Linux – i3wm running in Arch Linux guest (VirtualBox) stops auto-resizing

arch linuxi3linuxvirtualbox

I'm trying to get Arch Linux to work on VirtualBox. I've followed the instructions on the ArchWiki and the OS boots fine (running linux-lts kernel, with virtualbox-guest-dkms Guest Additions installed). After installing i3, I've added the following to ~/.xinitrc:

VBoxClient-all
exec i3

This appears to work, but does the auto-resizing only once. After that, the Auto-Resize Guest Display menu and Seamless Mode in host VirtualBox menu become disabled.
What I found out, is that if I kill the VBoxClient process and re-initiate it, the auto-resize functionality starts to work again, but disables as soon the first resize event occurs.

killall VBoxClient
/usr/bin/VBoxClient-all

Can anyone suggest a solution?

Best Answer

I updated my Arch recently and the problem seems to be fixed! However, prior to that, I just settled with defining an alias in my .zshrc file:

alias resize='killall VBoxClient && VBoxClient-all'

So whenever I needed to fix the sizing of my screen, I just typed that command in my terminal. Not really the solution I was asking for, but it still helped out a lot.

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