How to increase resolution WITHOUT Guest Addition (xorg 1.9)

[karatedog]

I want to give a try to Ubuntu Maverick, which has Xorg 1.9 and that is - yet - without support in Guest Addition.
So my question is, how can I increase the resolution above 800x600? I don't need fancy things like Full Screen or Seamless mode, just a tiny bit more data on my huge monitor . 1600x1200 will suffice.

[Perryg]

AFAIK since Ubuntu deprecated the xorg.conf this will not be possible.
Hopefully the next maintenance release will have support for Xorg 1.9

[codfather]

I certainly don't want to start an argument here, but all the reading I have done with the latest versions of Ubuntu is that they support xorg.conf if it is present, but by default it is not created, as the latest versions of xorg don't need it.

I have done a lot of testing with Virtualbox 3.2.8 r 64453 using the latest daily Ubuntu build of 10.10, and if you put an xorg.conf file in place it definitely gets read, as if you try to get it to load vboxvideo it fails, change it back to vesa and it all works fine again, which is what I think we are getting by default with this 800x600 settings.

Having read a lot on the forums about this, I do however agree that expecting the VB devs to support every Alpha that comes along is expecting a lot, and the best we can hope for is for beta's onwards.

I look forward to the next update of VB which hopefully will support xorg 1.9.

Nick

[Perryg]

@codfather,
Were you able to create the xorg.conf file and were you able to get more than 800x600?

[codfather]

Yes, I could create the xorg.conf file but unfortunately no matter what I changed the settings to in xorg.conf, you just get the 800x600 resolution. This has worked in the past for 10.04, so I can only assume there might be a setting in xorg 1.9 which we are missing that would allow us to change this.

I'm currently now testing it with VMware 3.1.1 Player to see if I can get it to allow larger screen resolutions, unfortunately VMware always appears a little slower, but it will be an interesting test.

[Perryg]

Thus my answer above. I usually don't go into detail about why because... well who cares. You need to download a patch for the other virtualizer to get it to work as well. The next maintenance release should have the proper fix.

[codfather]

Agreed, as I said I just wanted to point out that Ubuntu will use xorg.conf, but at the moment with Virtualbox this is not working.

I have just installed it with VMware Player 3.1.1 and I get full video options, so the latest drivers supplied with that version are working fine with xorg 1.9 and Ubuntu 10.10 beta (daily build September 6th) , no need to download anything extra to get it to work. Now before anyone gets upset about one VM manager over another, I use them all, including KVM and Xen, but prefer VB on the desktop, it just happens at the moment it is lagging a little with this one particular scenario, it's not a big issue. If you want to test Ubuntu 10.10 beta with full graphic resolution today, then that is a good option for you, if you can wait, then I'm sure the next release of VB will have the appropriate drivers. This is all pre-release code , which has been pointed out before.

Hope this helps people looking for a temporary solution.