Screen resolution of Linux guest (#17790)

[elewis33]

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[ModEdit; related ticket: #17790: Screen resolution limited after Linux guest OS update]

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Having trouble getting the screen resolution of a Linux guest on an OS X host to go any higher than 1024 X 768 (4:3). The host is OS X 10.11.6 and the guest is Linux 4.1.12-124.14.2.e17uek.x86_64 (Oracle Linux 7).

The only options shown in the guest display settings are 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768, all in 4:3. Ive installed the latest version of VB (5.2.12 r122591) along with the corresponding extension pack and the guest additions are installed on the guest.

I've played around with the vboxmanage getproperty/setproperty a bit. The GUI/LastGuestSizeHint had a setting of Value: 800,600, presumably from previous sessions. I tried to change it using

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vboxmanage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" GUI/LastGuestSizeHint 1280,1024

The setting changes in the .vbox file, but it had no effect on the guest OS.

I've run this VM at higher resolutions in the past. One of the recent VB updates seems to have changed the resolution somehow and now I can't figure out the secret sauce for getting back to higher screen resolutions. I'm assuming it has something to do with the host, but none of the user manual documentation that I've read provides any clear guidance, at least to me.

If this were a headless VM I wouldn't care, but I actually use the desktop GUI, so it would be nice to be able to get some of that screen real estate back. Anyone have any hints, insights or answers? Thanks!

[socratis]

We're going to need a complete VBox.log, from a complete VM run:

• Gathering the necessary information:
  1. Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state).
  2. Observe the error, i.e. login and try to change the screen resolution.
  3. Shutdown the VM (force close it if you have to).
• With the VM completely shut down (not paused or saved), right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log".
• Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response. See the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form.

Moving this to "Linux Guests" from "OSX Hosts".

[elewis33]

Thanks so much for the quick response. I believe the attached zip conforms to your instructions (fingers crossed). Please let me know if there are other questions.

[socratis]

I can't see anything wrong with your log. Can you double check the VirtualBox Preferences » Display » Maximum Guest Screen Size, is set to "Automatic"?

Can you also post the ZIPPED ".vbox" file for the VM? Right-click on the VM, "Show in Finder". Compress (ZIP) that .vbox file and attach it to your response.

[elewis33]

Ok, checked that Preferences setting and it was set to "None", so I changed it to "Automatic", powered off the VM, shutdown VB, restarted VB and checked the setting. It's now set to "Automatic". Restarted the VM and there was no immediate screen resolution change, so I went into the guest display settings and still only have 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x763 (4:3).

Attached is the zipped .vbox file for your perusal. Also attached a screenshot to show the options displayed by the guest, and what the screen resolution actually looks like.

The odd thing is that I don't have this problem with two other VMs I run on the same OS X host, one is Windows 8.1 and the other is Linux Lite.

Thanks so much for taking a look at this. It's greatly appreciated.

[mpack]

I would say:

1. Change the setting back to "None". This ensures that VirtualBox will not filter the available display sizes.
2. Manually drag the window to a widescreen aspect ratio, ideally one with the same aspect ratio as the host.
3. Fully shut down and restart the guest OS.
4. Check the guest menu again. If the guest OS display module is sensibly written then it should detect that you now apparantly have a widescreen display, and offer appropriate other sizes.

[elewis33]

@mpack, I followed your suggested steps and it made no difference. Same resolution choices. Unable to change to anything higher. Thanks though.

[socratis]

Shut down the VM (not paused or saved). Issue the following commands:

• 
  VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "CustomVideoMode1"
  VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastGuestSizeHint"
  VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition"
  VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastScaleWindowPosition"
  VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastScaleWindowPosition1"
  VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/ScaleFactor"
  

See if that changes anything...

If not, I want you to re-install the GAs, but this time, I want you to copy the whole text output from the terminal during the GAs installation, but before you close the terminal. Or a screenshot, but the text is much preferred.

[elewis33]

Shut down the VM (not paused or saved). Issue the following commands:
VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "CustomVideoMode1"
VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastGuestSizeHint"
VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition"
VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastScaleWindowPosition"
VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/LastScaleWindowPosition1"
VBoxManage setextradata "Oracle DB Developer VM_1" "GUI/ScaleFactor"
See if that changes anything...

I assume all of that is supposed to remove those settings from the .vbox file. And if so, it was successful at that (none of those setting were in the file after I ran the commands), but it had no effect on the available screen resolution settings.

If not, I want you to re-install the GAs, but this time, I want you to copy the whole text output from the terminal during the GAs installation, but before you close the terminal.

I did that (remounted the GA disk and ran the installer) and here's the screen output of the terminal.

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Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 5.2.12 Guest Additions for Linux........
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Copying additional installer modules ...
Installing additional modules ...
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules.
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Running kernel modules will not be replaced until the system is restarted
VirtualBox Guest Additions: Starting.
Press Return to close this window...

Rebooted the VM after the GA install. Still no joy.

I'm getting ready to dump this VM and start fresh. Hopefully I can save the work I've put on it. But I'm still open to other ideas/suggestions. And I've gotta say, I'm glad it's not just me that's being baffled by this one. I've done some variant of all of the suggestions made here and this thing is just persistently uncooperative.

[socratis]

Let me throw a last minute desperate idea here... Can you download the following GAs? http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualb ... 5.0.40.iso

Mount that in your VM and install those GAs. Let us know how that goes...

[elewis33]

Got that .iso mounted, installed the GAs and rebooted the VM, and no joy. i'm making funeral arrangements...

[socratis]

Since OL is based on RHEL, I thought it was the same issue that an older CentOS (also based on RHEL) client is facing: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=87685

It was a good VM, it will be sorely missed...

[elewis33]

Yeah, that thread looks almost identical. It was a good VM, hopefully it will be easy to replace.

[mpack]

@mpack, I followed your suggested steps and it made no difference. Same resolution choices. Unable to change to anything higher.

When you dragged the display border to change the aspect ratio manually, did the guest OS adapt correctly to the change? What display size did the guest OS report?

[garbage_collected]

I am having the same symptom on a CentOS 7.5 guest today after doing a system update ("yum update"). Resolution is limited to 1024x768 suddenly. My theory is that something in a recent RHEL update (kernel?) is breaking the GA build. I wouldn't be surprised if it's affecting Oracle Linux as well.

Interestingly the GA installer is *not* showing any error:

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Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 5.1.28 Guest Additions for Linux...........
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Removing installed version 5.1.28 of VirtualBox Guest Additions...
Copying additional installer modules ...
Installing additional modules ...
vboxadd.sh: Starting the VirtualBox Guest Additions.

Press Return to close this window...

However looking at /var/log/vboxadd-install.log shows this:

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make[2]: *** [/tmp/vbox.0/vbox_fb.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vbox.0] Error 2
make: *** [vboxvideo] Error 2
Creating user for the Guest Additions.
Creating udev rule for the Guest Additions kernel module.

To get around it, I rebooted the VM and picked the previous (working) kernel from the grub boot menu. When it booted, I reinstalled the GA's and confirmed that the build was successful with no error messages in vboxadd-install.log:

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  gcc -Wp,-MD,/tmp/vbox.0/.vboxvideo.mod.o.d  -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.8.5/include -I./arch/x86/include -Iarch/x86/include/generated  -Iinclude -I./arch/x86/include/uapi -Iarch/x86/include/generated/uapi -I./include/uapi -Iinclude/generated/uapi -include ./include/linux/kconfig.h -D__KERNEL__ -Wall -Wundef -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -Werror-implicit-function-declaration -Wno-format-security -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks -std=gnu89 -O2 -m64 -mno-mmx -mno-sse -mpreferred-stack-boundary=3 -mtune=generic -mno-red-zone -mcmodel=kernel -funit-at-a-time -maccumulate-outgoing-args -Wframe-larger-than=2048 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SIGNAL_FRAME=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SECTIONS=1 -DCONFIG_AS_FXSAVEQ=1 -DCONFIG_AS_AVX=1 -DCONFIG_AS_AVX2=1 -DCONFIG_AS_AVX512=1 -DCONFIG_AS_SHA1_NI=1 -DCONFIG_AS_SHA256_NI=1 -pipe -Wno-sign-compare -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables -mno-sse -mno-mmx -mno-sse2 -mno-3dnow -mno-avx -mindirect-branch=thunk-extern -mindirect-branch-register -DRETPOLINE -Wframe-larger-than=2048 -fstack-protector-strong -Wno-unused-but-set-variable -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -g -pg -mfentry -DCC_USING_FENTRY -fno-inline-functions-called-once -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign -fno-strict-overflow -fconserve-stack -DCC_HAVE_ASM_GOTO -Wno-declaration-after-statement -fshort-wchar -fno-pie -include /tmp/vbox.0/include/VBox/VBoxGuestMangling.h -I/lib/modules/3.10.0-693.21.1.el7.x86_64/build/include -I/tmp/vbox.0/ -I/tmp/vbox.0/include -I/tmp/vbox.0/vboxvideo/ -I/tmp/vbox.0/vboxvideo/include -Iinclude/drm -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -DRT_OS_LINUX -DIN_RING0 -DIN_RT_R0 -DIN_SUP_R0 -DVBOX -DVBOX_WITH_HGCM -DLOG_TO_BACKDOOR -DIN_MODULE -DIN_GUEST_R0 -DRT_NO_EXPORT_SYMBOL -DRT_ARCH_AMD64 -DVBOX_WITH_64_BITS_GUESTS  -D"KBUILD_STR(s)=#s" -D"KBUILD_BASENAME=KBUILD_STR(vboxvideo.mod)"  -D"KBUILD_MODNAME=KBUILD_STR(vboxvideo)" -DMODULE  -c -o /tmp/vbox.0/vboxvideo.mod.o /tmp/vbox.0/vboxvideo.mod.c
  ld -r -m elf_x86_64 -T ./scripts/module-common.lds --build-id  -o /tmp/vbox.0/vboxvideo.ko /tmp/vbox.0/vboxvideo.o /tmp/vbox.0/vboxvideo.mod.o
Creating user for the Guest Additions.
Creating udev rule for the Guest Additions kernel module.

After a second reboot and picking the same kernel from the grub menu, full-screen is working again.

To summarize my experience:

kernel 3.10.0-693.21.1.el7.x86_64 --> works fine
kernel 3.10.0-862.3.2.el7.x86_64 --> breaks GA build

Hopefully this is applicable/helpful here, too.


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Update: attaching full vboxadd-install.log for both good/bad builds with each of the two kernels mentioned.

vboxadd-install-logs.zip

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