[WORKAROUND FOUND] Guest screen auto-resize not working since 6.1.0
Posted: 10. Jan 2020, 12:02
Hi, I'm using a Gentoo Linux VM on a Windows 10 64-bit host.
Up to (and including) VirtualBox 6.0.14 it was all good: The VM used the "VBoxVGA" graphics, 3D acceleration and auto-resize worked without a problem.
With VirtualBox 6.1.0 and the deprecation of the "VBoxVGA" driver in favor of the "VMSVGA" driver (and of course switching to that one), the auto-resize stopped to work. Even after updating the guest additions to 6.1.0. I also removed the "vboxvideo" kernel module from being loaded and added the VMware grahics driver to the guest's kernel config. The current state is that the graphical environment (KDE running atop X) starts up and is stuck at 800x600px. If I use KDE's System Settings to change the resolution, this is executed but the VM is immediatelly reset to 800x600. If I full-screen the VM or resize the VM's window, the guest doesn't adapt to the new screen size as well.
All other VM "features" (shared clipboard, shared folder with auto-mounting, 3D acceleration) are working perfectly fine.
On the host's VirtualBox, the "File -> Preferences -> Display -> Maximum Guest Screen Size" is set to "Automatic" and the scale factor for "All Monitors" is set to 100%.
The host machine is running Windows 10 Pro 1909 64-bit. The internal Intel Graphics card has been disabled in the BIOS, the nVidia Quadro M2200 with nVidia driver 441.66 is driving three screens: the laptop's own screen at 1920x1080 and two external ones at 1920x1200 each.
Extension Pack is installed.
I attached a zip-file with the following log files (Booting the VM, then using System Settings to resize to 1280x1024, then resizing the VM's window by mouse dragging, then powering off the VM):
VBox.log Log file from VirtualBox itself
dmesg.log Log file from the guest's kernel. Note the two lines saying "[drm:vmw_host_log] *ERROR* Failed to send host log message."
config.gz Kernel configuration of the kernel running
Xorg.0.log Log file from the guest's X server
virtualbox-guest-additions.log Log file of the "emerge" process when installing the virtualbox-guest-additions package (to see configuration options and files being installed)
GuestProperties.txt Output of "VBoxControl guestproperty enumerate" ran in the guest machine
Also note that the "VMMDev: Guest Additions capability report" always says "graphics: no. When the "vboxvideo" module was loaded, it changed to "yes".
If there's any information you might need in addition, please ask
P.S.: IMHO it was a bad decision to deprecate the VBoxVGA driver, just now that the "vboxvideo" was getting part of mainline Linux and made using VirtualBox-based Linux guests easier. Now we have to tell the guests: Yes, I need VMware's graphics driver but don't install the other VMware-guest-tools, it's not a VMware guest after all. Nevertheless, I'm still a happy user of VirtualBox and really appreciate all your work!
Up to (and including) VirtualBox 6.0.14 it was all good: The VM used the "VBoxVGA" graphics, 3D acceleration and auto-resize worked without a problem.
With VirtualBox 6.1.0 and the deprecation of the "VBoxVGA" driver in favor of the "VMSVGA" driver (and of course switching to that one), the auto-resize stopped to work. Even after updating the guest additions to 6.1.0. I also removed the "vboxvideo" kernel module from being loaded and added the VMware grahics driver to the guest's kernel config. The current state is that the graphical environment (KDE running atop X) starts up and is stuck at 800x600px. If I use KDE's System Settings to change the resolution, this is executed but the VM is immediatelly reset to 800x600. If I full-screen the VM or resize the VM's window, the guest doesn't adapt to the new screen size as well.
All other VM "features" (shared clipboard, shared folder with auto-mounting, 3D acceleration) are working perfectly fine.
On the host's VirtualBox, the "File -> Preferences -> Display -> Maximum Guest Screen Size" is set to "Automatic" and the scale factor for "All Monitors" is set to 100%.
The host machine is running Windows 10 Pro 1909 64-bit. The internal Intel Graphics card has been disabled in the BIOS, the nVidia Quadro M2200 with nVidia driver 441.66 is driving three screens: the laptop's own screen at 1920x1080 and two external ones at 1920x1200 each.
Extension Pack is installed.
I attached a zip-file with the following log files (Booting the VM, then using System Settings to resize to 1280x1024, then resizing the VM's window by mouse dragging, then powering off the VM):
VBox.log Log file from VirtualBox itself
dmesg.log Log file from the guest's kernel. Note the two lines saying "[drm:vmw_host_log] *ERROR* Failed to send host log message."
config.gz Kernel configuration of the kernel running
Xorg.0.log Log file from the guest's X server
virtualbox-guest-additions.log Log file of the "emerge" process when installing the virtualbox-guest-additions package (to see configuration options and files being installed)
GuestProperties.txt Output of "VBoxControl guestproperty enumerate" ran in the guest machine
Also note that the "VMMDev: Guest Additions capability report" always says "graphics: no. When the "vboxvideo" module was loaded, it changed to "yes".
If there's any information you might need in addition, please ask
P.S.: IMHO it was a bad decision to deprecate the VBoxVGA driver, just now that the "vboxvideo" was getting part of mainline Linux and made using VirtualBox-based Linux guests easier. Now we have to tell the guests: Yes, I need VMware's graphics driver but don't install the other VMware-guest-tools, it's not a VMware guest after all. Nevertheless, I'm still a happy user of VirtualBox and really appreciate all your work!