Archive for June, 2013

VirtualBox Ubuntu Guest Auto Re-size Display Problem

Sunday, June 23rd, 2013

Oracle-VM-VirtualBoxOracle VirtualBox version 4.2.12 was released on 12-Apr-2013 and caused the following problem: VirtualBox Guest Additions 4.2.12 breaks Ubuntu 12.04 guest. The solution of reverting back to GA 4.2.10 allowed the VM to run but I lost the ability to re-size the guest display.

On 21-Jun-2013 version 4.2.14 was released with a fix to this problem.

GA 4.2.14 does not cause graphics problems but it did not resolve the re-size issue for me. The Ubuntu VM starts up okay, but the display would still not re-size when the host (Windows 7 x64) window size was changed.

The solution to this problem was to change /etc/X11/xorg.conf back to its original configuration (this is the complete un-commented file content):

The xorg.conf this replaced had device/monitor/screen sections with specific driver details, e.g.:

I've been using this VM for a number of years and I suspect that older versions of the guest additions made this change.  Apparently newer GAs no longer require this.

Anyway, if you're having a Ubuntu guest display re-size problem give this a try.