I'm currently seeing this under Ubuntu 14.10. In my case, however, the issue is somewhat worse than that originally reported. Regardless of whether the guest image is idle or not, the keyboard in such guest becomes unreliably unresponsive exactly X minutes after (re)entering such guest, where:
* "Unreliably unresponsive" means a seemingly random loss of roughly half of all keyboard input (as in the original report). * "X" is the currently configured inactivity time in the Ubuntu host (defaulting to 10 minutes), after which the host screen is blanked or a host screensaver run. Interestingly, this is correctable in the same manner as that originally reported. To reiterate, when a guest keyboard becomes unresponsive: 1. Return to the Ubuntu host from the guest VirtualBox image (e.g., by hitting <Right-Ctrl>). 2. At such point, Ubuntu immediately performs inactivity handling (e.g., screen blanking, screensaver running). 3. Stop such blanking or screensaver (e.g., by hitting any key). 4. Return to the guest VirtualBox image from the Ubuntu host (e.g., by clicking in the VirtualBox window for such guest). This is may not necessarily be a gnome-screensaver issue. I'm currently running Cinnamon 2.2 as provided by the canonical (horrible pun intended) 14.10 Ubuntu repositories. While I do have both "cinnamon- screensaver" and "gnome-screensaver" installed, the prior appears to currently take precedence. Intuitively, this "feels" like a lower-level upstream issue. My suspicions are that VisualBox is failing to notify the host X11 of the activity state of guest images *AND* that VisualBox is failing to preempt guest images on guest inactivity with the host X11 inactivity handler (e.g., screen blanking, screensaver running). It may be pertinent to note that the guest in question is OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). Due to licensing concerns, Oracle has yet to offer a Guest Additions ISO for OS X VirtualBox guests, thus preventing use of Seamless Mode under such guests. Seamless Mode displays application windows running under guests as native windows running under the host, and is available for all non-OS X guests. Since virtualization of OS X is non-trivial (to say the least), most VirtualBox users are likely to run guests under the blatantly superior Seamless Mode. Does any this matter? Possibly not. My deepest suspicion, however, is that VirtualBox only fails to notify the host X11 of the activity state of guest images *NOT* in Seamless Mode – which would, of course, always be the case for OS X guests and only rarely the case for non-OS X guests. This could explain the lack of concurring reports for this bug. (Or this could explain nothing at all.) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-screensaver in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/490434 Title: keyboard input less responsive after screensaver fails to activate because of VirtualBox Status in gnome-screensaver package in Ubuntu: Invalid Bug description: Binary package hint: gnome-screensaver Description: Ubuntu 9.10 Release: 9.10 Installed: 2.28.0-0ubuntu3 Candidate: 2.28.0-0ubuntu3 Version table: *** 2.28.0-0ubuntu3 0 500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Expected to happen: I work away inside a VirtualBox image, leave my machine for 10 mins come back and type away as normal. What happened instead: I come back to the VirtualBox image and the keyboard becomes unresponsive. I escape out the VirtualBox machine, wait 5 seconds and the screen saver starts. Application causing the bug: VirtualBox Application affected: gnome-screensaver Gnome-screensaver setting: after 10 mins of idle keyboard and mouse the screen saver will activate Reproducing the problem: 1) Using the mouse click inside a VirtualBox machine. 2) Leave Ubuntu to idle for over 10 mins. 3) After 10 mins observe that the screensaver has not started. 4) Start typing text into any application within VirtualBox 5) Observe that keyboard input is unresponsive (50% of text typed is accepted .e.g. into gedit) 6) Press Right CTRL to escape out of the VirtualBox and wait 5 seconds. 7) Observe the screensaver starts instantly. 8) Move the mouse or tap a key on the keyboard to cancel the screensaver. 9) Observe the keyboard input responsiveness within VirtualBox has returned to normal. ProblemType: Bug Architecture: i386 Date: Mon Nov 30 17:30:23 2009 DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10 ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5) Package: gnome-screensaver 2.28.0-0ubuntu3 ProcEnviron: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-15.50-generic SourcePackage: gnome-screensaver Uname: Linux 2.6.31-15-generic i686 XsessionErrors: (gnome-settings-daemon:1851): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1904): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed (nautilus:1889): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-screensaver/+bug/490434/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
