Question for the VirtualBox users

WetGeek

After reinstalling Solus Plasma on my daily laptop (to create a swap partition large enough to allow hibernating), I needed to re-create my set of Solus VMs. But this time I encountered a problem that's got me puzzled.

The first VM I created was Budgie. Things went fine until I used the HOST+F keypress to take the VM to full-screen. It locked up the VM and its host so solidly that I couldn't get things moving again without a series of extreme actions. So I set out to try to find the cause of the lockup.

After much experimenting, I learned how to prevent the lockups: I found that if I simply maximized the smaller version of the VM instead of trying to make it full-screen, there were no problems at all. That presents the VM's UI starting above my laptop's bottom panel, which incidentally is how I sometimes use the host's Spectacle utility to take screenshots of the VM.

But it also includes the VirtualBox menu at the top, so the VM UI ends up much shorter than it would be at full-screen. That's why I'm trying to figure out what's happening, and how I could once again use HOST+F with VMs, without making them and their host totally non-responsive.

If anyone else has noticed this, and has a suggestion how to keep it from happning, please share what you've found. I now have all four Solus VMs fully configured and usable, but only at this smaller size. They're useful, but could be much more.

wingman-4

I use the view selection on v-box menu to set full screen and then use the display settings on the distro to set the resolution I like. I hope that is helpful. If the set resolution is smaller than the screen it will have a black border and the v-box menu will popup from the bottom as usual.

WetGeek

wingman-4 I hope that is helpful

It might very well be helpful. But please tell me, did you do that in respone to the problem I mentioned? I'm wondering whether it's happened to anyone else, or if I'm just special.

More info: the last time I installed Plasma on this laptop, afterwards I regretted some of the choices I'd made. In particular, I'd used the entire 500 GB SSD, with is rediculous for a Solus installation. At the time, however, I wasn't in a mood to start over again.

Now, however, I started wondering whether a reinstallation might resolve the VM problem. So I carefully reinstalled Solus Plasma, and this time I only used about half the SSD, leaving 251 GB for a possible next project. After the new system was installed and fully configured, I created another Budgie VM and tested it.

The first time I pressed HOME+F, it locked up just like the last time. After getting control again, I installed the Guest Additions and ran them. I know that wasn't necessary with a Solus edition, but thought it might help. The system immediately locked up when that finished.

I use Wayland, so my next try will be with an X11 session. I almost hope that doesn't help, because I like Wayland a lot, but if I have to use X11 to get VMs to behave, I guess I'll have to settle for that.

nolan

I think you need to install the correct packages of virtualbox.
See:
Setting up VirtualBox (from help center)
Solus as host (from help center)

And this package (as host):
VirtualBox 7.0.8 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (from virtualbox.org)

That last one gave me some headache for not having the correct and using an outdated one, happens from time to time wen a mayor update is released.

WetGeek

WetGeek I use Wayland, so my next try will be with an X11 session.

Well, that solved it. Seems like it's always the last thing I try that fixes the problem. 🤣 Using X11 as the window manager makes everything work just as it should. I didn't even need to install the Guest Additions.

I now have no problem toggling my Budgie VM to full-screen and back.

WetGeek

@tomscharbach , I've run into serious problems using my VMs full-screen, and after a lot of debugging, I found out that it's a Wayland problem. In an X11 session, VMs work perfectly. But in a Wayland session, every time I attempt to take a VM to full-screen, it locks up the VM and its host, quite solidly.

I know that VirtualBox and Gnome Boxes both use KVM for a hypervisor, so I thought perhaps you might have run into the same problem. If you have, and you're still looking for a solution, just change back to an X11 session.

nolan

That's different of what I thought, unrelated with a vm, I have rendering problems with games on wine, so... yea, wayland is making some problems

wingman-4

I've found some distros are better setup for v-box than others when it comes screen resolution. I'm sure you've had similar experiences.

zmaint

I've had a much better experience using Virt-Manager.