Seamless Mode Not Working Correctly in Virtual Box

[Tim Chambers]

I think the bug is in Nautilus, but the search field says there are too many matches. I'm making a naïve guess, anyway. Maybe it's in VirtualBox, which would be nice to get narrowed down.

Enclosed is the text at http://askubuntu.com/questions/136397/seamless-mode-not-working-correctly-in-virtual-box – three of us are seeing this issue, so I decided it's time to file a bug. Plus, as a fan of Ubuntu, I'm concerned that Giovanni said, "This problem, together with the bad feeling I have with Unity, will probably force me to try other distributions, like Mint."

-- tbc0

[text updated 2012-05-31 by tbc0]
I run Ubuntu Desktop in a VirtualBox seamless mode, hosted on Windows 7. I recently upgraded from 11.10 to 12.04 and seamless mode no longer works correctly. I have re-installed guest extensions.

The problem is that the Ubuntu desktop wallpaper is shown, effectively blocking the Windows desktop. I can bring Windows apps to the foreground, but as soon as I bring any Ubuntu window to the foreground, all the windows apps will disappear, hidden by the ubuntu desktop even if I activated an Ubuntu window in a different monitor. So, it is not very much different from full-screen mode at this time.

I suspect if I could turn off the Ubuntu desktop or wallpaper this would be a sufficient workaround (this is basically what Seamless mode is) but that does not seem to be possible within Ubuntu itself.

[Jeremy doesn't specify system config, but I can confirm I'm seeing this behavior in Win 7 64-bit with both 32-bit and 64-bit guests. Giovanni sees the same thing on his laptop running Vista Ultimate 64 bit after upgrading his 32-bit guest to 12.04 (forums.virtualbox.org p225407, requires logging in with your free Oracle account). I was using vbox 4.1.14r77440 and matching Guest Additions. I upgraded to 4.1.16-78094 vbox+additions. Still a problem. And I filed launchpad bug 999929 to see if I can get feedback from developers. – tbc0]

Any other ideas?

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/999929/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Tim Chambers (tbc0)]

Ok, I added Nautilus to this bug report. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Peter G (pgtest70)]

Can confirm that the seamless mode bug is also present on Win 7 Home 64-bit host with Virtualbox 4.14r44770 and Ubuntu 12.04 (32-bit) as guest.

[mariannebrown (marianne-e-brown)]

I am also seeing this behaviour on a Mac OS X 10.7.4 host running a 64-bit 12.04 Ubuntu guest.

[Tim Chambers (tbc0)]

I updated the Bug Description to match latest askubuntu.com text. Changes: (1) I'm also seeing this behavior in a Win 7 32-bit guest. (2) I upgraded to 4.1.16-78094 vbox+additions. No joy.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Tim Chambers (tbc0)]

The Unity root window seems to be blocking my host desktop. I'm using Xubuntu as a workaround. Seamless works fine without Unity.

[Ric Sherlock (tikkanz)]

I'm getting the same behaviour. I'm running Win7 Professional 64-bit as host and Ubuntu 12.04 as guest.
Seamless mode works fine for me with Ubuntu 11.10 (Unity) as guest but the host desktop is obscured by the guest Desktop background when using Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity as the guest.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

there was some discussion about a related problem but specific to vmware on unity-dev list I think no progress was made there

[San (c-the-skeptic)]

I am running Virtualbox 4.1.18 on Windows 7 host (home premium) and Ubuntu 12.04 as guest. I had a tough time installing guest additions in the first place and I believe there is also a discussion as to the autorun for the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso. After the installation, the shared folder was active and I could transfer files easily from Host to guest and vice versa.

However, no matter how many times I reinstalled the Vbox guest addtion package, reconfigured dkms , reinstalled linux-headers and installed the xserver-xorg packages, the seamless mode didn't seem to work. It did need the X11 I guess. I decided to go for the easier way out and installed the gnome package.

Now I have a desktop manager and the seamless mode works real smooth too.

Other options like xdm, kdm, lightdm would also work. Somehow I feel that I was just missing the x11 packages.

[radzfoto (rzdiaz)]

This bug appears to be related to Gnome 3. Here is what I tried: On a Windows 7 64-bit host, I installed Ubuntu 32-bit as a VirtualBox guest with Unity. Seamless mode behaved as in the bug description (i.e. clicking on any Unity window caused all Windows 7 windows to disappear). Then I created a new vm with Mint MATE 32-bit. MATE uses Gnome 2. Seamless mode worked perfectly. Then I created yet one more vm with Mint Cinnamon 32-bit. Cinnamon is based on Gnome 3. Seamless mode failed completely. I couldn't see the taskbar/panel or anything when going full screen.

From other forums, I have read that other have tried various Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 (and other) desktops. Gnome 2 based ones work reliably. Gnome 3 ones fail.

I am going to try bare Gnome 2, bare Gnome 3 and Xfce just to check, but I think the problem appears to be with some interaction between Gnome 3 and VirtualBox seamless mode.

[radzfoto (rzdiaz)]

I apologize, I forgot to put what versions in my previous post: Ubuntu 12.04 and Mint 13 were used with the different desktops. By the way, I also tried Ubuntu with MATE and it works fine in VirtualBox seamless mode. I am using VirtualBox 4.2.

[Peter Jensen (jensen-allen)]

Turn of having Gnome draw the background. Install gconf-editor if you do not have it, run gconf-editor, go to /desktop/gnome/background and uncheck the "draw_background" value. Not only does it fix the problem, it also is much more responsive.

[Peter G (pgtest70)]

Tried Peter Jensens approach on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS under Virtualbox 4.2.4 r81684 with extensions. Unchecked the draw-background value... but no change in behavior... It still blocks all other screens in seamless mode... it even redraws the background. (Yes, I have rebooted after changing the value and gconf-editor says its OFF).

So problem still unsolved for me... have been forced to switch to other distribution for now.

[Peter G (pgtest70)]

additional info... to #14

With draw_background unchecked:

If turn on auto-hide... background gone but the auto-show when close to border does not work then... thus totaly transparent screen windows 7 shown... but according to Virtualbox Ubuntu win active in seamless mode (transparent Ubuntu... that does not respond).

If turn off auto-hide... background redrawn and Ubuntu hide all other.

[Michael A. Phillips (maphilli14)]

For me this was a case of multiple displays. With a single display, seamless mode works fine. With multiple displays it crashes everytime!

[Tim Chambers (tbc0)]

I can no longer reproduce this bug in 15.04 in VirtualBox 5.0.2 (Windows host) on a Dell M4800.

[Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)]

Due to the nature of this bug, i'm closing it because the bug opener cannot reproduce this bug anymore. Please open a new if you are still experiencing a similar issue.