I have installed a Fedora 13 64 bit virtual machine using VirtualBox software. Host platform is a Dell XPS 64 bit machine. The default screen resolutoin is 800x600. The Dell monitor is one of the wide screen models driven by Nvidia. The host OS is Windows 7 64 bit.

I need to set the resolution to 1366x768. I have made edits to the xorg.conf file and grub. After reboot, the screen initially enlarges to 1366x768, but then returns to the 800x600 resolution when the OS boot up page appears. I've had the same problem with Ubuntu 10.04. I was able to correct the problem in a Windows XP guest VM by resetting the Windows XP screen resolution in the usual way.

Is this a VirtualBox problem, a virtual machine problem in general, a problem with Nvidia driving wide screen monitors, or a Linux problem? Sun Microsystems does not recommend using the Nvidia drivers (after all else failed, I tried this anyway and the result was that the Linux OS failed to boot, so I deleted the VM and started over). Anyone have a solution?

VirtualBox virtualizes its own video card, so Fedora doesn't see the physical GPU. Did you install the virtualbox guest additions? I believe that will get your guest OS to use whatever resolution you have the virtualbox window set to (and give you a fullscreen option).

Adam

Installing the "guest additions" packages to the Fedora 13 virtual machine I created using VirtualBox resolved the monitor resolution issue. For my laptop, I edited the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf by adding the following:

Modes "1440x900"
to the Section "Screen" as follows:

Section "Screen"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "144x900"
EndSubSection

Also, the full screen option works as expected, taking up the monitor screen.

Considering that most would consider having full screen monitor resolution to be an essential feature, it is unexpected that it is not provided by the VirtualBox installation software. Until receiving the question asking if I had installed the "guest additions", I did not realize that I had more reading to do in the VirtualBox installation quide. I assumed that something called "guest additions" was there to add optional functions rather than essential ones. Now that I'm on the VirtualBox forum, I'll include it as a suggestion to the developers that in a future release, they combine "guest additions" into the installation wizard application.

Thanks for the assistance!

And how do you know that "most" would consider that an essential feature?

By the way, there's also an "Install Guest Additions" option in the Devices menu.

Adam

My understanding is that the guest additions can't be included in the main package because they include drivers that the client OS needs to install. You can't install a driver into the virtual box program itself. That doesn't even make sense. Though, maybe I am missing something.

I think the OP means that the VirtualBox should prompt you to install the driver after you've setup the guest OS.

Adam

I have installed Guest Additions and have also enabled 3D Hardware Acceleration from Virtual Box VM settings. Still I am getting only one screen resolution option (800X600) and also, am not able to change Color Schemes, as I am getting an error "3D Hardware Acceleration is not available". Anyone has a solution? Why the Fedora system is not able to detect 3D Hardware acceleration?

What's the output of 'glxinfo'?

Adam

My bad! I didn't install Guest Addition properly, so was getting that error. It's working fine now after a re-install. Thanks.