Debian shows only a blank desktop when using compiz

Question

I have a Debian (squeeze) guest on virtualbox on a Windows 8 host. I have given it 128 MB video memory (the max allowed by vb) and 3 GB RAM. I am trying to run Compiz on it, but every time I switch to Compiz from GNOME my mouse, icons, top bar, and lower bar all go away, and I am left with a blank desktop. I have installed everything for GNOME-based compiz, followed the Debian wiki's guide to installing it, and edited all the necessary files for it to work. I tried enabling window decorations, which was supposed to fix the windows, but that didn't work. What am I doing wrong? I have 1200 MB video memory, and I have enabled 3D acceleration (vb doesn't allow 2D acceleration on non-windows guests), but are Intel integrated graphics just too crappy to run Compiz, or will it not run on virtual machine based Debian?

Answer 1

I am also running VirtualBox in windows 8 with debian squeeze. It's my first run so I'm still using the twm window manager. I'm getting the same thing as you- a blank desktop. The only time i can see anyhting is when I hold down the left mouse key(twm's ugly!). When I quit X server I got these error messages:

starting VirtualBox Additions:
error: VbgIR3Init failed with rc=VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND failed!
(EE) VBoxVideo(0): Failed to intialize with VirtualBox device (rc=-102)
- Make sure that the VirtualBox guest additions are properly installed.
If you are not sure try reinstalling them. The X window graphics driver will run in compatability mode
FATAL: Module vboxVideo not found
(EE) VBoxVideo(0): DRIScreenInit failed, disabling DRI
SELinux: Disabled on system, not enabling in X server

Try entering text mode and note what is being displayed. If you have DRI disabled like mine then it would explain the blank desktop since OpenGL depends on DRI(Direct Rendering Infrastructure) for hardware accleration:

DRI has also been adapted to provide OpenGL acceleration on a framebuffer console without an X Server running.

and from the Compiz article:

Internally Compiz uses the OpenGL library as the interface to the graphics hardware