VirtualBox virtual machine - Debian stable (Lenny) has higher screen resolution than my monitor

Question

I installed debian in vm in virtualbox and it has 1280x1024 resolution, while physical screen is 1024x768... So I'm getting scrollable virtualbox window and I have to scroll it. It's pretty hard to work on it. I tried:

• Change resolution in gnome... There's no option to choose resolution (just window with blank buttons)
• Edit xorg.conf... xorg.conf is blank
• I googled and found out that it's normal for xorg.conf to be blank in this version and that I can use xrandr. I tried xrandr -s 1024x768... I got "size 1024x768 not found in available modes"
• sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg doesn't do anything. It only lets me to select keyboard layout and that's all. No xorg.conf is created.
• I turned off X and tried X -configure but I got completely blank black screen so I restarted vm. After restarting it I looked into xorg.conf and it's still blank.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I had same problem than you. I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf with:

Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller" Monitor "Monitor genérico" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Modes "1024x768" EndSubSection EndSection

And restarted X server using CTRL+ALT+BackSpace (or from initial display botom).

The only one display conf that It works is 1024x768, when I'm using 1280x800 in windows XP. Now, when I select complete display in VirtualBox I get a nice display but black unused spaces on left and right.

Regards, fernando.

Answer 2

Have you tried simply resizing the VirtualBox window? Worked for me with the VirtualBox drivers installed in the guest OS - changed the resolution to the size of the window.

Answer 3

i installed the virtual box modules through the package manager in debian and that did the trick