VBoxVRDP unnecessarily connects to an X server on Linux

[Robert Bordelon]

When starting headless sessions, VBoxVRDP apparently connects to the X server if possible, even though it does not actually use it (since that's the whole point of having a headless session.)

This behavior causes any headless sessions started from a graphical environment (i.e. one which has a valid DISPLAY environment variable) to be termimated (and marked "aborted") if the X server is shut down -- for instance if the user logs out. This problem is present whether VBoxVRDP is started directly or via "VBoxManage startvm <Session> -type vrdp".

Here is a log snippet of such a session:

VirtualBox VRDP Headless Interface 1.5.0
(C) 2005-2007 innotek GmbH
All rights reserved

Listening on port 3393

<X server is shut down>

X connection to hostbox:0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

This problem can be worked around by unsetting the DISPLAY environment variable before starting headless sessions, or by starting from an non-graphical session, but I believe a more roubust solution would be to have VBoxVRDP not connect to the X server in the first place since such a connection is not needed.

[Michael Thayer]

Is that guest using the shared clipboard? And if so, does deactivating it make a difference?

[Robert Bordelon]

Replying to michael:

Is that guest using the shared clipboard? And if so, does deactivating it make a difference?

The guest session was indeed using the shared clipboard. Deactivating it did fix this problem.

How could a shared clipboard work in a headless session anyway?

[Sander van Leeuwen]

This is fixed in 1.5.2.