Solaris guest VM window is unresponsive on OSX maverick host

[edp_oracle]

I was running VirtualBox 4.3 without any problems until i upgraded OSX to Mavericks yesterday. The guest is Solaris 12 build 32. Guest extensions are NOT installed. X is disabled in the guest so the guest is simply trying to display the Solaris console (presumably in some vga or vesa text mode).

When i try to run the guest, the primary window for the guest appears but quickly becomes unresponsive. ie, when i move the mouse of the window i see the spinning colorful ball and the window refuses to accept any input or display any output from the guest. The good news is that the guest is actually running. i have a local network setup and after waiting for a bit i'm able to ssh into the guest.

When this problem occurs the main VirtualBox application window also becomes very slow to respond to requests.

i've tried rebooting. i've also tried un-installing and re-installing VirtualBox but the problem persists.

[edp_oracle]

To work around this problem i've switched my Solaris VM to run in headless mode and to send console output to ttya, then i'm connecting to it via a socat + screen. It seems that if i avoid the VirtualBox GUI there are no problems.

of course now i'm trying to install a Ubuntu VM and having the exact same GUI hang problems as with the Solaris VM.

[edp_oracle]

given that this problem isn't limited to solaris guests, i'd like to update the Summary and Guest type fields, but i don't see any way to do that.

also, it seems that this problem may be related to bug 12283. i primarily interact with virtualbox when i have my macbook docked, in which case it's lid is closed so i'm using an external usb mouse. i just discovered that if i open my macbook then the problem goes away (ie, a hung GUI all of a sudden starts responding). Note that i don't have USB passthrough configured for any of my VMs.

[Jon Aimone]

I am experiencing something similar with VBox 4.3.6 on Mavericks (10.9.1) running a Solaris 11.1 guest. I do have X configured and extensions installed. The guest starts fine, but when I attempt to scroll windows or do other mouse tracking activities the guest seems to freeze.

The guest is running. I have the console through ttya/named pipe. If I kill the top application (firefox, vncviewer, etc.) then the guest desktop seems to recover... until the next time I scroll using the mouse/touchpad.

[Michael Thayer]

aimone: what you are seeing does not sound related to the issue described in this ticket. The ticket describes the whole guest system - i.e. the VirtualBox application on the host - becoming unresponsive, not individual guest X windows. I suggest that we continue discussion of your issue on the mailing list where we started it for now.

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.