this into main, so test reports are welcome.

[manyroads]

We'd really like to get this into main, so test reports are welcome.

Here come da tests ... I'll test away and see what I can break for you!