VB GAs are taking over the guest clipboard even with VB clipboard functionality disabled. => Fixed in SVN

[oivey]

Although this issue is literally driving our team nuts I'm afraid we are out of time to invest in it right now.

I am therefore providing the closing status of the virtual box forum discussion in the hope that the Oracle VB Dev team agree that it is a serious issue and resolve it. (further detail and uploaded information can be found on the virtual box forum discussion here: ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=97718&start=15)

Closing status from my perspective:

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1. VB guest additions mess with TigerVNC on CentOS 7 (and likely all Enterprise Linux variations)
2. The guest additions never used to cause problems prior to 6.1.2 so a Guest additions bug has been introduced.
3. Version 6.1.10 version of the guest additions has become even more invasive in that it actually changes the VNC client screen dimensions from those set in the VNC configuration file.
4. This bug is inconsistent in that it doesn't occur on Linux hosts.
5. I can use the workaround of using standard network shares

My closing observations to the Virtual Box development team should they ever read this:

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1. It is a critical design requirement that Guest additions be transparent to a user accessing the guest operating system. Not being able to rely on this renders the guest additions untrustworthy and therefore useless / dangerous.
2. while it is possible to use the alternative network share method kindly suggested by @scottgus1, it is not at all ideal because it means that:

• sharing configuration is required on both the host and the guest (rather than just the VB environment / guest)
• it introduces a requirement for additional unneeded os packages to installed on the guest to support networking share. This OS inconsistency in environment from one server deployment to another introduces the potential for guest behavioural differences and thus increased risk.
• the guest now needs knowledge of the host username / passwords in order to access the shares.

Again @scottgus1 - thank you so much for your efforts and help on this topic, I can only hope Oracle put the effort in to correct this.

[oivey]

I mention above that version 6.1.10 GAs have become even more invasive as they change the VNC client screen dimensions that are specified on the server.

We are now seeing exactly the same VNC screen dimension change behaviour for Linux EL7 server guests running 6.1.12 GAs on Linux hosts. (thankfully the main copy paste GA issue for this ticket remains limited to guests on Windows hosts only)

However this GA invasive behaviour is really problematic both practically and from a VM raison d'aitre perspective. I really hope Oracle devs will agree as if this is not fixed or gets any worse sadly we will have no option but to migrate to another VM platform.

[oivey]

While the guest works 100% with no GAs this is not an option for us as we need the shared drive feature GAs provide.

As copy paste used to be 100% fine in VNC on older versions of VB, I thought maybe installing an older version of GAs might solve the problem. I therefore retained the 6.1.12 windows host software and installed GA 6.1.2 and 6.0.24 on the linux guest.

No joy. Changing the GA version has no apparent effect and copy and paste continues to fail.

I therefore tried retrograding VB entirely to 6.0.24 (both host and GA) - and now copy and paste WORKS!

My conclusions are therefore that:

1. the problem is in the 6.1 branch only
2. the problem is related to the way the guest additions and 6.1 host work together

I will therefore continue on the 6.0 branch of VB until Oracle sees fit to sort this - rather serious - problem out.

[sdfsdfs]

this problem has been resolved as at 6.1.28!