keyboard swallows/repeats some characters

[Mathias Walter]

VirtualBox is running on Fedora16 and Windows XP fully patched as guest.

If I sit in front of the computer (at work) and run VirtualBox all things are fine.

But if I connect from the home office, the keyboard does not work as expected.

At the Linux host XRDP in combination with TightVNC is configured. From the home office, I connect from Windows 7/WinXP using the onboard Remote Desktop Client. After login to the Xfce session, I start the VM. Windows XP boots well inside the VM.

If I now edit some documents (especially with fast typing), some characters are not shown. They are "swallowed". Sometimes some characters are repeated twice or more times. Any key/key combination is affected. Sometimes just the uppercase character at the beginning of a sentence does not appear, even after hitting the key combination more times.

The strange thing is that this problem was introduced with VirtualBox 4.2. or 4.2.2. It is still not present in the latest 4.1.26. Thus I've just downgraded to 4.1.26 again without changing anything else.

I'm willing to contribute as much as possible to solve this problem.

For easier testing, it would be nice to have VirtualBox 4.1 and 4.2 installed side-by-side. Is this possible?

[error_401]

Could this be related to bug # 11772?.

[michaln]

Sorry, running different VirtualBox versions side by side is not supported and it's extremely unlikely that it ever will be.

I doubt anyone is willing to replicate your ultra-complex setup, not to mention that without being able to get the exact same network latencies etc. it might not even be possible. But what you could try is craft a testcase using VBoxManage controlvm keyboardputscancode, perhaps in a script with delays etc. That would greatly increase the chances of analyzing and fixing the problem.

Hard to say if #11772 is related or not as I couldn't make heads nor tails of that one. Your assumption that we're experts on keyboard barcode scanners is not correct :)

[cyberb]

I have the same issue. My setup is: Windows 7 -> Citrix Client -> Windows 7 -> Virtual Box 4.3 (Kubuntu 13.10 x64 guest)

Almost immediately keys are repeated and then I am not even able to type these previously repeated keys. Backspace is working so I can delete repeated key.

Will try to downgrade to 4.1.30.

[cyberb]

Also for v4.3, I tried two ways of connection:

1. Using Virtual Box console
2. Using Virtual Box VRDP

Both have the same issue.

If someone can give me some ideas on how to debug this, would be really great.

v4.1.30 test is still pending.

[steve richards]

Try this... Set the scan repeat rate to 20 and the delay to 250 or 500ms. I've had this issue with Linux with remote access on both virtual and native. You need to change the console rate and the GUI rate (that is two places to change)

[cyberb]

Setting delay/rate inside lunux guest using KDE GUI does not help, just changes delay and rate :)

Behavior is strange:

1. Push and release key 'a'
2. After some delay it will auto repeate
3. Hit key 'b'
4. Now 'b' will repeate
5. Hit arrow and it stops
6. No more 'a' and 'b' in this session.

4.1.30 has the same issue, I am not even able to install kubuntu using graphical installer remotely, because I cannot enter same password twice as I lose key once I type it :)

[steve richards]

I had to do a

xset r rate 250 20

in a Terminal Session

and also

set it in this file

/etc/sysconfig/keyboard

I'm using SUSE Linux running in Vbox 4.3.4

[cyberb]

I think there is no /etc/sysconfig in ubuntu world,
so I created /etc/X11/Xsession.d/91xset
with this line: xset r rate 250 20

Still no luck, not even able to login to kde and I think x session is not started yet.

Isn't xset requires running X?

Thanks for helping me!

[cyberb]

Finally was able to run Citrix Receiver on Linux and problem is gone. Current setup is:

Kubuntu 13.10 -> Citrix -> Windows 7 Host -> Virtual Box 4.3 (Kubuntu 13.10 Guest)

Looks like it was not virtual box problem, but Citrix client OS (Windows) issue. Hope that helps someone.

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.