Entering Fullscreen with Guest - Disrupts Synergy

[jdm]

The cursor is lost, and also communication is disrupted between my Host and other PC's via Synergy when a GUEST is run in FullScreen Mode.

While running Synergy on a Host (Ubuntu 10.04 - 64Bit) everything works fine. I can access guest systems, and move between my Host system and other systems via Synergy. But when I enter FullScreen Mode, communication between the Host and other PC's is interrupted. I have control of the guest system until the cursor hits the edge of the screen. Then I lose the cursor and have to exit FullScreen Mode to regain control of any system.

I'm running VBox 3.2.8. My host is Ubuntu 10.04 (64 Bit) with an Ubuntu 10.04 (32 Bit) and a WinXP Guest. I have an Ubuntu 10.04 sys to my left and a WinXP sys to my right. When I go Full Screen with a Guest System, it's like Synergy can no longer talk to the other remote systems. When my cursor hits the system edge, it disappears and will not return UNTIL I EXIT Full Screen mode on the Guest System. I need to be full screen in my Ubuntu Guest system 90% of the time, with Synergy still able to work on the Host.

Other users are reporting the same issue HERE --> ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33040

Thank you for your assistance!

[Anthony Sepa]

I have three screens. One screen is my laptop running XP and Synergy client. The other two screens are connected to my desktop running Fedora 14. Here is a diagram:

| Laptop  |---|       Desktop         |
|   XP    |---|      Fedora 14        |
|Synergy C|---|      Synergy S        |
| Screen 1|---| Screen 2|---| Screen 3|
|         |---| Desktop |---| VBox XP |

I'm using Fedora 14 with VirtualBox 4.0.0. I am experiencing the same problem. When VirtualBox is in either fullscreen or seamless mode the cursor will disapear when transitioning from the active VirtualBox over to my Synergy controlled laptop.

So I move from my active "VBox XP" screen 3 past screen 2 and at the transition edge of screen 2 and screen 1 the mouse cursor will disappear. Manually releasing the mouse (i.e press the host button) will make the mouse appear at the transition edge of screen 1 and screen 2.

From the symptoms I am hypothesizing that the program is not properly releasing the mouse when the mouse is no longer over the active fullscreen or seamless "area". When VirtualBox is in windowed mode the edges of the window is well defined and the program works properly. When VirtualBox is setup to only use one monitor it should respect the monitor edges and release the mouse when the mouse goes outside the monitor boundary.

[Drew]

I can confirm I am having the same issue, well described above. VirtualBox 4.0.4 and synergy server running on Archlinux.

[Chad Sutton]

I have the same issue and have lived with it for quite some time. I am constantly hitting the right CTRL key to get the mouse to work properly again.

I am running Virtual Box 4.0.4 on Ubuntu 10.10 with Synergy Plus.

[mlehner616]

What is the status of this? This was open a year ago and it's driving me crazy.

The issue is that Virtualbox doesn't really release the mouse until I click somewhere on the host. So when I drag my mouse over to the edge, synergy sees that as a trigger to switch screens but Virtualbox has not yet "let go" of the cursor causing the cursor to disappear on the guest, host, and the other computer.

If I click the desktop on the host (to release the cursor from VBox) before I switch screens there's no problem.

[Michael Thayer]

The strange thing here (speaking as a VirtualBox developer) is that when Additions are installed VirtualBox doesn't actually grab the mouse so there is nothing to release. I assume that this is always with Synergy running on the host system? Have you tried talking to the Synergy people to get their point of view on the matter? Knowing what Synergy thinks is happening might be helpful in solving this, and they are best placed to help you find this out. (And sorry I haven't had time to follow this up, but I'm afraid that I have an awful lot of things to do with a higher priority, so that I will only be able to do something here - if at all - if other people are able to find out precise issue rather than just the symptoms. I can certainly give a few hints to help you along the way if you are willing to put an effort in.)

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.

[Nicolas]

The last mode this was working was the windowed mode, which is why I used it over years with an old VirtualBox version (5.0.40). Now I upgraded to the current virtualbox version 5.2.28 and it stopped working in windowed mode as well!

I am sorry, but this definitely is a change in VirtualBox' behaviour. My complete description is here: ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=87059

But it matches all the symptoms that were described here already.

I will have to go back to the old version, for being able to work efficiently again.

Please do bring back the old behaviour of releasing the mouse cursor properly! This is a show stopper for me.

[Michael Thayer]

Please 1) make sure that everything is working correctly without Synergy running (e.g. that the Additions are installed correctly). 2) make sure that the behaviour is the same with a newly installed virtual machine.

In addition, I would strongly recommend that you talk to the Synergy people, at least for initially debugging this, as the use case is probably more interesting for them than for us.

[Nicolas]

Hi Michael,

1) everything is working correctly, the additions are installed of course. I don't know what to test else, if Synergy is not running.

2) The behaviour is the same with a Windows Server 2016 virtual machine, I installed a few days ago, right after installing VirtualBox 5.2.28. In fact, the need for this machine was the reason to upgrade VirtualBox.

I can try to get help from Synergy, but I doubt that they are able to help. Because when using VMware Player, everything works correctly! I prefer VirtualBox though, due to the support of multiple monitors in windowed mode.

[Nicolas]

Hi all,

I found a solution: disable the auto-capture option of VirtualBox!

Source: ​https://symless.com/forums/topic/2459-with-virtualbox-vm-in-the-foreground-cursor-cant-leave-screen/

As I can hover over the VirtualBox window and this is transported to the virtual machine as well (objects get highlighted), I wonder what this feature does differently (except blocking the Synergy use case, of course ;-) )...

Update:

Now I noticed a difference: my mouse gestures from the host system aren't transported to the virtual system anymore. But I can live with that.

Update 2:

Keystrokes like e. g. Alt+Tab aren't working as well in the virtual system without auto-capture option.

It seems that the auto-capture option isn't a feature but a workaround to being able to disable normal auto-capture behaviour, because it has deficites like not releasing the capture properly when moving the mouse away from the virtual screen.

Update 3:

I noticed another change in behaviour after working with the auto-capture option disabled. Previously, global hotkeys that are handled by the host system were partially transported to the guest as well, though having released the capture focus via host key prior! This was an annoying unwanted behaviour, cause it seems to affect modifier keys that are transported to the guest, while omitting the corresponding normal key. This resulted in a sticky modifier key in the guest. This happened to me multiple times a day, e. g. when locking my system via WIN+l.

I may be wrong, but meanwhile I got the impression that there is one root cause that causes multiple issues: auto-capture being too aggressive.

It may be possible therefore, to improve various usability issues with improving the auto-capture feature!