full screen problem with linux host

[ScubaSteve84]

Hi,

I'm trying to switch over from Windows XP to Ubuntu as my host system for VMWare Workstation 6.5, but I'm having a major problem with fullscreen/exclusive mode:

In the Windows host, when running fullscreen, the VM displays at the guest's resolution. In Linux, however, the VM is displayed in a small window in the center of the screen. It can be stretched, but it won't change my screen resolution. This happens with both Linux and WIndows guests, in fullscreen and exclusive mode, and with or without VMWare tools installed.

I'm not running compiz or xgl or any other bling software that would interfere, just a standard Gnome desktop, and using the official (closed-source) Nvidia driver (177.80).

If anyone has any suggestions for how I might be able to fix this, I'd really appreciate it.

[wila]

Hi,

Welcome to the forums!

The first thing you should try is to use the open source driver and see if it fixes your issue. Can you go full screen then?

If so then it is probably the nvidia driver... my guess still is that it is the nvidia driver.....

Used workstation on many linuxes and almost never have that kind of issue. When I did have issues it was always the closed driver (ATI or NVIDIA)

If the above helps then update your driver to 177.82 which appears to be the latest.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

--

Wil

PS: Interesting forum name.. scuba diving is cool!

[ScubaSteve84]

Thanks for the suggestion, wila. No luck though, unfortunately, with either the open-source nv driver or the latest 177.82 official.

[louyo]

I agree that it is probably the Nvidia drivers, I have same thing here with Nvidia proprietary drivers.. Full screen is hit or miss... I have good luck with Quick Switch mode as a work around. Or else just maximize the window and use fit window/fit guest now. I can always show full screen that way and get the resolution I want.

Lou

[ScubaSteve84]

Thanks wila and louyo for your input. I'm moving my VMs back to Windows for the time being until NVidia or VMware sorts this out, but I'll still have Ubuntu installed as well. If anyone has any other ideas, I'll be sure to try them out. If not, thanks anyway.

[wila]

Hi,

When you said you tried it without the nvidia drivers, I take it you rebooted as well to fall back to the default screen driver ? (sorry for the question, just making sure)

Well one thing that might help troubleshooting what is going on here is to attach your vmware.log file as is located in the VMs folder to a reply here.

Please try booting your VM, then try to switch to full screen and make a note of the time and tell us that along with the log file.

It might give us additional insight and/or background info into what is going on.

--

Wil

[riotxix]

run vmware-configtools.pl

When it gets to the x section, let reconfigure your thing to he max resolution (1280x800 probably).

Then startx.

Alternatively try

Dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

[ScubaSteve84]

Thanks, riotxix. I tried "Dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" on the host, though I suspect you meant to run it on the guest. In any case, it didn't really do anything except turn off the proprietary driver. I wouldn't be to surprised if my xorg.conf had something to do with this though, so I'm attaching a copy here of both the one generated by the proprietary driver and the one generated by reconfiguring xserver-xorg.

vmware-config-tools.pl I believe is meant to be run on a Linux guest, whereas my VMs are running various versions of Windows. Is there an equivalent command to run under Windows? That did sound rather promising.

Wila, that's a good question, but yeah I rebooted each time I changed drivers. The ones I've tried so far are nv, vesa, and nvidia-glx. None of them fixed the issue, and I had other issues with the open-source drivers, so I'm back to the binary drivers for now (and probably until nvidia follows ati's lead and starts supporting the open-source efforts, but that's a topic for another forum)

Along with the two xorg.conf files, the attached archive also contains a vmware.log file. I went fullscreen at exactly 00:11. There are some interesting video-related messages shortly before that, though.

Thanks again for all your help.

[wila]

Hi,

Just had a look at your log file and I think I know what is going on.

There are 2 lines of interest in your log.

Dec 06 00:10:00.671: vmx| DICT    pref.autoFitFullScreen = fitHostToGuest

and

Dec 06 00:11:00.955: vmx| VMXVmdbCbVmGuestResolutionSetJob: Sending rpcMsg = Resolution_Set 1434 894

The way I would read the top setting is that it would try and change the host resolution to make it what the guest is.. but when I just tried it here on a VMware Server machine, it worked the other way around. My host is 1152x864.. and the windows 2000 guest in non full screen is 1024x768 and after going full screen it went up 1152x864

So... my hunch here is that your windows 2000 guest cannot switch to your resolution of 1434x894.

Could you try a lower screen resolution and see if you can go full screen then?

Another alternative might be to change the preference, but let's do this one step at a time

--

Wil

[ScubaSteve84]

Hi Wila,

Actually, I have no problem with going fullscreen at the host's resolution, which in this case is 1440x900 (not sure why it was off by 6 in the log, but my monitor's OSD does show 1440x900), and I have no problem if the screen is set to 1024x768 going fullscreen at 1024x768, etc. The problem is that it doesn't change my actual (host) screen resolution to match the guest's, which should happen automatically when I go to exclusive mode.

For instance, if I go into exclusive mode and switch to 640x480 on the guest (either Linux or Windows), or if a fullscreen application on the guest requests that resolution, VMWare on the Windows host would detect that and change my host resolution to 640x480, but the Linux host remains at 1440x768 (or whatever it had it set to).

I had hoped changing the preference to "fitHostToGuest" would fix this, but it seems all this does is try to stretch the image (poorly) to scale up to the host resolution, and the resulting effect is like trying to browse the web on a Nintendo 64. fitGuestToHost, on the other hand, creates the "little box with black borders" effect I had originally.

I'm sorry I did a poor job of explaining this in my initial post, and I hope it didn't cause you too much trouble. Thanks again for your efforts.

[ScubaSteve84]

Also just to give an example, if you go into exclusive mode right away when you start a Windows 2000 guest, your screen resolution should change to 800x600 if I'm not mistaken. Then, when the login window comes up, it should change to whatever your desktop resolution is supposed to be (in my case, 1440x900). However on my Ubunutu setup, it just stays at 1440x900 the whole time.

Of course, I doubt anyone cares what the Windows startup screen looks like, but that's just an example. Most fullscreen applications do the same thing, and that's the real problem.