How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

archuser11301 · 2016-02-09 22:39:54

I followed the wiki for installing using pacman of the guest utils and ran the service to start the clipboard (VBoxClient --clipboard) but nothing happened.

Not sure what to do next? I only want to be able to copy and paste text to terminal as I am not going to be using a desktop.

oliver · 2016-02-09 23:40:28

You might have to enable in in the Virtualbox guest settings too.
Shutdown the guest, go into 'settings' and under 'general' there is an 'advanced' tab. In there is a 'shared clipboard' option.

Sometimes I have to restart the clipboard process on the guest to get it working again too.

archuser11301 · 2016-02-10 10:03:55

No that shared clipboard never works. thats the first thing i tried the bidirectional thing it does absolutel nothing and doesnt for the majority of ppl from what ive been reading online.

ps aux | grep -i vbox

i tried that and it still doesn't show the clipboard as being on though there are 3 other vboxclient services running since doing `vboxclient-all`

Last edited by archuser11301 (2016-02-10 12:24:00)

TheSaint · 2016-02-10 14:29:21

Sometimes is long to react. Also should work with CTRL+V, only highlighting may not suffice.

archuser11301 · 2016-02-10 15:03:59

im doing ctrl v i also tried shift, ctrl v.

i cant highlight anything in vbox anyhow since there is no cursor. i need to paste in not out anyhow but i will need both in future

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-02-10 15:44:39

archuser11301 wrote:

i cant highlight anything in vbox anyhow since there is no cursor

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/gpm/

oliver · 2016-02-10 16:04:34

archuser11301 wrote:

No that shared clipboard never works. thats the first thing i tried the bidirectional thing it does absolutel nothing and doesnt for the majority of ppl from what ive been reading online.

Yeah, sorry. I glossed over the 'no desktop' part. The shared clipboard thing is, indeed, for Xorg only.

hb860 · 2016-02-10 19:06:34

archuser11301 wrote:

I followed the wiki for installing using pacman of the guest utils and ran the service to start the clipboard (VBoxClient --clipboard) but nothing happened.
Not sure what to do next? I only want to be able to copy and paste text to terminal as I am not going to be using a desktop.

Here is a bit dumb, but working solution
Mount a folder from your host OS and use some text file instead of the direct paste.
I use it for my web server VM.
If you are using midnight commander and its mcedit, you can assign some hotkey in the user menu (f2) to copy that file to mcedit.clip, so you will be able to "paste" the text with Shift+F5 in mcedit.

Last edited by hb860 (2016-02-10 19:07:14)

archuser11301 · 2016-02-10 19:24:56

hb860 wrote:

archuser11301 wrote:
I followed the wiki for installing using pacman of the guest utils and ran the service to start the clipboard (VBoxClient --clipboard) but nothing happened.
Not sure what to do next? I only want to be able to copy and paste text to terminal as I am not going to be using a desktop.
Here is a bit dumb, but working solution
Mount a folder from your host OS and use some text file instead of the direct paste.
I use it for my web server VM.
If you are using midnight commander and its mcedit, you can assign some hotkey in the user menu (f2) to copy that file to mcedit.clip, so you will be able to "paste" the text with Shift+F5 in mcedit.

well the main reason i want it is so I dont have totype in the strong password every time at login i guess theres some workarounds for that however I do need on the fly copy and pasting really.

I havent made any headway with this yet so thinking I might have to throw in the towel and look at other virtual machines or maybe dual boot. i dont understand tho why i dont have the clipboard process at all in the running tasks . other ppl seem to have got it going.

Last edited by archuser11301 (2016-02-10 19:25:59)

Gew · 2026-01-26 23:47:43

Bit of thread necromancy on my behalf now, but the OP has my issue on spot! Is this still a tough task, ten years later? I'm on Windows, and have a VirtualBox machine running Arch (no X/GUI, just TTY/console), and I want to be able to copy text in Windows and paste it into Arch.

WorMzy · 2026-01-27 00:17:24

Please do not necrobump.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … bumping%22

Closing.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-02-09 22:39:54

How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#2 2016-02-09 23:40:28

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#3 2016-02-10 10:03:55

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#4 2016-02-10 14:29:21

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#5 2016-02-10 15:03:59

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#6 2016-02-10 15:44:39

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#7 2016-02-10 16:04:34

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#8 2016-02-10 19:06:34

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#9 2016-02-10 19:24:56

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#10 2026-01-26 23:47:43

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

#11 2026-01-27 00:17:24

Re: How do I paste text into the terminal of arch vbox?

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