Opened 12 years ago
Closed 12 years ago
#11367 closed enhancement (wontfix)
Enhance VB VM Close menu selection.
| Reported by: | jb.1234abcd | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Component: | VM control | Version: | VirtualBox 4.2.6 |
| Keywords: | shutdown, power off | Cc: | |
| Guest type: | Linux | Host type: | all |
Description
The menu selection descriptions for VB VM closing are unfortunate and counterintuitive/misleading, in particular under UNIX and like OS:
'Machine-Close-Send shutdown' means "Close VM" (unforced) with orderly shutdown" of a Guest (actually it does 'shutdown -p now', equivalent to 'poweroff').
'Machine-Close-Power off' means "Kill VM' (forced) without regard for a Guest; but the "Power off" in its name often makes a user believe that there is "Poweroff" (orderly shutdown, poweroff like 'poweroff') of a Guest involved as part of the process.
It would be better if these menu selections were called: "Machine-Close-Shutdown-Guest" "Machine-Close-Kill-Guest"
No margin for error/misunderstanding. Thanks.
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I fear that your suggestions may be more confusing than the current ones for many people. In particular, "Kill VM" must sound rather strange to someone without a UNIX background. The "shutdown signal" referred to is the ACPI shut down signal which some guests may happen to translate to the "shutdown -p now" command, though this can often be configured in the guest system. This actually translates to the System/Shutdown resp Ubuntu/Shutdown menu commands in the Solaris 11 and Ubuntu 12.10 systems I just checked.
If we really wanted to change these, something like "Ask the machine to shut down" and "Stop the machine immediately" might be even clearer to users without strong technical backgrounds, but since I don't think anyone has raised this before I prefer to leave things as they are.