Solved Mouse-pointer integration with VirtualBox Guest Additions

[cac]

I have installed virtualbox-ose-additions on 9.3 (with Xfce) and have full screen and seamless mode working, but mouse integration is not working. The pointer is in one of two states: with the little icon at the bottom right grey, the mouse/pointer is not captured and one can type either in the host or the guest (in a terminal window); as soon as one presses a mouse button, a message appears giving one the opportunity to capture the mouse (i.e. have it work only in the confines of the window manager and applications called from it). In that case the icon turns solid blue. It never displays the pattern indicating mouse integration (MI) is on.

Is there a command or an option to VBoxClient that will turn MI on?

 

[wblock@]

This is one of the few situations where a manual addition to xorg.conf in the VM is useful:

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier "xfce"
        InputDevice "Mouse1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Mouse1"
        Driver "vboxmouse"
EndSection

As far as I recall, the ServerLayout section is not required.

 

[cac]

Thanks! I spilled egg on my shirt over this one: when I went to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and to the section InputDevice, what did I see but

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Mouse0"
        Driver "vboxmouse"
        Driver "mouse"
EndSection

As soon as I removed the last line and rebooted, MI was there. Sorry I didn't catch this until your reply. So this thread is solved, too.

 

[grahamperrin]

Reading post #3 above alongside https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...freebsd-10-1-on-virtualbox.49701/#post-277811 and

…The mouse entry just makes it easy to move this from a VM to real hardware. …

I created /etc/X11/xorg.conf in single user mode, went to multi user mode, integration was not as expected so I experimented with a change to the .conf file and rebooted but still, I can't move the pointer from the guest to the host without a keypress (in my case, the right-hand Command key).

Please, what am I doing wrong?

 

[SirDice]

Are the Virtualbox kernel modules loading properly?

 

[wblock@]

I created /etc/X11/xorg.conf in single user mode

Please don't do that any more.
Start the VM. Inside the VM, make sure emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions is installed and enabled in rc.conf:

vboxguest_enable="YES"
vboxservice_enable="YES"

Remove all old xorg.conf files in the VM. Manually create /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf with only these contents:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Mouse1"
        Driver "vboxmouse"
EndSection

 

[grahamperrin]

Thank you both. The manual editions to the .conf files were effective.

Is there any reason why editions are not automated when the package is installed?

 

[SirDice]

No port does and as far as I know it's not allowed to do that. You have to assume that everything you install needs to be configured and enabled.

As for configuring, I like the "new" way. Instead of creating /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf, add a file called mouse.conf to /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and put only the mouse definition in it. All files from /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ are loaded automatically. And it keeps everything nicely separated.

 

[kpa]

Thank you both. The manual editions to the .conf files were effective.

Is there any reason why editions are not automated when the package is installed?

FreeBSD is not an operating system that is going to hold your hand, you're expected to learn the ropes and become skilled in doing things yourself. This may not be ok for everyone but it's not going to change either.