On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 10:55:00PM -0000, Ted Harding wrote:
Hi folks (and apologies to any who may be affected by cross-posting).
I have VirtualBox installed on a Windows XP machine, and Debian Etch installed as a guest. The Linux Guest Additions have been installed, and generally seem to be doing their job.
However, the Shared Clipboard facility apparently does nothing. It is enabled as "Bidirectional" in the virtual machine.
If, for instance, I highlight some text in an XP window, and select "copy selection", and then go to a Linux text window in X and middle-click (the usual "paste" manoeuvre) then nothing happens.
In the reverse direction, if I highlight text in the X window (the usual "put into clipboard" manoeuvre), and then go to an XP window and "Paste", again nothing happens.
If I first highlight text in the Linux X window, then go to the XP window and "copy selection", then when I go back to Linux the Linux text is still there (can be pasted with "right click"), so it has not been changed by the XP operation.
I've read some indiciations on the web that this feature has caused such problems, but have not seen a solution. It could also be that I'm not doing the right manoeuvres for copying into the clipboard and pasting out of it, in this context.
If anyone has useful comments, I'd bevery grateful to receive them!
VirtualBox 1.5.0 (2007-08-31).
I'm running the other way around - Ubuntu 8.10 host and Windows XP guest. In addition I'm running a much newer VirtualBox, version 2.1.4. Among other things I'd recommend moving to a newer version of VirtualBox, there's *lots* of improvements and bug fixes. There's even a 2.2.x version in beta now so moving to 2.1.x is hardly pushing the limits.
Having said all that I too find that cut and paste between host and guest doesn't always work. I *have* found though that it depends how you copy text into the clipboard in the Linux host. If I double click to select text it doesn't work whereas if I use CTRL/C (in Firefox in particular) to copy text in the Linux host then it *does* work and can be pasted in the Windows guest.
On the other hand, for me, copy text in the XP guest and pasting in the Linux host seems to always work OK on my system.