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On windows 10 I run a VirtualBox with ubuntu 22.04.2 and when I start the xclock with

xclock -digital -fg white

I see this window:

enter image description here

Is there a way to fix this? xclock without parameter works, but I need to have a digital clock with seconds.

The command

xclock -digital -fg white -bg black

gives:

enter image description here

Also, when I open a normal terminal, this is how the top bar looks like:

enter image description here

again these hieroglyphs ...

It is definitively the VM, because when I turn off Display -> Enable 3D Acceleration then I see the terminal title bar and xclock -digital works as expected. However, in that settings I see my mouse cursor often as a black square and the whole windows are flickering and jumping around, making the VM virtually useless.

Is there a way to fix this WITHOUT reinstalling the VM (which I have dome way too often already)?

VirtualBox 7.0.20

I tried to create a simple python script using tkinter to show the clock in digital format -> Shows the same kind of hieroglyphs ...

Alex
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3 Answers3

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If you install xterm, you can use date with a suitable configuration string and get something very similar to xclock -digital ..., for example

xterm -fa default -fs 12 -title 'my clock' -geometry 24x2 -e bash -c 'while true; do date +"%a %Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S";sleep 1;done' 2>/dev/null
sudodus
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On Ubuntu 24.04

Hmm... no --version option...

$ file `which xclock`
/usr/bin/xclock: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV),  
dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2,  
BuildID[sha1]=43b56fee78570f716f70671eab030c5a8286ce5a,  
for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped

$ xclock -digital -fg white -bg black  # OK
$ xclock -digital -fg white            # all white, white text on white bg?
$ xclock -digital           -bg black  # all black, black text on black bg
$ xclock -digital                      # OK.

... here I'd say this is the classic fg==bg, nothing else...

Hannu
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I have a workaround: I start the python script to show the current time on windows and drag that window on top of the VM screen. That way, I have the time in a moveable window on top of any other VM-Linux application...

Alex
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