Arch Linux

I am building an ArchLinux image for use as a guest in VirtualBox. I am using version 6.1.4 of VirtualBox, with the 6.1.4 extension pack.

The ArchLinux version of the guest kernel as reported by uname is 5.5.10-arch1-1 x86_64. System is configured with the VMSVGA graphics controller.

I have used the following commands while building the image from the "Installation steps for Arch Linux guests" section of https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox:

pacman -S virtualbox-guest-utils xf86-video-vmware
the chosen package is virtualbox-guest-modules-arch
systemctl enable vboxservice.service # this is supposed to dynamically load the kernel modules
# I have also disabled this and placed the names of the kernel modules in
# /etc/modules-load.d/vbox.conf for the system to load them while booting
# same problematic results

I know that /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all is being invoked when I log into the system as I placed some xmessage calls
in the script; I know that the system is getting to the calls to VBoxClient.

The problems:
a. 'VBoxClient --checkhostversion' triggers the following error response:
VBoxClient: error: No service specified. Quitting because nothing to do!
b. 'VBoxClient --vmsvga-x11
xmessage: VBoxClient: Failed to register resizing support, rc=VERR_INVALID_FUNCTION
xmessage: VBoxClient: Failed to get display change request, rc=VERR_ACCESS_DENIED

I've tried setting /usr/bin/VBoxClient as setuid (to root), but to no avail.

There are a number of complaints about problems with the VMSVGA graphic controller in a variety of Linux guest kernels. My primary goal is to have the guest OS window stretch when the window is resized. I used to do this with VBoxVGA, but that is now deprecated. Additionally, when I used VBoxVGA in a previous version, I experienced flashing screens when running the guest on MacOS.

I am attaching a list of all installed packages in the guest kernel.

I have been using ArchLinux guests with my beginning students for over 2 years now. resizing the window has always been tricky, but VBoxVGA has always solved it. Now that using VBoxVGA causes the flashing problem on MacOS (but not on Windows), I really need to get this resolved. Alternatively, I may have to revert to an older version of Virtual Box, but I am unsure whether this will even work, since the virtualbox-guest-utils from the ArchLinux repositories appears to be tuned for the latest release of VirtualBox.