Ubuntu guest on Ubuntu host limited to 800x600 resolution

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 20. Sep 2008, 00:56

I am running as my host, Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit edition, on an AMD 64-bit dual core CPU. The guest is Ubuntu Christian Edition 8.04 (32-bit).
It installed okay onto a virtual disk but the display is limited to only 800x600 pixels. The host display is set to 1152x864.
When I run other Guest OS systems in Virtual Box on this PC, the displays can work okay at 1024x768 (which I want for the guest).
Within the Ubuntu guest, the options for screen resolution are just 800x600 and 640x480. How do I get it to give more options for the resolution? It is like Virtual Box is only telling the guest OS that the virtual graphics card can only support 800x600, or is there some other explanation?
I installed the Guest Additions into the guest OS (Ubuntu Christian edition).
How can this be fixed?

Post by **Sasquatch** » 20. Sep 2008, 01:18

You have to make sure that the GA enabled the vboxvideo driver for you. They should install just fine, but they tend to skip the step to update your xorg.conf file so it mentions this driver. After that, you can use any resolution you want. If you check the first menu option where you have a few Video options like Full Screen and Seamless, there is also an option to automatically resize the Guest Window Resolution when it's resized. If you do not have these options (auto resize and seamless), you aren't using the vboxvideo driver.

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 20. Sep 2008, 10:28

I edited the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and added the line
Driver "vboxvideo"
to the graphics card section and logged out and back in again.
Now the resolution is correct.

Thanks for your help.

t.arnfeld · Post by **t.arnfeld** » 21. Sep 2008, 21:41

I had that problem.. and i thought i would let you know.. i have a widescreen (not sure what ?x? is it) and i instaled VIRTUAL BOX GUEST ADDITIONS by running my VM not in full screen mode, clicking DEVICES and installing guest additions. It will pop up in your VM (mine was XP not sure about other OS) and i just installed and restarted and when i went into FULL SCREEN mode it just fitted my screen.!

Hope this helps:)[/i]

Post by **Sasquatch** » 21. Sep 2008, 23:31

t.arnfeld wrote:I had that problem.. and i thought i would let you know.. i have a widescreen (not sure what ?x? is it) and i instaled VIRTUAL BOX GUEST ADDITIONS by running my VM not in full screen mode, clicking DEVICES and installing guest additions. It will pop up in your VM (mine was XP not sure about other OS) and i just installed and restarted and when i went into FULL SCREEN mode it just fitted my screen.!

Hope this helps:)[/i]

Yes, that works just fine for Windows Guests, but Linux needs a bit more work sometimes.

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 23. Sep 2008, 03:03

Well I got it to work with an Ubuntu guest and some others that I think were based on Ubuntu. But when I installed CentOS into VirtualBox the display is limited again to 800x600.

I upgraded my VirtualBox to the latest version before installing CentOS, so now I am using 2.0.2

Post by **Sasquatch** » 23. Sep 2008, 19:50

davoura wrote:Well I got it to work with an Ubuntu guest and some others that I think were based on Ubuntu. But when I installed CentOS into VirtualBox the display is limited again to 800x600.

I upgraded my VirtualBox to the latest version before installing CentOS, so now I am using 2.0.2

You have to install the additions for each VM and after each kernel upgrade of a Guest VM.

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 24. Sep 2008, 02:24

Sasquatch wrote:
davoura wrote:Well I got it to work with an Ubuntu guest and some others that I think were based on Ubuntu. But when I installed CentOS into VirtualBox the display is limited again to 800x600.

I upgraded my VirtualBox to the latest version before installing CentOS, so now I am using 2.0.2
You have to install the additions for each VM and after each kernel upgrade of a Guest VM.

I think what you are saying is that I have to install the Guest Additions into CentOS, which I already did, of course. But it made no difference.

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 1. Oct 2008, 01:54

Still no answer to my dilemma.

Now I have had this problem in several virtual machines, usually Ubuntu based but some in Ubuntu virtual machines I can set the screen res correctly.

The best-behaved OS so far has been Mandriva 2009. I installed that and it did not even need the Guest Additions, it just set the res to 1024x768, and when I go into full screen mode, it actually fills the screen completely. All other virtual machines I have run in Virtual Box, with screen res set to 1024x768, when going into full screen mode, have a black border. This is because the host's resolution is set to 1154x864.

The latest OS I have installed is Kubuntu. I cannot get Kubuntu to the right screen res after installing Guest Additions and rebooting it.

Post by **Sasquatch** » 1. Oct 2008, 11:18

It seems that somehow KDE is messing things up here. You said that it works just fine in Ubuntu, which runs Gnome. I have Xubuntu in a VM too (run it on bare hardware on my laptop) and that works just fine too. Perhaps a downgrade of KDE to 3.5 or something might help? Or just ditch KDE

.

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 1. Oct 2008, 13:25

As I wrote earlier, I had the problem in CentOS, which runs Gnome. The problem is either with VirtualBox or some configuration on my PC, or just that some distros do not properly implement something that would allow the screen resolutions of the vboxvideo driver to be recognised.

How can I properly check that the vboxvideo driver is installed into a guest?

Post by **Sasquatch** » 1. Oct 2008, 20:14

You can check that if you use the vboxvideo driver in your Xorg.conf file and are able to use higher resolutions. If you can't, then somehow Linux is using the VESA driver as a fallback. Check your Xorg.*.log files found in /var/log/.

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 3. Oct 2008, 19:51

In CentOS running in Virtual Box, I looked at the xorg.0.log file and in that file I saw this:

(**) VBoxVideo(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
(==) VBoxVideo(0): RGB weight 888
(==) VBoxVideo(0): Default visual is TrueColor
(==) VBoxVideo(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
(II) VBoxVideo(0): The maximum supported resolution is currently 5760x5760
(II) VBoxVideo(0): <default monitor>: Using hsync range of 1.00-10000.00 kHz
(II) VBoxVideo(0): <default monitor>: Using vrefresh range of 1.00-100.00 Hz
(II) VBoxVideo(0): Clock range: 1.00 to 1000000.00 MHz
(--) VBoxVideo(0): Virtual size is 800x600 (pitch 800)
(**) VBoxVideo(0): *Built-in mode "800x600": 29.3 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 36.4 kHz, 60.0 Hz
(II) VBoxVideo(0): Modeline "800x600" 29.31 800 802 804 806 600 602 604 606
(**) VBoxVideo(0): *Built-in mode "640x480": 18.8 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 29.2 kHz, 60.0 Hz
(II) VBoxVideo(0): Modeline "640x480" 18.84 640 642 644 646 480 482 484 486
(==) VBoxVideo(0): DPI set to (96, 96)

It is loading the vboxvideo driver, and although in one place it gives a max res of 5760x5760 (which would be impossible on current monitors), further down it lists
(**) VBoxVideo(0): *Built-in mode "800x600"

It seems to have only this and 640x480 available in the built-in modes.

A warning in the log appears further down:

(WW) VBoxVideo(0): Failed to set up write-combining range (0xe0000000,0x8000000)

davoura · Post by **davoura** » 3. Oct 2008, 20:12

CentOS wanted to update itself with 5 updates, including a kernel update. After updating and rebooting this virtual machine, CentOS now has a screen res of 1024x768, just what I wanted.

One of the updates must have fixed the problem.

Post by **Sasquatch** » 3. Oct 2008, 21:50

No, your kernel module for the vboxvideo is no longer loaded. After a kernel update, you need to reinstall the GA for everything to work again (like shared folders).

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Ubuntu guest on Ubuntu host limited to 800x600 resolution

Ubuntu guest on Ubuntu host limited to 800x600 resolution

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