Seamless VirtualBox VM Application Windows running on Ubuntu

Having run VirtualBox OSE (1.5.6) for a while now, I succumbed to the idea of grabbing the latest version from the VirtualBox website and putting it on my main Linux box. The idea of having 64-bit support proved irresistible and I did get OpenSolaris to start, even if its being a VMware VM meant that it stalled along the way.

To do this, I needed to rid my system of all traces of the old version before 2.02 would install with a system reboot being needed before the process of installation fully completed. Then, I fired up a Windows XP virtual machine only for it to completely freeze. The hint as to the cause came when I opened up the VM’s settings for the following message to greet me:

Could not load the Host USB Proxy Service (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND). The service might be not installed on the host computer.

While it didn’t stop things in their tracks when it came to accessing and changing those settings, it was a vital hint for working out what was happening. It now seems that a problem with USB port support was the cause. The fact that issuing the following command got things going for me appeared to confirm the prognosis.

sudo  mount -t usbfs /sys/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb/

Of course, not wanting to have to issue the same command over and over again, I was after a more permanent solution. That involved adding the following lines to /etc/fstab:

#usbfs

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0

A reboot later. that change apparently was enough to settle the matter and I am now able to run VM’s as before. Seamless application mode is going well (the host key - right Ctrl by default - + L key combination is sufficient to toggle the setting on and off), even if it has a few quirks. Two that I have spotted include the usual Ubuntu screen furniture disappearing when maximised windows are displayed and the Windows taskbar appearing when two or more applications are running. That last one may be just as well because individual applications don’t get an Ubuntu taskbar icon each, which is perhaps an idea for a future enhancement. Updating Guest Additions in a VM’s doesn’t seem to change the behaviour but any imperfections are curiosities rather than complaints given how well things run anyway, unless you decide to confound matters by closing and minimising windows but resolving that is just a toggle away. It’s all looking good so far…

It’s when you pop from one operating system to another that you realise how operating system specific it is that fonts are. For instance, only one of the names in the following list are understood by Firefox on Ubuntu, the last one: Trebuchet MS, Lucida Grande, Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif. The reason that San-Serif is understood is that it’s a general font class name in the world of CSS. However, that does not mean that you still are not at the mercy of operating system fonts. In fact, font sizes vary and 16px in one font isn’t the same as 16px in another; that can mean broken layouts if you are sufficiently clumsy.

As it happens, the main menu bar on my hillwalking blog should all fit on one line but it took up two lines when viewed on Linux. If it did that neatly, there wouldn’t be much of a problem but it didn’t. Some CSS hacking could have repaired the situation but I went for a simpler solution for now: picking a Linux sans serif font that fitted the bill better. So popping in mentions of "Nimbus Sans L" in appropriate places in my stylesheet was the way that I went. I don’t know how this appears in other Linux distributions but the wonders of virtualisation should allow to find out.

If I was really concerned about the fonts that were being used, I could have gone with a server-side approach: embedded fonts. I haven’t tried this for a while but differing browser support was a major issue when I did: you had to create a set of files for IE and for Netscape when I was investigating such things, hardly convenient even in those days when Opera was merely a speck on the horizon and Mozilla was nascent. It’s a valid approach for those exclusive fonts but so is questioning why you are using them in the first place. Adobe’s Flash is another option for those who obsess with fonts though how users take to this remains an open question, as does the accessibility of the approach.

I will be sticking with testing how things look in different operating systems and virtualisation is an excellent enabler of this, as are Live CD’s. The latter is particularly useful for Linux distributions which the former has application with more scenarios: names OpenSolaris and, with a spot of tinkering, OS X come to mind. It sounds like an intriguing proposition and Firefox is virtually a de facto cross-platform standard these days anyway. Mind you, seeing how websites are rendered by Safari running on OS X might be of interest to some.

Looking at from the user’s point of view rather than the web developer’s, there remains a question regarding the visiting of websites that break because of the font conundrum. If you find this happening to you a lot, it may be an idea to bring in some TrueType or OpenType fonts. With Ubuntu, this is straight forward: fire up Synaptic, search for msttcorefonts and install that package along with any of its dependencies. Logging off from and on to the system will make the new fonts available. There was a time when more work was needed than that…

Contrary to appearances given by this blog, I am not exclusively a Windows user. In fact, I have sampled Linux on a number of occasions in the past and I use VMware to host a number of different distributions – my Ubuntu installation is updating itself as I write this – as I like to keep tabs on what is out there. I also retain a Windows 2000 installation for testing and have had virtual machine hosting a test release of Vista not so long ago. I also have my finger in the UNIX world with an instance of OpenSolaris, though it is currently off my system thanks to my wrecking its graphics set up. However, ZoneAlarm has been known to get ahead of itself and start blocking VMware. If you go taking a look on the web, there is no solution to this beyond a complete system refresh (format the boot drive and reinstall everything again) and I must admit that this sounds like throwing out bath, baby and bathwater together. I did find another approach though: removing ZoneAlarm and reinstalling it. This wipes all its remembered settings, including the nefarious one that conflicted with VMware in the first place. It’s amazing that no one else has considered this but it has worked for me and having to have the security software relearn everything again is much less painless than rebuilding your system.