> NOTE: The physical ACPI power supply allow PC to hard shutdown if the > power button is being pressed for 5 seconds exactly for this reason. > > Unless smart mechanism can be developed for VMs, I recommend removing > this option as from the GUI as dangerous. (either remove this option, > or after 2 clicks allow user to choose.. "ask" for action) >
11.e. There is some misunderstanding regarding the ACPI part, and why I recommend to remove this feature from the GUI. This feature, when used in automated way like in VMlite is dangerous and confusing. This ACPI signal is supposed to shutdown the VM, but it won't work in case guest application stucked guest OS or in case guest OS does not support ACPI. When the user tries to close a VM by clicking "X" button, VMlite won't respond at all, and user will think that VMlite is broken, while in fact VMlite send ACPI powerdown signal to the VM, but it is not processed by the guest. The standard expectation of any GUI user is that "X" button closes the current window, but this is not the case with ACPI under many situations. The automatic poweroff or hibernation (save state) are fine, because they close the current window under all reasonable situations, while ACPI powerdown signal fails under the following conditions: -VM under heavy load -Low-level application stucks in the VM (happens when debugging software in VM or when Gaming) -Unsupported Guest OS -Incorrectly configured guest OS (Windows XP with Standard PC HAL) This will confuse users. It is OK in VirtualBox implementation, however, because if the VM does not respond, next time user clicks "X" button, user can choose a different action. -- -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov" _______________________________________________ vbox-dev mailing list [email protected] http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev
