Arch Linux

It's the same for me, except that I see this under a Windows 10 Guest. Also the busy cursor (that rotating circle) is not blue anymore but white.

Additional info:
* runnging Virtualbox 5.1.0-1, Linux 4.6.4-1, xf86-video-intel 1:2.99.917+676+g26f8ab5-1, xorg-server 1.18.3-3

Same issue here with Windows 7 guest. Seems that it forces the mouse pointer to be black & white as well as removing transparency.

Note that you can disable mouse pointer shadows in the Windows7 control panel, which mitigates this somehow.

I'm experiencing a similar problem with the SailfishOS emulator (Linux 32-bit). The cursor is black-and-white too, the shades are quirky.

Persists on 5.1.2

seems to be fixed in 5.1.4

The monochrome cursor problem still happens for me with 5.1.4. I have updated to 5.1.4 drivers in the guest.

Win7 guest: http://imgur.com/a/gLIJk

Still persist in 5.1.4-1 regardless of a guest driver. Host is 4.7.1-1-ARCH. Guests are: 4.7.1-1-ARCH, win7, winxp.

Hi, I have the same problem running arch linux in a virtualbox on arch linux.
Updated both installations on 23 August 2018 running kernel 4.7.1 and
virtualbox 5.1.4

The monochrome cursor problem persists for me in 5.1.4, too. I also have updated guest additions in Windows 10.

Confirming, persists in 5.1.4, both SailfishOS Emulator and Win7 guest even after updating guest additions.

Hi,

the busy cursor of my Windows 7 guest was broken for 5.1.0, too and it's also broken for 5.1.4. Since I provide libvpx 3 and 4, I downgraded to 5.0.24, resp. most likely will downgrade again.

[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ pacman -Q virtualbox{,-guest-iso,-host-dkms,-ext-oracle}
virtualbox 5.1.4-1
virtualbox-guest-iso 5.1.4-1
virtualbox-host-dkms 5.1.4-1
virtualbox-ext-oracle 5.1.4-1
[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ grep "virtualbox (5" /var/log/pacman.log | grep downgrade
[2016-07-20 18:19] [ALPM] downgraded virtualbox (5.1.0-1 -> 5.0.24-1)
[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ ls -Ggh /lib/libvpx*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 15 Aug 1 19:41 /lib/libvpx.so -> libvpx.so.4.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 15 Jan 16 2016 /lib/libvpx.so.3 -> libvpx.so.3.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 15 Jan 16 2016 /lib/libvpx.so.3.0 -> libvpx.so.3.0.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 3.4M Jan 16 2016 /lib/libvpx.so.3.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 15 Aug 1 19:41 /lib/libvpx.so.4 -> libvpx.so.4.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 15 Aug 1 19:41 /lib/libvpx.so.4.0 -> libvpx.so.4.0.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 3.3M Aug 1 19:41 /lib/libvpx.so.4.0.0
[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ uname -rm
4.7.0-1-ARCH x86_64
[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ less /mnt/winos7/vmw7/Logs/VBox.log

I might have missed something, but it seems that there's nothing related in the log file and I still had no time to launch the VM by command line.

The packages are from community, excepted of virtualbox-ext-oracle, which was build from AUR.

Edit:

[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep -v "#"
Driver "radeon"

X is up to date.

Regards,
Ralf

I can confirm it, too.

Win 7 64bit guest, additions up to date, Nvidia GTX670 with binary drivers on host.

Just disable the mouse integration. I know, this is not a solution, but it explains the reason: If the mouse integration is enabled, the pointer will be rendered by the host (thus the response is much faster). This does not work if the pointer uses an alpha channel. In this case it will be filled white and has a strange shadow. The problem existed already many years ago and I wonder why it wasn't fixed or appeared again.

But this is specific to the Arch Linux version. Probably some of the patches is to blame

JFTR for me the mouse pointer is not broken, perhaps it's related to the chosen white mouse pointer with black outlines, but without shadow for my Windows 7 guest. The busy cursor is broken, I downgraded the virtualbox related packages.

It's not a specific theme but all cursors with alpha. Even if you use a plain old theme there are custom cursors in 2rd some applications that are affected.

I found workaround (maybe be not the first :D):
Disable cursor shadowing in GUEST OS (obviously?)

So I have just sharp mouse cursor in Windows 7 x64.

Also notice that cursor is well displayed in fresh install without Virtualbox Guest Additions.

@Vlad

As explained the reason is transparency of the pointer. Without shadow most pointers do not have transparency and are rendered correctly, but some have transparency also without shadow.
Without guest additions there is no mouse integration and thus the pointer is rendered by the guest.

@Sven

Do you know about any openned issue on official virtualbox tracker? Or is it arch specific?

This is Arch-specific. This doesn't happen when using the upstream binaries. Or at least, it didn't as of 5.1.0

This is the upstream report:
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/15829

They'll say they don't support Arch-specific patches, just as when I asked on the forums: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=78750

If we don't know where the issue is, we can just binsearch on the patches.

A quick workaround is to install virtualbox-bin from aur

If you would read all comments, you could notice that we are already aware that the "Oracle branded non-OSE version" doesn't suffer from this issue. I'm using it, too. Don't forget to remove vboxhost from /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.

Any progress in 5.1.10?

Another idea: It might not be related to virtualbox at all! It it possible that this is a Qt issue?

The same problem appears with QMapShack. The author says:

> Imho this is a bug in Arch Linux. The cursor *.png has a semi-transparent shadow. For what ever reason you system is not able to handle an alpha channel other than 0 or 255.

https://bitbucket.org/maproom/qmapshack/issues/136/tms-maps-are-rendered-a-bit-fuzzy

So maybe we should focus on Qt and related packages. Can someone check if virtualbox-bin ships a static version of Qt?

Looks like this is fixed with Qt 5.8. Who can confirm?

Yep, I'm still on the 5.8 RC and seems fixed.