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Accepted
jmarina
Asked: 2018-05-05 01:18:32 +0800 CST

ubuntu xfce/lxde 16.04-19.10 virtualbox bidirectional clipboard sharing, window resizing, shared folders not working

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ubuntu with xfce (xubuntu) or lxde (lubuntu) on virtualbox and guest additions installed and clipboard sharing set to bidirectional does not allow plain text to be copied/pasted to/from the virtual and the host system; what else needs to be configured?

note - this is an issue across multiple releases of ubuntu; on some it appears to work partially; I have not found a lubuntu where it works; as if something basic in lubuntu causes copy/paste of plain text to not work

virtualbox lubuntu clipboard lxde

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    A variation of this answer worked. First, the intro steps: double-click the VBox_* CD icon on the desktop to mount the guest additions. Then open a terminal, ctrl+alt+t and go to the directory where the virtual CD was mounted: cd /media/your_user_name/VBox_ and press tab to complete the path name.

    Then run the linux version: sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

    Next, to get it working:

    Specifically, this fixes it for lubuntu 16.04:

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-x11 xorg-video-abi-20 xserver-xorg-core

    if it asks you about keeping a file or installing the new one, press i to select the new one/package maintainer's version;

    sudo VBoxClient --clipboard

    this fixes it for lubuntu/xubuntu 18.04 - 20.04 and derived variants:

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-x11

    if it asks you about keeping a file or installing the new one, press i to select the new one/package maintainer's version;

    sudo VBoxClient --clipboard

    Note, as raghavan said, that installing virtualbox-guest-x11 package as shown, also resolves the issue where the shared folders are not visible.

    And installing this package (and rebooting the virtual machine) also resolves the guest window not autoresizing when the vm window is resized.

    This also resolves the issue where paste after reboot no longer works and sudo VBoxClient --clipboard command needs to be repeated. After installing virtualbox-guest-x11, the --clipboard command does not need to be repeated after each reboot.

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