# virtualbox-ose garbled UI with remote X server



## mikkol (Jul 23, 2020)

When using virtualbox-ose with a remote X server, the application window is garbled. It does not redraw itself when changes are made. This is reproducible with both Xming on Windows and when using a Fedora environment as the X server. With Xming, I have tried both X11 forwarding over SSH as well as plain, unencrypted connections that do not depend at all on an SSH connection.

Examples of garbled windows:







Since this is reproducible regardless of whether the remote X server is a Windows port or a more native Fedora server, I guess this is a configuration problem on the FreeBSD side.
Is there a way for me to find out what the cause of the problem is?

Disclaimer: I would prefer not to be lectured about not running things as root.


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## SirDice (Jul 23, 2020)

mikkol said:


> I guess this is a configuration problem on the FreeBSD side.


I'm more suspicious of the Virtualbox application itself being the problem. I'm doubtful it was written with remote X in mind. With X (remote or otherwise) the application is the client, there are only a few client Xorg libraries used, it's the application that has to take care of window refreshes and such. And it's those that appear to be problematic here.


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## mikkol (Jul 23, 2020)

Darn. I will do further tests in the basement with a local copy of it running.

Result: on the local X server, it runs (user-interfacewise) perfectly well. SirDice must be right again.


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## kpedersen (Jul 23, 2020)

The VirtualBox toolkit is Qt and these things are caring less and less about network transparency.

You might consider X forwarding Xephyr with the VirtualBox UI running inside that? Or perhaps simply VNC. That seems to be the direction of remote *nix with naive stuff like Wayland.


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## SirDice (Jul 23, 2020)

I have very little experience with it but www/phpvirtualbox may be a better solution if you're looking to remotely manage Virtualbox.


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## mikkol (Jul 23, 2020)

SirDice said:


> I have very little experience with it but www/phpvirtualbox may be a better solution if you're looking to remotely manage Virtualbox.


Thank you. In all honesty, I'm just trying to have the FreeBSD computer run the Fedora system until I can, piece by piece, service by service, implement on the FreeBSD side everything that the Fedora side is now implementing. These are on the same machine, naturally. Once I'm done with the transition, I will say bye-bye to VirtualBox on that computer. ...if I ever manage to make the Fedora actually work faster than running with an 8086 CPU.

Remote management is needed because I prefer the comfort of my office as opposed to sharing space with things that crawl in the basement server room.


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