Screen flicker in VirtualBox running under nomachine

[Misha Koshelev]

Ever since upgrading to 2.2.2 horrible screen flicker/shearing when running XP guest in Ubuntu Hardy amd64 host.

[Daniel Kulesz]

I am hitting the same problem. I am running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on amd64 and a 32bit XP Guest. The same problem happens also with other guests, i.e. a 32bit SuSE Guest or a 64bit Ubuntu Guest.

With upgrading to Virtualbox 3.0 the problem does not go away. Only a downgrade to Virtualbox-2.1 (which is part of Ubuntu 9.04, I guess in the OSE Edition) "solves" the problem.

Any ideas? What feature has been introduced in 2.2 that could cause this problem

[Daniel Kulesz]

Update: I have upgraded to VirtualBox 3.0.2 and the screen flicker problem does not occur anymore.

[Misha Koshelev]

Thanks. Which version do you have specifically?

I have 3.0.2 r49928 on amd64 and flicker on Ubuntu 8.04. Thank you

Misha

[Daniel Kulesz]

Hi Misha,

I am running the same version as you - r49928 on amd64 but on Ubuntu 9.04. As mentioned above, I was using 9.04 before with 3.0, and also experienced the screen flicker there.

One point that could make a difference: Have you imported your "old" Virtual Machine with XP in 3.0.2 or have you created a new VM? I have created a new one, stating it's a Windows XP and keeping all defaults, except giving the VM 512MB of Memory. Then, when asked for the hard drive, I have simply pointed it to my old xp.vdi image.

Kind regards, Daniel

[Misha Koshelev]

Just tried doing what you said (creating a new machine with 512 MB of Memory Windows XP defaults) same problem. Are you using Guest additions?

Also what versions of nx? dpkg -l | grep nx ii lynx 2.8.6-2ubuntu2 Text-mode WWW Browser ii nxclient 3.3.0-6 NX Client ii nxnode 3.3.0-17 NX Server Node ii nxproxy 3.1.0-2-1 NX X compression library ii nxserver 3.3.0-22 NX Server

In any case seems to work very well with rdesktop.

Thank you Misha

[Daniel Kulesz]

I just tried using it from home, and looks like screen flicker is back :-( What is the connection speed you have set up? I was using "ADSL" at home, now I disconnected and reconnected with "WAN" and I am getting no more screen flicker. I also disabled the usage of shared pixmaps, since it causes screen garbage in Java Apps (in i.e. Netbeans). On my other box I tried with this option enabled and disabled, and with connection speed LAN and WAN, but there was no screen flicker anymore. Maybe I should try to use "ADSL" tomorrow, to see if it reappears.

Here is my list of packages:

ii nxclient 3.3.0-6 NX Client ii nxnode 3.3.0-17 NX Server Node ii nxserver 3.3.0-22 NX Server

I am using the guest additions from 2.2.2r46594. Is there an easy way for you to reproduce the flicker? I am always getting it when hitting the "Start" button in XP and selecting workspace.

And no - I haven't tried using it with rdesktop yet, but glad to know there is some workaround for the problem then.

Regards, Daniel

[Misha Koshelev]

You know you are right with WAN it goes away completely. Here is my rdesktop script btw:

more vbox

#!/bin/bash VBoxHeadless -startvm "$*" & sleep 5 rdesktop -a 16 localhost misha@misha-d630:~/bin$

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.