VirtualBox 6.0 beta1 - problems with full screen mode for Debian client

[Darius123]

host - MacBook Pro with MacOS 10.14
guest - Linux debianDB-02 4.9.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.110-3+deb9u6 (2018-10-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux

With vbox 6.0 full screen mode is only working with laptop native retina resolution making everything super small.
There is no problem with scaled mode when running Debian in a window.

It worked perfectly with vbox 5.x allowing different than native resolutions in full screen.

[socratis]

There is no problem with scaled mode when running Debian in a window.

Meaning that you set the ScaleFactor to 200% or something like that?

It worked perfectly with vbox 5.x allowing different than native resolutions in full screen.

What does the "different than native resolutions in full screen" mean exactly? Can you give some more details?

I've found that moving between the 5.2.97 development builds (what now became 6.0.0b1) and the 5.2.14-5.2.21 builds (maybe even earlier), I had to do the following:

• 5.2.x

  • VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/ScaleFactor

• 6.0.0

  • VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/ScaleFactor 2

which basically sets a Global Scale Factor of 200% for all VMs. This will not work if you've already manually set the Scale Factor. What I do is to use a text editor and I search *.vbox files for the ScaleFactor string. Quit VirtualBox (and wait for all VBox* processes to end) and then i delete those keys from the individual vbox files.

Yes, it's a pain sometimes, especially if you switch back and forth between 6.0.0b1 and previous versions. Yes, they're working on it...

[Darius123]

Thx for the hint. Indeed changing scale factor to 200 solved the issue. It was enough to set it using Vbox GUI in display options.

[socratis]

It was enough to set it using Vbox GUI in display options.

As I said in my previous post, that will change the per VM "<VM>.vbox" settings by changing the:

<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/ScaleFactor" value="x.yy"/>

and if you do that, you are going to be finding yourself changing each and every VM when moving back and forth between 5.x.x and 6.x.x, or until this is addressed. The "global" setting is one for all...

BTW, I don't think that this should be at 200%, honestly. This is *not* a zoomed in version in my book, it's a normal setting that happens to run on a HiDPI display. There should be an additional check/setting, and the zoom factor determined as:

• ZoomFactor = ( HiDPI + 1 ) × ScaleFactor

where HiDPI=0 for normal displays and HiDPI=1 for HiDPI displays...