mouse moves very eratically in VB 3.0.4 -> fixed in SVN/3.0.10

[Stéphane Charette]

VB 3.0.4, host: Ubuntu 9.04-64bit, guest: Ubuntu 9.04-64bit, guest additions 3.0.4 installed. Guest is running maximized, but not fullscreen nor seamless.

I'm having a lot of problems with my mouse starting with VB3.0.4. When the guest first starts up, everything is fine, but after a while (say 30-60 minutes?) the mouse stops working correctly. At that point, the mouse seems to either become "stuck" in one location, or it starts to bounce around where several times per second the mouse will skip from the top of the guest, to the bottom of the guest, with mouse clicks happening randomly, causing windows to appear, minimize, close, etc.

Disabling mouse integration at that point sometimes helps a bit, but even then it still ends up bouncing all over the place.

This has never happened to me before with the dozens of other VirtualBox versions I've used on this computer.

One key thing to note: my host uses a Wacom USB tablet, not an actual mouse. I don't even own an actual mouse, so I cannot test if this is tablet-related. However, I do know this is a regression from previous versions of VirtualBox.

[Michael Thayer]

Stephane, could you test whether re-installing the ​3.0.2 Additions fixes this? That might tell me whether the regression is in the host code or the guest code.

[Stéphane Charette]

I reloaded the 3.0.2 guest additions into this guest and restart it. Guest has now been running for about 1 hour, and all is fine with the mouse. Will continue to use it through the weekend, and will update this ticket if the problem re-appears using the 3.0.2 guest additions.

[Stéphane Charette]

Problem just happened again, even with the 3.0.2 guest additions as Michael suggested. I came back to my host which had the screensaver running since I was away all day. Entered the password, and tried to use the guest running in a maximized window. Mouse was behaving erratically. Disabled and re-enabled mouse integration, but now in the guest the mouse is forever stuck about 1 pixel down and 40 pixels in from the top-left corner. No matter where I try to move the mouse and click, it is drawn in that same spot, and click brings up and hides the standard Ubuntu "Applications" menu.

Disabling mouse integration worked for about 3 minutes, then the mouse began jumping all over the guest, and generating mouse clicks all over the place. This is exactly the behaviour I initially reported with the 3.0.4 guest additions.

Wonder if this only happens when I go back to the guest after the host's screen saver has kicked in following a period of inactivity. Will try to see over the next day if this is the cause.

[Michael Thayer]

Just for sanity, it would be great if you could test VirtualBox 3.0.2 with the 3.0.4 Additions.

[Stéphane Charette]

I've been using VB 3.0.2 with the 3.0.4 guest additions for the past 2 hours, and I haven't seen any mouse problems. I'm willing to do some more tests with development cycle 3.0.5 builds if necessary to try and get a solution for this before 3.0.6, as the current 3.0.4 build is unusable for me both with and without mouse integration.

[Michael Thayer]

I wonder whether this is the same issue as #4779? Do your screen savers do 3D effects by any chance?

[Michael Thayer]

Stephane, you might want to try these Additions from 3.0.5:

​http://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase/VBoxGuestAdditions-r51082.iso

(Obligatory disclaimer ​here.) I don't think they will solve your whole problem, but they may (should...) fix the problem with the mouse being stuck in the top left-hand corner of the guest.

I am away this week, I will see if we can solve this when I get back.

[harmscon]

There are many tickets currently open that share this common symptom, ie the mouse becomes uncontrollable. The ticket numbers are: 4713, 4248, 2603, 4252, 3350, 2575, 4700, 2660, 2682, 4817. The issue goes back through many versions of VirtualBox.

Common themes appears to be: USB mice/device, screen capture to clipboard or just plain becoming erratic after time (memory leak?).

This bug should be upgraded to blocker priority as it is no longer possible to be productive in this unstable environment.

[Frank Mehnert]

harmscon, please could you stop polluting the bugtracker or I'm forced to delete your account.

[Michael Thayer]

Stephane, it looks to me from your log like you are using a guest with four virtual CPUs. Could you see if setting this to uniprocessor makes a difference?

[Michael Thayer]

Is this still an issue with 3.0.6? Your forum posting suggested that it is fixed.

[Stéphane Charette]

I'm not having the mouse problems anymore, but I also reverted from 4-cpu to 1-cpu a while ago. On Monday morning I'll try and go back to 4 virtual CPUs and see if it is indeed fixed.

[Stéphane Charette]

I started running 3.0.6 with 4 virtual CPUs yesterday, and today I'm having mouse issues again. But definitely with 1 cpu the mouse is behaving fine.

When running with multiple CPUs:

The issue I'm now seeing in my Ubuntu 9.04-64 guest is the mouse location doesn't seem to be sent to the guest. Mouse clicks (left, double, and right-mouse-click) happen, but always at the same location. The actual pointer "arrow" image is moving around, and I can also move as expected across the guest/host boundary. Host mouse is not affected, only the guest is misbehaving.

[Stéphane Charette]

Disabled mouse integration, which allowed the mouse to work correctly for about 10 seconds with 2 or 3 mouse clicks. Now mouse is stuck in the upper-left corner again after having bounced around the screen a few times.

This is exactly the same behaviour I first reported in this ticket in August. But since then I've been running with 1 CPU in my guest and have not seen this, so the problem is definitely due to multiple virtual CPUs. Must reboot my guest now to disable virtual CPUs since this renders it inoperable (from a mouse perspective).

[Stéphane Charette]

I just had this happen to me with VB 3.0.8 after 52 hours of uptime in my guest. I'll be restarting my guest with only 1 virtual CPU instead of 4 to get around this strange mouse issue.

Only thing in the VBox.log file is several "VMMDev::SetVideoModeHint: got a video mode hint..." messages, but I think that is when I resized the VM and toggled mouse integration hoping it would force the mouse to start working again. Previous message to that is 52 hours prior when the VM booted up ("starting shared clipboard thread").

[Frank Mehnert]

Please reopen if this problem persists with VBox 3.0.10.