Debian 8.6 VM display resolution cannot be increased

debianresolutionvirtualbox

I set up a new Debian 8.6 VM today (Windows 7 Host) and have installed guest additions from the disk image via terminal. I also installed dkms, altered my grub file. Plain old dkms installed just find, but aptitude couldn't find any of the virtualbox-guest files at all. Having done all this and restarted my VM every step along the way, I still am stuck at 1024 x 768 display resolution on my 1080p monitor. Even if I set the VM to full-screen mode, it gives me a display area of the exact same size as before, just with black letterboxing all around it.

Everything else I've seen about this problem seems to be some sort of variation on the advice that hasn't worked for me thus far.

Best Answer

For install guest additions you will need linux-headers and if aptitude don't see the virtualbox packages. I"s because your forget to change your apt sources.list for adding "contrib"

/etc/apt/sources.list

must contain

deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib

after that run

apt-get update

and finally

apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') virtualbox

Related Solutions

Windows – Custom resolution in VirtualBox Windows 8 with Guest Additions

This tip from (http://www.mstechpages.com/2011/09/set-custom-resolution-in-virtualbox-for-windows-8/) gave me the hint I needed to finally get it working:

"Did not work for me. I then installed the display driver from the guest extensions which enabled the Host+G shortcut (also worked in fullscreen)"

Here's what I ended up doing:

Install Windows 8.1 on VM
Run the above command: VBoxManage.exe setextradata "GuestName" CustomVideoMode1 1900x1080x32 (several times, actually to add in all the resolutions I wanted)
Install VirtualBox Guest Additions
Extract the drivers from the Guest Additions according to the instructions in the D:\64Bit\Readme.txt a. Open Command Prompt b. Type "D:" c. VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64 /extract /D=C:\Drivers
Right Click on desktop, choose "Screen Resolution"
Choose "Advanced Settings"
On "Adapter" tab, choose 'Properties'
Choose "Driver" tab
Click "Update Driver" button
Click "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my comptuer" link.
Choose "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter"
Click Next.
Restart, if prompted.
Back on the Screen Resolution page, choose your new resolution from the ones you added from the command line.

Linux – How to change resolution of CentOS 6.5 Resolution on virtualbox (Host: Win7)

More steps to add 1920x1080 Screen resolution. Just make sure that you "reboot" after you uncomment X11's xorg.conf file before you run the automated scripts further down below.

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.unused

You can use the following scripts. Also credit to Adam Prax's Answer How to change resolution of CentOS 6.5 Resolution on virtualbox (Host: Win7)

#!/bin/bash
Diplay_Name=`xrandr | grep connected | cut -d' ' -f1`
Display_Spec=`cvt 1920 1080 | grep Modeline | cut -d' ' -f2 |cut -d '"' -f2`
Display_Params=`cvt 1920 1080 | grep Modeline | cut -d' ' -f2-18`
xrandr --newmode $Display_Params
xrandr --addmode $Diplay_Name $Display_Spec
xrandr --output $Diplay_Name --mode $Display_Spec

You should have something commands execution like below.

xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync 
xrandr --addmode VGA-0 1920x1080_60.00 
xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1920x1080_60.00

Then, you can use VirtualBox’s “View -> Auto-resize Guest Display” to let VirtualBox automatic resize work for you.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – Custom resolution in VirtualBox Windows 8 with Guest Additions

Linux – How to change resolution of CentOS 6.5 Resolution on virtualbox (Host: Win7)

Related Question