Bug#858709: debian-live: Resolution changes and lost keystrokes, every 15 seconds, in VirtualBox
Package: debian-live
Severity: normal
I think this will be helpful to anyone who wants to run a GUI in
a live Stretch image in VirtualBox. None of my work-arounds seem
to be specific to VirtualBox, so this may also be helpful to people
using other (real or virtual) platforms.
I built a live Stretch image with task-kde-desktop, and booted it
in VirtualBox. I expected to see a logged-in desktop environment,
but instead I saw a screen asking for DEBIAN LIVE USER's password.
Every 15 seconds, the VM's display window would change to a different
resolution and immediately change back, losing any password keystrokes
that I was typing while it was changing. When I entered the password
I got a desktop environment, working as expected, except the resolution
changes and keystroke loss continued to happen every 15 seconds.
I determined that SDDM, which I don't think is supposed to run at all
on a live system, was successfully running its own X server, while the
autologin facility, which _is_ supposed be running an X server, was
trying and failing to start an X server, repeating every 15 seconds.
I was able to work around these problems by adding " xserver-xorg-legacy"
to config/package-lists/my.list.chroot, and creating an executable file
named config/hooks/live/no-sddm.hook.chroot containing these four lines:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
echo disabling sddm
systemctl disable sddm
###### Live System Information: ######
Name Version
===-=============================-===================
ii live-boot 1:20170112
ii live-config 5.20170112
ii live-tools 1:20151214+nmu1
Debian Release: 9.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
###### Host System Information: ######
Name Version
===-=============================-===================
ii debootstrap 1.0.88
ii live-build 1:20170213
Debian Release: 9.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
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