Taskbar not visible with Lubuntu under VirtualBox

[louis_nichols]

OK, plot twist.

Thanks for trying that. It certainly moves things forward.

I’m trying to think of any packages that might do that, but I don’t think I have any. I really only installed a few UI apps inside the environment, nothing significant.

I would suspect rather the hardware config of the VM itself.

I’ll start tweaking a bit to see if I find something.

[louis_nichols]

Yeah. I tried everything I could think of, but no joy.

I modified the RAM allocation, number of CPUs, graphics controller, chipset, type of acceleration and maybe a couple more things. Nothing worked, so I returned to lightdm.

But I did notice this, by chance

Could it be related? Does it look the same way on your working VM?

[peterwhite23]

@louis_nichols

I did look into virt-manager and, as I learned it is Linux only, I realized that I missed to mention at any point that the host in this case is a Windows server. So virt-manager not an option.

FWIW, there is WSL for running Linux on Windows, which could enable you to run virt-manager, but I have no experience with that, so that might be more trouble than it’s worth. Plus, if you were to run WSL, you would already have a Linux environment, so why bother with virtualization of yet another one.

@louis_nichols

But I did notice this, by chance

Could it be related?

I cannot answer that question but, just for kicks, what happens if you click that radio button, which says “Continue using a manually installed driver”? It’s also interesting that that one is not selected, b/c it might hint at some broken guest additions driver.

I also totally forgot to do as discussed in a PM thread and post this here:

As far Lubuntu and virtualbox. One can go through and try all the well-known solutions which OP seems to have done, but failing all those, one has gotta go to the logs to trace the problem. And vbox logs are pretty dense. He would probably get a little further toward a solution on Virtualbox.org, though.

OP can check status of the guest additions from within lubuntu guest with a terminal and the rcvboxadd command if the problem is related to that.

$ sudo rcvboxadd [status | status-kernel | status-user]
That’ll tell OP if the guest additions are installed and running.

That’s from someone with some experience with VB, whom I happened to ask about this thread, just FYI. And by the looks of that screenshot the graphics driver seems to be the problem.

[iamthomasremy]

@louis_nichols

Does it look the same way on your working VM?

yes it’s the same: VMware SVGA II Adapter not working.

I really suggest you to install a VNC server and try that way. Since the VNC server does not depend on the VB graphics driver, it’ll help to diagnose whether the issue is related to VB or not.

[peterwhite23]

I also seem to remember that SVGA II is the bare minimum device to get some graphics working, but it lacks any 3D capabilities, which could explain some elements, like the taskbar, being missing or rendered not quite correctly. I believe the guest must be set to use a “Virtio” graphics card for 3D acceleration and the guest additions provide the driver for it.

Or, you could see if you can disable 3D rendering in LXQt, which is obviously not going to work in Wayland. Or force an X11 session, if that’s still possible.

[louis_nichols]

@peterwhite23

FWIW, there is WSL for running Linux on Windows, which could enable you to run virt-manager

Hm… that makes me curious. My first thought would be that virt-manager depends too much on the inner workings of the kernel to work under WSL. But that would be something!

@peterwhite23

Plus, if you were to run WSL, you would already have a Linux environment, so why bother with virtualization of yet another one

It’s off-topic, but I think for my particular use case, the VM is a must. I use the VM to make backups of the server that are invisible to ransomware that might infect the server. WSL might be able to do that, but I wouldn’t risk it.

@peterwhite23

I cannot answer that question but, just for kicks, what happens if you click that radio button, which says “Continue using a manually installed driver”? It’s also interesting that that one is not selected, b/c it might hint at some broken guest additions driver.

If I select the middle option, the Apply button stays grayed out.

So the only option I have is to hit Close. Then, I open the window again and the middle option is still unchecked.

@peterwhite23

He would probably get a little further toward a solution on Virtualbox.org, though.

Thanks, I will probably try that. It’s just that, until the recent post from @iamthomasremy , Lubuntu seemed to me the more likely suspect.

Although, considering a fresh install worked for @iamthomasremy and that the panel works even for me with lightdm, I’m not sure what to expect from the vbox forum…

@peterwhite23

OP can check status of the guest additions from within lubuntu guest with a terminal and the rcvboxadd command if the problem is related to that.

$ sudo rcvboxadd [status | status-kernel | status-user]
That’ll tell OP if the guest additions are installed and running.

Weird stuff.

@peterwhite23

That’s from someone with some experience with VB, whom I happened to ask about this thread, just FYI. And by the looks of that screenshot the graphics driver seems to be the problem.

Thank you for doing that. Much appreciated.

[peterwhite23]

@louis_nichols

My first thought would be that virt-manager depends too much on the inner workings of the kernel to work under WSL. But that would be something!

Good point which I hadn’t even considered. I don’t even know if KVM would work in that environment.

<screenshots showing active guest additions>

Weird stuff.

I think you should look into changing the graphics card of the VM; look for something pertaining to “3D acceleration”. That’s what the guest additions are expecting, when it comes to graphics, IIRC; again, long time…

Thank you for doing that. Much appreciated.

You’re very welcome.

[iamthomasremy]

@louis_nichols

My first thought would be that virt-manager depends too much on the inner workings of the kernel to work under WSL.

Actually, that would probably work just fine because WSL has nested virtualization enabled by default (WSL is a lightweight Hyper-V VM). But I don’t think that it is very efficient to run nested VMs only for the benefit of using virt-manager instead of VB.

[iamthomasremy]

@peterwhite23

I think you should look into changing the graphics card of the VM; look for something pertaining to “3D acceleration”.

VMware SVGA is the default for Linux guests and supports 3D acceleration. It should work just fine.

[peterwhite23]

Oh, right, my memory has failed me.

[iamthomasremy]

@louis_nichols do you have a system running some Linux to try something?

It may be a good idea to follow @peterwhite23 recommendation and try to run the thing from libvirt / virt-manager. I believe you can convert the VDI to a qcow2 image using qemu-img, then run the thing using virt-manager to see if the taskbar shows up or not.

If it shows up, thinker with VB settings and guest additions drivers and stuff. If it doesn’t, maybe look in the logs.

[louis_nichols]

Hm… good idea. I think I do have where to test that. I just need to wait until I’m able to reboot a particular computer. Might take a day or so.

[iamthomasremy]

you can also run a 2nd VM and enable nested virtualization to use libvirt on it.

Then load your vdi drive in it and convert it to qcow2.

I’m not sure tho how the graphics drivers of VB works in that case