openSUSE 12.2 guest misbehaving, please help! (Virtualbox)

English Virtualization
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Hello! I have a guest openSUSE installed in Virtualbox, Windows7 host.

Now, i’ve had one before, but not this suse version (12.2).
I can’t get it to work!

I can’t install virtualbox guest additions. I have no idea what’s wrong.

I get the “Building the main Guest Additions module - FAILED” message and they’re not installed.

Can i install this from a repository? Because i’ve only tried that from the virtual usb.

Also, this annoying thing happens all the time. I don’t know why. (see picture, i’m bad at explaining things in english).

http://i48.tinypic.com/10da7pf.png

It appears at random, i don’t even know what the shortcut for this is…

Also, the resolution doesn’t scale well with the window resizing, and going to fullscreen leaves the resolution to last used (i guess, since it doesn’t go full screen, just the same resolution with black around it).
I suspect that could be solved with virtualbox guest additions, but something’s wrong with that, and i can’t install them properly…

I’m not a pro or anything, i use my linux for most daily stuff, internet, music, emails and such, so i guess i’ve hit a wall here. I don’t know how to procede. Should i just download an older suse that worked?

This was installed from a DVD linux image (downloaded from torrent, form the official site)…

If anyone knows how to solve it, please, post here, i’m stuck.
And if you need additional information, please tell me what you need.

2

On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:46:02 +0000, Vepar wrote:

> I get the “Building the main Guest Additions module - FAILED” message
> and they’re not installed.

That message points to a logfile (I just went through this myself earlier
this evening). What are the contents of that log file (please use CODE
tags so the formatting is right).

Chances are you’re missing development tools/packages that are necessary
to compile some of the stuff that is installed. That was the case in my
setup (which was SLES11SP2, but still).

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

3

Hmm, so, all of a sudden VBox wouldn’t start my suse machine, and i had to reinstall a new one, but this time i included nearly all additional packages (especially programming packages), and i could install extras without a problem. Now they work… So i can’t post a log file since there isn’t one anymore. Now i look like a jerk since you came to help me and i don’t need help anymore… :expressionless: Sorry. :stuck_out_tongue: Anyway, yes, i was missing some packages installed and i think i know which ones, the ones in the RPM development group, since i didn’t include that one in the last installation.

The annoyng issue (in the screenshot) is still present though. All open programs begin randomly appearing so i have to select the one i’m using to make it dissapear…
How is this feature called? Maybe i can just disable it since i don’t really need it anyway.

Also, there’s a few things that happened (and are still happening) in the meantime.

For example, in Mozilla, sometimes, when i click on something, the mouse selects (and clicks) the top left corner in the screen opening the window menu then i have to click several times around to make it dissapear. This also happens when dragging windows. The mouse would jump to the top left corner with the window. This makes everyday basic usage of the system very exhausting unfortunately and i’d like to fix it if possible. I have no idea if that’s because of VBox or because of the new suse version. There are mouse pinting issues all over in general, be it selecting files, clicking window borders to resize them, clicking on anything really… But mostly this, with the mouse suddenly teleporting to the top left part of the screen…

Another thing that happened is because of my monitor. It was set to sleep after 15 min, but then for some reason it “disconnects”, you can hear the sound and everything. Then it needed to be turned off and on again to work, messing up the resolution in both windows and linux guest. Then the calendar widget was stuck opened at the left bottom part of the screen and i couldn’t turn it off or hide it. It was above all other windows too, just to make it more annoying. :\

Restarting the machine fixed this, and i disabled monitor sleep so that won’t happen again.

Can you help me with other issues i’m having? Because the way it is, it’s not pleasant to use the system and i want to use it like this.
Any help would be appreciated.

4

On Sun, 18 Nov 2012 05:46:02 +0000, Vepar wrote:

> Now they work… So i can’t post a log file since there isn’t one
> anymore

The good news is you got it to work, and that’s the important thing. :slight_smile:

RPM dev isn’t needed, though, just kernel-devel, development tools (I
just installed the pattern), and the kernel source IIRC.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

5

Yeah. I missed them the first time, i had no idea i need them for guest extras… Now i know. :slight_smile:

Oh, and, i couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the window popup thingy, it just won’t stop showing all the windows every 2 mouse movements so i just deactivated the respective desktop effects that seem to do this (they were on by default) and now it’s fine. I don’t have that option anymore, but frankly, it’s more hassle than it’s worth. Alt-Tab works fine too without the fancy interface for window switching. :wink:

The mouse still seems to click the upper left corner of the screen for no reason, but oddly enough, now that i deactivated the 2 desktop effects, it’s not doing that so often anymore. I have no idea if that’s related, but for whoever is reading this, they might find that information useful. :wink:

6

For all those who are wondering about the issue with the mouse, here’s the link to a thread i made in VBox forums, where the moderator explained what happened.

Apparently it’s an X.org bug…

There are workarounds for mainly everything except KDE.

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=52776

Cheers!

7

Hi all -

I worked through this same misbehaving guest xorg issue with Fedora 17 (bug #852841). The symptoms were highly erratic mouse behavior after an xorg update came through - specifically: F17 xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.12.0 -> 1.12.3. This issue was corrected through a patch to the xorg-x11-server package (in v. 1.12.3-2.fc17)

I have run into the exact same symptoms that were corrected in this Fedora bug in OpenSUSE 12.2 running as a VirtualBox guest. This should be a fairly easy fix to make to the xorg packages. I just wanted to cross-reference the Fedora bug with this one since, as far as I can tell, they are in fact the same issue and I hadn’t seen anyone else relate the two above.

This OpenSUSE bug is preventing me from using the OS any further until it is fixed. For reference, this is a newly installed 12.2 vbox guest, with all the latest OS and VirtualBox updates installed. The xorg-x11-server package version is: 7.6_1.12.3-1.17.1.x86_64

Does anyone know of a (possibly known good) previous version of this package that we can try rolling back to?

Thanks in advance!

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Looking at the version numbers closer, it looks like for xorg-x11-server we need either a 7.6_1.12.0-x (downgrade) or 7.6_1.12.3-2.x or higher (upgrade). I could not find any versions prior to 1.12.3 in yast.

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This may be related to this OpenSUSE bug: #776385](https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=776385)

Posted some notes there as well.

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In case anyone is still experiencing this erratic mouse behavior, the updated xorg packages available here fixed this issue for me:

Index of /repositories/home:/olh:/bug776385:/12.2/openSUSE_12.2/x86_64

At this point in time, I do not know when these will be distributed through the standard update channels. Please refer to the OpenSUSE bug listed above for more details and updates.