Is it acceptable to post my inxi ^^^ as a link instead of plain text/block? I will know for future reference. thanks
I am having the age old enigma of the infamous mouse /curosr pointer invisibility in a virtual machine.
I haven't had to research this in a year or so. Any help would be appreciated. This invisible cursor issue happens on gnome-boxes and virt-manager on my machine here now. Fresh install of Garuda KDE Dr460nized. I've tried virt-manager and gnome-boxes with the same result. Invisible mouse pointer. I'm posting this as I am leaving out for errands and will check back in very very soon here to see replies and hopefully instant fixes. This is so agitating. Happens on any distro so I've learned. I've had to deal with this before and I can not remember the FIX right off hand. uuggghh
My searches proved empty so far. I find millions of posts online from people with the same issue... but no real solutions that work for me. Seems ridiculous. I will report back here with everything I have tried. SO far in gnome-boxed there are no settings to even edit in the GUI. virt-manager: I have added a usb device ... tried using a tablet... and a few other things. I will give more perfect details of what I've tried. Right now it has given me a headache. I've tried using an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 and several run of the mill usb mice. No dice with any of them.
If you need more info I will certainly provide it.
If youâre running Garuda in a VM, you were forewarned about performance issues before you even downloaded it. Itâs plastered everywhere. Your post is so full of âPANICâ it is hard to tell where you are coming from.
Anyway, Garuda is not at its best in a VM and is not âofficiallyâ supported which mean you wonât get official support but that does not preclude help from non-team members.
Just for testing purposes, are you willing to try VirtualBox? Never had one single issue with cursor for all distros and Garuda is BLAZING fast in VMs with 3D acceleration turned on (at least in VirtualBox it is).
Ok, noted for sure. Indeed poor performance in a VM. I am only testing some things and it is any distro I install in VM at this point. I have tried garuda-sway/KDE & debian stable and testing & fedora... nothing. No pointer. but the mouse IS working. I can blindly click on items. No cursor visible.
NOTE: I only use VMs for checking out some new configs for ( for XYX Application ) and so on. I expect poor performance in a VM. But I need them for testing.
The poor performance is mostly cuz 3D acceleration is not turned on, or you have either some quite slow hardware or really bad VM configuration. I tested this feature (3D, OpenGL) and made comparison not long ago, including in Proxmox which is QEMU based too (Proxmox doesnât have OpenGL capabilities, I opened an enhancement on that).
VirtManager had a bug recently and it couldnât be turned on, not sure if itâs fixed.
GnomeBoxes I canât remember if it uses good acceleration.
Awesome man and plz turn on that one and only checkbox for 3D Acceleration in VBox, youâll see what I mean.
If you need guidance on where to find, lemme know!
just to chip in - been using virtualbox for years, and in addition to 3d acceleration not being check by default, its worth checking how many cores of your processor are used too, 'cause the default seems to be just one (I always put it up to half the actual cores, so i use 4 when the laptop actually has 8, no noticeable effect on the actual os, but the vm works a lot better!)
Tried virtualbox [ same exact issue - invisible cursor ]
These are the front ends I've tried
Gnome Boxes
virt-manager
virtualbox
hmmmph
I've changed so many settings now... So, I start afresh and go into trouble-shooting mode.
Still no obvious solution.
Thoughts (light-bulb-moment)
What spice/vda agents (package names ?) are to be installed on the Guest?
I wonder if this could be related to my Host GPU/Driver? amdgpu with Radeon
Moving right along. I will do more research and report back. Thanks for all the suggestions so far. Seems to point to something other than the specific virt front-end. IE: Gnome-Boxes / virt-manager / virtualbox
Now I am not so much looking in the settings for the front-ends as much as looking into a system-wide cause for the invisible cursor/pointer in every virtual machine I have using virt-manager / gnome-boxes / virtualbox
You're right, it's definitely not related to QEMU, Virt or whatever, it seems no matter the Type 2 Hypervisor technology you use you get the same issue. Daaaaamn, that sucks.
What mouse settings are you using in your VM softwares, PS/2, USB-alike, other?
Have you tried playing with those default settings?
Yes, Iâve tried mouse settings as USB & EV Tablet as well as deleting hardware and reAdding items such as mice / input / tablet in virtualbox and virt-manager.
Yeah Gnome Boxes is meant to be very very simple so no surprise there doesn't seem to be any specific settings for that.
I totally understand your frustration, I use VMs every single day and would have killed someone with such a problem.
Maybe it's related to your mouse on your real hardware, if you use a Bluetooth mouse maybe you could try a USB (wireless or wired, whichever) and vice-versa?
Update: Houston, we have visible pointer! We are a go.
Good News / Bad NewsâŠ
good: We have pointer!
bad: It will be difficult to point to one magic bullet that solved this.
I will post the best Summary I can here including some of the steps
I took while troubleshooting.
Where I am nowâŠ
[ Tested with several different distros & ISOs in all three frontends ]
gnome-boxes â 100% â Yes Pointer
virt-manager â 100% â Yes Pointer
virtualbox â Fail â Still No Pointer
For now, Iâm good!
I hardly ever use virtualbox anyways.
But I will continue to try to solve this.
I basically followed this outline to start fresh troubleshooting:
Thanks especially â @FGD for making me think harder.
Steps I should have taken:
Install frontend of choice: virtualboxvirt-managergnome-boxes
Garuda Assistant â System Components â Virtualization Section
and check/tick everything.
If you donât plan on using virtualbox you can leave the two related virtualbox
tick boxes un-ticked.
Click Apply
RebootâŠ
Basically it slipped my mind concerning Garuda Assistant having Virtualization settings.
I suspect this would have went much smoother using the provided tool to begin with.
You would if youâd see how fast Guests are with 3D Acceleration enabled.
Itâs awesome you made it work, finally! Iâm still puzzled as to how it happened, when I install a fresh Garuda or any other distro I install Virtualbox and I donât need to tick anything anywhere in the KDE System Settings or any other distro settings and it works OOTB. I donât need to add the user to any group as well.
I just canât picture why this kept hitting on you.
But now you know the solution so next time if you forget again, just come back on this thread for the solution. lollll
I use 3d accel in virt-manager & gnome-boxes. I feel quite @home in either.
Somehow, someway⊠virtualbox alway has some kinks/quirks for meâŠ
call it voodoo.
So I stick to what works and move on.
tbh, Iâve never spent too much time troubleshooting/setting-up virtualbox.
Not sure but I always have to tweak/check something on a fresh OS/linux install
concerning setting up virt. gnome-boxes will just run for me, usually.
At least a reboot is needed to start the libvirt daemon and so on. : AnyhooâŠ
Remember, I have had this Invisible Cursor In A Virtual Machine curse hit me many many times on this machine. Always on a Fresh OS Install + Setting up virt.
Maybe this is a GPU thing. Something particular to this machine for sure.
Iâm curious to compare the groups your $USER belongs to my $USER, for kicks and grins.
â°âλ groups
sys scanner vboxusers cups libvirt sambashare realtime video lp kvm input wheel
Note: Thinking outloud here⊠I am starting to suspect that my GPU/driver combination, which does have it's quirks⊠[ AMD Amythest R9 m395 m395x Radeon using amdgpu kernel driver ] âŠmay be playing some part here.