VirtualBox Host key

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS with the latest patches available.  I spun up a virtual machine in VirtualBox 4.3.10 and quickly became annoyed that common key combinations popped up messages, some of which offered to shutdown or reboot my guest OS.

I found the Preferences, Input, Virtual Machine, Host Key Combination setting pretty easily and changed it from the default Right Ctrl to Left Ctrl + Left Shift, considering it's far more rare for me to press two modifiers at the same time, other than Ctrl-Alt perhaps.

No soap.  The Right Ctrl stayed as the modifier!  I thought maybe I had to try turning it off and on again.  Maybe exit VirtualBox entirely?  Still nothing.  Every time, the preference would reset back to the default.

I even found the configuration file ~/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml on my system, though the new default is ~/.config/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml but it was not obvious what I might want to change the value to.

<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/Input/HostKeyCombination" value="65508"/>


Then I found a bug report!

Comment 1 had my answer:

1. Open VBox "Preferences..." / Input page / Virtual Machine tab.
2. Change the shortcut for "Host Key Combination" in embedded-editor of the shortcut table and (!) press Enter (or Return) key while this shortcut embedded-editor is opened. GUI applying shortcut changes only in that case as this is the default Qt behavior. If you simple press OK button instead your change will be discarded.

 Fix is part of VBox 4.3.14