desktop-packages team mailing list archive

[Leyli Cecil <leycec@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm currently seeing this under Ubuntu 14.10.

In my case, however, the issue is somewhat worse than that originally
reported. Regardless of whether the guest image is idle or not, the
keyboard in such guest becomes unreliably unresponsive exactly X minutes
after (re)entering such guest, where:

* "Unreliably unresponsive" means a seemingly random loss of roughly half of all keyboard input (as in the original report).
* "X" is the currently configured inactivity time in the Ubuntu host (defaulting to 10 minutes), after which the host screen is blanked or a host screensaver run.

Interestingly, this is correctable in the same manner as that originally
reported. To reiterate, when a guest keyboard becomes unresponsive:

1. Return to the Ubuntu host from the guest VirtualBox image (e.g., by hitting <Right-Ctrl>).
2. At such point, Ubuntu immediately performs inactivity handling (e.g., screen blanking, screensaver running).
3. Stop such blanking or screensaver (e.g., by hitting any key).
4. Return to the guest VirtualBox image from the Ubuntu host (e.g., by clicking in the VirtualBox window for such guest).

This is may not necessarily be a gnome-screensaver issue. I'm currently
running Cinnamon 2.2 as provided by the canonical (horrible pun
intended) 14.10 Ubuntu repositories. While I do have both "cinnamon-
screensaver" and "gnome-screensaver" installed, the prior appears to
currently take precedence.

Intuitively, this "feels" like a lower-level upstream issue. My
suspicions are that VisualBox is failing to notify the host X11 of the
activity state of guest images *AND* that VisualBox is failing to
preempt guest images on guest inactivity with the host X11 inactivity
handler (e.g., screen blanking, screensaver running).

It may be pertinent to note that the guest in question is OS X 10.6.8
(Snow Leopard). Due to licensing concerns, Oracle has yet to offer a
Guest Additions ISO for OS X VirtualBox guests, thus preventing use of
Seamless Mode under such guests. Seamless Mode displays application
windows running under guests as native windows running under the host,
and is available for all non-OS X guests. Since virtualization of OS X
is non-trivial (to say the least), most VirtualBox users are likely to
run guests under the blatantly superior Seamless Mode.

Does any this matter? Possibly not. My deepest suspicion, however, is
that VirtualBox only fails to notify the host X11 of the activity state
of guest images *NOT* in Seamless Mode – which would, of course, always
be the case for OS X guests and only rarely the case for non-OS X
guests. This could explain the lack of concurring reports for this bug.
(Or this could explain nothing at all.)

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-screensaver in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/490434

Title:
  keyboard input  less responsive after screensaver fails to activate
  because of VirtualBox

Status in gnome-screensaver package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: gnome-screensaver

  Description:	Ubuntu 9.10
  Release:	9.10

    Installed: 2.28.0-0ubuntu3
    Candidate: 2.28.0-0ubuntu3
    Version table:
   *** 2.28.0-0ubuntu3 0
          500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Expected to happen:
  I work away inside a VirtualBox image, leave my machine for 10 mins come back and type away as normal.

  What happened instead:
  I come back to the VirtualBox image and the keyboard becomes unresponsive.  I escape out the VirtualBox machine, wait 5 seconds and the screen saver starts.

  Application causing the bug: VirtualBox
  Application affected: gnome-screensaver
  Gnome-screensaver setting: after 10 mins of idle keyboard and mouse the screen saver will activate

  Reproducing the problem:
  1) Using the mouse click inside a VirtualBox machine.
  2) Leave Ubuntu to idle for over 10 mins.
  3) After 10 mins observe that the screensaver has not started.
  4) Start typing text into any application within VirtualBox
  5) Observe that keyboard input is unresponsive (50% of text typed is accepted .e.g. into gedit)
  6) Press Right CTRL to escape out of the VirtualBox and wait 5 seconds.
  7) Observe the screensaver starts instantly.
  8)  Move the mouse or tap a key on the keyboard to cancel the screensaver.
  9) Observe the keyboard input responsiveness within VirtualBox  has returned to normal.

  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Mon Nov 30 17:30:23 2009
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
  ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
  Package: gnome-screensaver 2.28.0-0ubuntu3
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-15.50-generic
  SourcePackage: gnome-screensaver
  Uname: Linux 2.6.31-15-generic i686
  XsessionErrors:
   (gnome-settings-daemon:1851): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
   (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1904): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
   (nautilus:1889): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-screensaver/+bug/490434/+subscriptions