Changes between Version 4 and Version 5 of LinuxAdditionsDebug

Timestamp:

Sep 16, 2016 2:06:22 PM (8 years ago)

Author:

Michael Thayer

Comment:

Guest input driver, and what the Additions do not do

LinuxAdditionsDebug

@@ -6 +6 @@
 
 The core part, so to speak, of the Linux Guest Additions are the guest kernel drivers.  When there are problems with the Guest Additions, the first thing to check is whether the drivers are correctly installed.  There are three different drivers:
- * The main driver, `vboxguest`, provides communication between various services which can run on the guest and matching services on the host, as well as providing a few ad-hoc services itself.
+ * The main driver, `vboxguest`, provides communication between various services which can run on the guest and matching services on the host, as well as providing a few ad-hoc services itself.  It also includes an input driver which lets the host and the guest share a pointer.  This works by pretending that the guest system has a touch screen which is "touched" in the right location whenever the host pointer moves over the guest window.
  * The shared folder driver `vboxsf` provides shared folder functionality to the guest.  It communicates with the host ''shared folder service'' through the `vboxguest` driver.
  * The `vboxvideo` graphics driver drives the guest video hardware emulation.  It does not depend on other drivers, programs the emulated hardware directly and ''is not expected to be running'' on systems with X.Org servers older than and including 1.16, as they are not compatible with it and use special drivers, or on systems with Linux kernels older than version 3.11.
+
+The Guest Additions are notably not involved in keyboard input, USB and networking.  All of these use normal Linux drivers in the guest kernel which drive the emulated guest hardware.
 
 Some distributions actually come with Guest Additions installed, though generally not the most recent version.  The !VirtualBox team can usually not give much help with pre-installed Guest Additions (though the distribution should be able to), so our instructions for installation below include steps to remove distribution Guest Additions when these are known.