Ubuntu guest loses keyboard sporadically

[DO]

Host: ubuntu 14.04 Guest: ubuntu 12.04

Sporadically guest loses keyboard, xev doesn't show keyboard events, etc. The only way to fix this issue is to restart guest. Save/reload doesn't help.

I'm using the Microsoft Remote Desktop (Win7) as client. If I close it and reconnect to the guest the keyboard still doesn't work.

[Michael Thayer]

Would you be able to do a bit of further investigation? If you run the following command line commands:

VBoxManage setextradata "<VM name>" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pckbd/0/Config/R0Enabled" "0"
VBoxManage setextradata "<VM name>" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pckbd/0/Config/GCEnabled" "0"

and then start your virtual machine with this environment variable set:

VBOX_RELEASE_LOG=dev_kbd.e.l3

then you should get information about all key presses sent by the emulated PS/2 keyboard to the virtual machine added to the log file. This should tell you whether the problem is in the guest system or on the host side.

[Michael Thayer]

Terribly sorry, it seems that the logging was removed from the keyboard code in the 4.3 series. I have added it back in: you can get the updated builds of VirtualBox from the Testbuilds page.

[DO]

"The requested URL /download/testcase/VirtualBox-4.3.27-100331-Linux_amd64.run was not found"

[DO]

I've installed 4.3.x revision 100516, but there is no keyboard related information in the logs.

[Valery Ushakov]

Proper log group is not dev_kbd but gui, it seems.

You can also tweak this for a running VM with

VBoxManage debugvm "VM Name" log --release "+gui.l3"

and turn off again with -gui.l3

[Michael Thayer]

Actually it is dev_kbd.e.f, not dev_kbd.e.l3 as I initially wrote. Sorry.

[MH]

I am having this same issue with a CentOS 7.1 host and Linux Mint 17.2 guest while accessing the guest over RDP. The only solution is to restart the guest. I followed the instructions above for extra debug information and the keypresses are showing in the log despite not showing up on the guest.

My version is: 5.0.10 r104061

$ tail vbox/bluebox/Logs/VBox.log
00:20:51.396508 ps2kPutEventWrapper: key code 00000004
00:20:51.396561 ps2kInsertQueue: inserted 0x1C into queue 00007f99da093b24
00:20:51.525573 ps2kPutEventWrapper: key code 80000004
00:20:51.525622 ps2kInsertQueue: inserted 0xF0 into queue 00007f99da093b24
00:20:51.525630 ps2kInsertQueue: inserted 0x1C into queue 00007f99da093b24
00:20:53.804854 ps2kPutEventWrapper: key code 00000004
00:20:53.804895 ps2kInsertQueue: inserted 0x1C into queue 00007f99da093b24
00:20:53.924568 ps2kPutEventWrapper: key code 80000004
00:20:53.924610 ps2kInsertQueue: inserted 0xF0 into queue 00007f99da093b24
00:20:53.924617 ps2kInsertQueue: inserted 0x1C into queue 00007f99da093b24

[MH]

I've attached the full log file in case that is helpful and can do further investigation if needed.