Non-responsive mouse in FreeBSD virtual machine

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 12 Apr 2020 10:05:51 +0530, Manish Jain wrote:
> I have a strange situation here. I am running a FreeBSD 12.1 amd64 
> virtual machine in VirtualBox.
> 
> Everything works fine in the vm, except that the mouse simply won't 
> respond to click/right-click in any desktop (gnome3/kde5/mate/xfce).

Those desktops have in common... the use of HAL and DBus.
Do you have those enabled in /etc/rc.conf?



> So I can't open up the apps menu, change desktop background, bring up a 
> terminal, anything else.

There are usually shortcuts for that, like Alt+PF1, or the
"Windows" advertising key found on many keyboards. Sometimes
a terminal can be launched with Ctrl+Alt+T. But all this of
course depends on the desktop and its initial configuration,
and it doesn't really solve the problem. :-)



> The mouse just moves as expected and even 
> offers tooltips, but nothing happens with click/right-click.
> 
> Surprisingly, the mouse works fine in the default X window system twm.

For verification, install the X event viewer (xev) and compare
the results running under twm and in a desktop environment.
Do the events of mouse movement mouse click appear as expected?



> How can I possibly get the mouse to work normally in a desktop environment ?

The correct question would include the adverb "fully" (working),
because movement works, but clicks don't work. Maybe a VirtualBox
setting is also involved here. Have you checked anything that
could be related, like window focus and "transfer of control"?



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...