Linux Guest Desktop Background in Full Screen - Top Left Corner Only

[vmxmr]

This has "bugged" me for a long time. Most of my VMware guests are configured for full screen mode.

When I login to some Linux guests, the desktop background stays small, and is confined to the upper left corner of the screen. The rest of the screen is black. The Linux guest OS operates perfectly - this is a cosmetic annoyance.

Furthermore, the problem is not consistent. Sometimes the "quarter screen" desktop background appears in the top left corner briefly, and then expands to fill the desktop as it should. I cannot predict when it will be bad or good, but most of the time it is bad.

I am posting an example from Ubuntu 14.10, but I have seen it with other versions of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. An example from this morning is Trisquel Linux 7.

The problem appears on many Macs running different versions of OS X, and has been going on through several releases of VMware Fusion.

Any ideas of how to eliminate this cosmetic annoyance?

[vmxmr]

Bump.

Does anyone run Ubuntu Linux in full screen mode under VMware Fusion? Am I the only one seeing this?

[WoodyZ]

Yes, I can confirm its and issue for me mainly with Ubuntu however I'm using Linux Mint (Cinnamon and KDE) more then Ubuntu and it seems to be fine in LM.

As a workaround in Ubuntu, when I do occasionally use it, I use a bash scrip that toggles screen resolution which causes the wallpaper to fill the desktop.

[vmxmr]

Thank you for the confirmation and the hint. I use several different distros in VMware Fusion guests. As I said above, I have also seen it in Trisquel, although it is much rarer. To be honest, I have not been happy with Ubuntu for a long time, but many people I know use it.

Thanks to Woody, I discovered that changing to single window view, then back to full screen view also fixes the problem. If you have the Apple menubar hidden, then you can select the running VM in the Library view, go to the View menu and choose Single Window, then choose Full Screen again and it fixes the problem until the next time you boot Linux.

Here are two questions for Woody:

1. Can you save us time and share your script?

2. Do you know whether this is an Ubuntu (or Linux) issue, a VMware issue, or an Apple issue?

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

1. Can you save us time and share your script?

I have a MBPr and when I'm in the office its connected to a 27' Thunderbolt Display and full screen resolution is 2560x1440 and when not connected it's 1440x900.  So I coded the scrip to get the current resolution, toggle it to 1024x768, sleep for a second and toggle it back the original resolution.

On my system in the script the value of "$CSR" will either be  2560x1440 or 1440x900 and the current screen resolution is determined by:

CSR="$(xrandr | grep -o -m 1 'current.*,' | sed -e 's/current//' -e 's/ //g' -e 's/,//')"

Also attached a copy of fixwp in the fixwp.zip file.

2. Do you know whether this is an Ubuntu (or Linux) issue, a VMware issue, or an Apple issue?

I never really took the time to investigate since it was easy to script a workaround.  BTW I was also aware that switching between VM window modes would trigger the same results however that defeats the purpose of starting in Full Screen view so I scripted the workaround.

Message was edited by: WoodyZ - I edited the fixwp script as I noticed the grep argument really should have been single quoted not double quoted.  Even though in this case it doesn't affect the results it's more proper so the shell doesn't misinterpret it.  (The problem with looking at something one wrote over a year ago is one wants to make additional changes and so I did.)

[vmxmr]

Hi Woody - Thank you for sharing the script. I was looking at the xrandr man page when your helpful reply arrived.

[WoodyZ]

No problem.  BTW I made a minor edit to the script and noted why in the other reply.