ArcaOS, VirtualBox, and mouse freezes

[Bennie Nelson]

In April, of this year, after many years of running ECS and ArcOS in VirtualBox on Windows, I switched to Redhat on new hardware. Since then random mouse freezes have started occurring in ArcaOS, and although the mouse is no longer in the ArcaOS VM, the rest of the VM is still running fine and can be controlled from the keyboard. This has been happening with two different versions of both VB and ArcaOS. The hardware includes AMD processor and video and two Dell monitors. I keep everything patched and up-to-date, including updating to ArcaOS 5.0.7 this past week.

The ArcaOS Mouse Setup dialog reports that the Mouse Driver is not properly installed, and includes the following Driver Version error message:
Failed to query version info: rc = 22

The only mouse driver specified in CONFIG.SYS is:
DEVICE=C:\OS2Additions\vboxmouse.sys

I folllowed the instructions in the Arca Noae wiki about installing the OS in a virtualbox, with the exception of the Display and Mouse drivers. I assumed that those were for the install process only and that the versions in the VBox Guest Additions would be used for the VM.

Any suggestions?

Regards,
Bennie Nelson

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

The only mouse driver specified in CONFIG.SYS is:
DEVICE=C:\OS2Additions\vboxmouse.sys

That's caused by the additions. The message that something is not correctly installed may stem from a prior AMouse installation. Amouse is completely replaced by the VirtualBox driver, independant of what the pages of the Mouse object show. So in your case, it should be correctly installed with the single CONFIG.SYS entry.

BTW: It's also possible to deactivate the vboxmouse.sys and activate the amouse.sys driver instead. I had that set in order to keep the comfort of AMouse (scroll messages instead of keys messages and scroll window under pointer, not the one with focus). Maybe replacing the vboxmouse.sys driver changes something in your case.

Otherwise another idea is to change the mouse hardware.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Bennie

Possible checking what Andreas said, that you don't have vboxmouse.sys and amouse.sys enable at the same time on the config.sys. One of the two need to be REM out.

It can be interesting to inspect you VM specs in detail. You can try testlog (here it is the link) and do a "testlog generic" and share the report.

Regards

[Bennie Nelson]

I ran grep -i and here are the results:
[c:\] grep -i mouse config.sys
rem DEVICE=C:\OS2\BOOT\MOUSE.SYS
DEVICE=C:\OS2Additions\vboxmouse.sys

The AMOUSE.SYS suggestion is excellent and I will try that next. I had already switched to a different mouse, but I forgot to mention that.

Regards,
Bennie Nelson

[Bennie Nelson]

AMOUSE.SYS rendered the system unusable. The mouse pointer moves erratically within the VM and clicking on objects produces no results. As a point of information, this VM is a fresh install of ArcaOS 5.0.7, and I did not specify any mouse driver, other than selecting the VBOX Guest Additions.

I went to the testlog link, and it asked me what to do with a DOS/Windows executable. Is this an OS/2 program?

Thanks,
Bennie Nelson

[Bennie Nelson]

I found the answer to the testlog question here: https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/producing-diagnostic-log-files/

I'll post a log after the condition occurs again.

Thanks,
Bennie Nelson

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

AMOUSE.SYS rendered the system unusable.

Strange. The same with changed mouse pointer hardware? With luck this is a VirtualBox problem.

Otherwise I would probably create an AN bug tracker ticket.

[Bennie Nelson]

Replacing the mouse did not eliminate the issue. I'd like to identify the specific layer(s), but that is tricky. There are physical hardware components (motherboard, chipset, etc.), the host OS (Redhat) and drivers, VirtualBox, ArcaOS, VB guest additions, and perhaps others. I use SAMBA extensively, for example, and I've noticed that the number of shares and files puts quite a load on the ArcaOS VM. So I've backed off some of the shares, and that has helped some.

Regards,
Bennie Nelson

[Lars]

If you install a new VB version, you will need to manually update the OS/2 additions. Somewhere in the VB GUI you will find an option to attach the additions. That will put the additions on the first CD-ROM Drive letter in your OS/2 guest. Unlock any DLLs in the "os2additions" Folder and then copy over and restart the guest.

[Lars]

Finally, make sure that a USB mouse is emulated as a PS/2 mouse. I don't remember if something specific has to be set up in the VB GUI or if this is default behavior.

[mauro]

yes it comes by default in Machine Settings,-> System-> MotherBoard-> Pointing device (among USB tablet and USB tablet multitouch)

[Bennie Nelson]

If you install a new VB version, you will need to manually update the OS/2 additions. Somewhere in the VB GUI you will find an option to attach the additions. That will put the additions on the first CD-ROM Drive letter in your OS/2 guest. Unlock any DLLs in the "os2additions" Folder and then copy over and restart the guest.

I have not tried this, yet. I simply kept the VB guest additions that were installed by ArcaOS. I'm used to installing the guest additions manually, so I'll give it a try.
Thanks,
Bennie Nelson

[Bennie Nelson]

I updated the VB Guest Additions to match the version of VB and I have only had one mouse freeze in about a week. To recover from that mouse freeze, I used the shutdown command in 4OS2 and then rebooted the VM. Subsequent to that, the clipboard operation in most of the VMs (most are Redhat, but there is one Ubuntu, in addition to ArcaOS), has been spotty, and is deteriorating. I can no longer copy between VMs and sometimes even within the same VM.

The "simple" workaround is to reboot everything including the Redhat host, but that is painful with six running VMs and numerous apps.

At this point, it is looking like this is most likely a VB issue.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. The script for creating the VB Guest Additions Warpin package i still in the works.

Bennie Nelson

[Bennie Nelson]

After a time of stability, the mouse freezes returned. I decided to change the screen resolution from 2560 x 1440 in VirtualBox Full Screen mode to 1920 x 1200 in VirtualBox Scaled Mode, since the native resolution for the monitor is 2560 x 1440. It has been about two weeks without a mouse freeze condition occurring.

I am still investigating the shared Clipboard issue.

Bennie Nelson

[Remy]

I'm not under virtualbox (boot through airboot or direct after boot disk choice) and have from time to time mouse freeze too since I upgraded my systemto 5.0.7  (normal mouse driver)

Could it be some drivers compatibility ?