Vbox-Ubuntu VM is freakishly small

I

illuminate

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 24, 2007
Messages
1,895
Alrighty, my 2 friends, and i are having vbox issues.

First, the specs, i dont know if this is needed to figure out the issue, but here it is anyways:

Friend-1:
Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4
X2 5000+ @ 3.0
8800GTS
2gb DDR2 800 ram
XP Pro x64
Click to expand...


Friend-2:
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe Socket AM2
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor ~3.1GHz Dual Core
EVGA 9800GTX+ SSC
4GB Mushkin 240-Pin DDR2
Windows Vista Home Premium 64x
Click to expand...


Me
E2160 @ 1.8ghz
4GB DDR2 PC2 6400
XFX 9600gt 512mb
Windows Vista Home Premium x64
Click to expand...

----

Okay with that out of the way, here is what is happening.

All three of us are trying to run ubuntu in a VM. We are using Virtual Box 2.1.0. But, it is only staying in 800 x 600. The screen shots look like this:

friend 1
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd105/johnspalding4/ubuntuquestion.jpg

2
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/TheAnswer241/untitled-28.jpg

and mine looks just like those.

Anyone know why this is happening? all 3 of us are running vbox 2.1.0
 
Did you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions? Those contain the proper VM video and mouse driver which allows for higher resolutions. The pics looks like it's working fine, at least to me, but without that driver - and without changing the resolution in Ubuntu - you're going to be "stuck" at that resolution.

VirtualBox is running the entire OS in a window, yanno, so when you expand it, it's going to expand the window but not the content inside it. That's using the default resolution set for the OS in the VM itself, so that's the limit for it until you install the Guest Additions and get that proper VM video driver installed.
 
There should be a menu option in virtualbox to install guest additions, then you need to go to the command line and for ubuntu i believe its /media/cdrom/ and sh whateverlinux32x64etcscript.sh
and it will install the additions

its been a while sinc ei used virtualbox, and i dont have it in front of me, but i remember it being that straightforward.
 
yer guest extensions to get display drivers.
from the vbox menu of a running VM there should be an install extensions option - this is basically an iso it mounts into its virtualCD

HOWEVER... installing vbox extensions in ubuntu (or most distro's) aint easy because by default ubuntu doesn't install the toolchain (gcc,kernel-headers...) I can't remember but when you run the VboxLinux.... script it will either tell you what you need todo or give you some hints - give me a bit and I will give you the EXACT apt-get command to type
 
Just did this myself to get debian in VB for my cs202 class. Anyone else having troubles with the guest OS randomly repeating keystrokes and occasionally logging itself out?
 
bbranigin, i had that issue with the older vbox, but with the new one 2.1.0, i havent had that issue.
 
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