Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.3 LTS resolution problem

[viking1304]

I just installed ARM version of Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.3 LTS without any problem. The only issue I noticed so far is that I can't change resolution. There is only one option 1024x768. I am aware that auto resizing doesn't work, but I am little confused why I can't choose any other resolution, even I installed open-vm-tools-desktop.

What I am missing? Should I specify desired resolution i .vmx?

[Mikero]

Have you read the Testing guide?

It covers this in great detail 😉

[viking1304]

Yes I did, but I probably was not paying enough attention to some details.

I noticed that auto fit is not supported and that it is a known issues, and I also noticed that Wayland should be disabled before updating kernel, but I guess I missed the part where it said that I should update my kernel to 5.14 to be able to change resolution. 😳

[Mikero]

That's it 😃

Because of our policy of shipping into Open Source, our drivers for Linux are introduced into the kernel itself rather than shipping them separately and having users install them.

As distros adopt 5.14 and later this will work "out of the box".

Likewise, with auto-fit, our fixes for that will go into Open VM Tools, and the distros will have to pick up our changes and put them into their releases. (Users can always compile from source while they wait)

(I don't usually say "go read the docs", but I spent a _lot_ of time writing them to try and answer as much as I could in advance! 😉

[dmitrito]

Thanks you for writing the detailed startup guide. 

I have successfully installed Debian at 5.15.0-1-arm64 using LXDE which does not use Wayland.

I also compiled open-vm-tools from source and added it to systemd and that seems to be running.

I still am not seeing the resolution change from 1024x768 when I resize the window. It appears to be scaling the window contents.

A caveat is that I've never run VMWare Fusion before so I have no clue how this is supposed to work and may be missing something obvious (I also don't have an Intel Mac to compare on).

Any further ideas to debug?

[dmitrito]

I tried switching to gdm3 with Wayland disabled and am still not able to resize the vm's display out of 1024x768 by resizing the MacOS window or switching to fullscreen mode.

[palter]

At this time, auto resizing isn't supported. After you resize the macOS window or switch to full screen, you have to change the resolution manually inside the VM in the Settings app under Display.

[dmitrito]

Got it. Well other than that inconvenience this M1 beta seems to be working great for me!

[dmitrito]

And indeed I optimistically misread Mr. Roy's post and the guide as saying "the distros don't yet have auto-fit, but the latest available code from our repo does." 

[stormie213]

I was running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS arm64 on the apple silicon version of VMware, and I followed the steps on page 6 through this testing guide by Mikero. I failed to update the kernel to 5.14 (It seems that the 20.04 LTS has a newer version already, not sure), but after I finished the disabling Wayland steps and then run "sudo reboot", I was able to change the resolutions in the display setting page inside the guest os.

[donnaaboise]

Excellent tip - I had no idea I had to update the kernel.  Only slight confusion is that in the testing guide, the user is asked to download four *.deb files, but only three are on the actual download site.  But everything worked with only the three files. 

linux-headers-5.14.0-051400-generic_5.14.0-051400.202108292331_arm64.deb
linux-image-unsigned-5.14.0-051400-generic_5.14.0-051400.202108292331_arm64.deb
linux-modules-5.14.0-051400-generic_5.14.0-051400.202108292331_arm64.deb

 This three updated my kernel, and I was able to change my screen resolution, so it must have worked. 

[chyang]

I managed to get resizing window with arbitrary resolution work by rebuilding open-vm-tools. Here are the steps just in case someone would like to try.

* Follow previous tips to install kernel 5.19.0 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS 
Kernel: Linux 5.19.0-051900-generic

* Uninstall open-vm-tools

sudo apt purge open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

* Install prerequisite libraries

sudo apt install autoconf libtool make libmspack-dev libglib2.0-dev libpam0g-dev libssl-dev libxml2-dev libxmlsec1-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev libxinerama-dev libxi-dev libxrender-dev libxrandr-dev libxtst-dev libgdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0-dev libgdk3.0-cil-dev libgtk-3-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev gcc g++

* Compile and install vmtoolsd

git clone https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools.git
cd open-vm-tools/open-vm-tools/

autoreconf -i
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

* Main starter: /etc/rc.local (with execute permission, this scripts handles resizing of login screen)

#!/bin/bash

/usr/local/bin/vmtoolsd -b /var/run/open-vm-tools.pid

* User starter: /etc/xdg/autostart/user-vmtoolsd.desktop (this script handles copy and paste after user login)

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=vmtoolsd user launcher
Exec=/usr/local/bin/vmtoolsd -n vmusr --blockFd 3
Icon=system-run
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

After installing your customized open-vm-tools, make sure you have 2 copies of open-vm-tools one running under root and the other running under your account. This would make window resizing and copy/paste work. However, I didn't try to enable drag & drop since I rarely use them. Hope this helps.