[Bug 254266] emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions bidirectional shared clipboard not working for FreeBSD guests

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Sat Apr 24 14:10:14 UTC 2021


https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=254266

--- Comment #7 from Guido Falsi <madpilot at FreeBSD.org> ---
I have checked some docs around and I gathered this:

VBoxSVGA is the official virtualbox device, the one the additions provide a
specific driver for. It supports 3D acceleration, is based on the VMWare driver
but extended. Obviously performance can be ass good as the driver is. FreeBSD
not being officially supported it is possible the driver is suboptimal.

VMSVGA is a device compatible with the VMWare one. It has less functionality
than VBoxSVGA (in my case screen auto sizing is not working for example). The
additions provided driver does take advantage of it, but is not tailored for
this one. Looks like this is provided to allow using already existing drivers
for VMWare when additions are not available.

VBoxVGA is the legacy device from virtualbox <6.1, obviously only available to
provide compatibility with old systems where additions 6.1 are not available.

These findings support my idea. Whatever the warnings given in the UI, IF
additons 6.1 are available the best choice is VBoxSVGA.

If only old additions are available (for example on FreeBSD i386 guests with
5.x additions) VBoxVGA should be preferred.

When additions are not available it obviously depends on what the guest is. In
FreeBSD there is a VMWare graphics driver available
(x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmware) and maybe (not tested) that could be used with
VMSVGA without installing the additions and should work and give some
acceleration, but what's the point? in that case you'd miss clipboard and other
integrations anyway.

For other legacy OSes testing case by case would be needed.

On FreeBSD we do have working additions, let's take advantage of them together
with the virtual graphics device the additions are designed to work with:
VBoxSVGA.

I don't even know if it is possible, on FreeBSD to make clipboard integration
work with VMSVGA device, but why spend time on it when there is a better
alternative?

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