Xorg video inside VirtualBox

Xorg video inside VirtualBox

[Paul van der Walt]

Hello all,

I hope i won't commit any grave errors of etiquette, since this is my 
first post here.

I've been experimenting with installing Guix inside a VirtualBox virtual 
machine, and it's pretty cool. I'm even managing to figure out how to 
install packages ;)

My problem is thus: i've installed slim by adding the following to my 
system config: (i also do the necessary import at the top)

  (services (cons* (slim-service)
                   %base-services))

This compiles fine, using `guix system reconfigure /etc/myconfig.scm`, 
but when i reboot the VM, X seems to start alright, but with a garbled 
screen. <http://i.imgur.com/XT5n24X.png>

I suspect that this is because it is loading the vesa driver and not the 
vboxvideo driver (according to /var/log/X.org.log it tries to load 
vboxvideo then falls back to vesa after failing -- it just says 
"Warning, couldn't load module vboxvideo").

My question is therefore: has anyone else managed to get X working 
inside a VirtualBox VM? If so, how? And, (assume i'm a total noob here) 
where can i find the vboxvideo driver: in a package, or should i  
compile it from source? I am willing to try and package it as a 
practise-case for myself if it's not already in the Guix repos, but i 
have no idea where to begin.

Thank you for your time and effort! And my apologies if i should 
rtfm/gtfo/be beaten by a clue-stick!
p.

Re: Xorg video inside VirtualBox

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi, Paul!

Paul van der Walt <paul@denknerd.org> skribis:

> This compiles fine, using `guix system reconfigure /etc/myconfig.scm`,
> but when i reboot the VM, X seems to start alright, but with a garbled
> screen. <http://i.imgur.com/XT5n24X.png>
>
> I suspect that this is because it is loading the vesa driver and not
> the vboxvideo driver (according to /var/log/X.org.log it tries to load
> vboxvideo then falls back to vesa after failing -- it just says
> "Warning, couldn't load module vboxvideo").

Still, VirtualBox should be able to emulate that, no?

> My question is therefore: has anyone else managed to get X working
> inside a VirtualBox VM?

I’ve only tried QEMU.  See for instance
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-10/msg00024.html>
for hints on how to use it.

More importantly, I recently learned that VirtualBox now requires
non-free software to build, so that’s another reason to prefer QEMU.

Thanks for testing!

Ludo’.