how can I get clipboard copy events from Mac OS X to carry over into Oracle VM Arch w/ i3 window manager?

Question

I am running arch linux with Oracle VM Virtual Box Manager on Mac OS X 10.7, and am running into a problem where I cannot select text in my Mac OS X world and paste it into Arch land... I tried installing a program called KeyRemap4MacBook and enabled Mouse Keys Mode -> [option] Space to MiddleClick...

When I try copying some text from either Mac OS X or from within the terminal inside the i3 window manager, pressing option-space does absolutely nothing.

Answer 1

Have you installed the guest additions in your arch linux VM? I believe bi-directional clipboard won't work without them.

If you find that you are often needing to share the clipboard, you might find more success by launching your VM in a headless mode (see VBoxHeadless or the --type headless in chapter 7 of the manual. You can then use something like TightVNC to connect directly to the guest and autocutsel to get a shared clipboard through the VNC connection.