VirtualBox and Xorg

[Adam Vande More]

IOn Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Ben Paley <ben at benpaley.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I’ve installed 9.2-RELEASE in VirtualBox on a Macbook. It was, against my
> expectations, pretty much the easiest install I’ve ever done, but I’ve had
> trouble with Xorg.
>
> I followed the instructions at
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/virtualization-guest.html#virtualization-guest-virtualbox-guest-additions- I’ve installed emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions successfully (as far as
> I can tell, anyway; VB now lets me configure a shared directory, even
> though I don’t seem to be able to mount it because FreeBSD doesn’t support
> the file system). I’ve added the vboxguest and vboxservice lines to
> rc.conf, and I’ve created /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy/90-vboxguest.fdi
> with permissions 644 owned by root:wheel.
>
> If I do startx with no configuration then I get a nice vanilla X but the
> cursor doesn’t respond.
>
> If I do "Xorg -configure” then the Device section in xorg.conf.new is just
> like the one in the docs. The InputDevice is a little different:
>
> Section “InputDevice”
>         Identifier      “Mouse0”
>         Driver  “vboxmouse”
>         Option  “Protocol” “auto”
>         Option  “Device” “/dev/sysmouse”
>         Option  “ZAxisMapping” “4 5 6 7”
> EndSection
>
> …but commenting out the extra lines doesn’t seem to change anything: if I
> do “X -config /root/xorg.conf.new” then the screen goes black and I’m not
> sure what’s happening. The cursor gets captured and released by VirtualBox
> just as it should, but while it’s captured it becomes black or invisible or
> ceases to exist, or something. In any case I don’t think it moves, because
> when I release it, it shows up in the same place even if I’ve been wiggling
> my finger around.
>
> I have a feeling that the vboxmouse and vboxvideo aren’t present, or are
> improperly detected or something. Am I supposed to install them separately?
> Or is there anything else obvious? Or non-obvious?
>
> I’m not sure whether or not the system is using HAL - hal-0.5.14_20 is
> installed, but I don’t really know if I need the HAL policy file: but it
> doesn’t seem to make any difference if I move it.
>

It is generally easier to run a full desktop environment like kde rather
than just vanilla X, see the handbook.  Also install the xorg-minimal
package to insure you've got the needed depends installed.  The FreeBSD
VBox wiki works well for me.  If it doesn't for you, please isolate the
step where it fails and post the results.

-- 
Adam