Display Resolution Under Virtualbox

Hi,

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with a 15.4'' screen (~330x206, max 1680x1050 pixels), with Windows XP installed. I am now trying to install Linux (Suse 10.3) in a Virtualbox and encounter problems with the screen resolution, or rather the screen size.

First, I installed Suse 10.3 in addition to Windows XP, as dual-boot. This works fine, everything including max screen resolution (1680x1050). It was not entirely straight forward to set the correct screen size, aspect ratio etc. I had to fiddle quite a bit with sax2, rebooting, trying again..until it worked.

Optimally, I want to run Linux as a virtual machine under Windows XP rather than as dual-boot. So I installed Virtualbox 1.6 from SUN, and installed Suse 10.3 the same way as I did before, but now as a virtual machine.
The result: I cannot get the full screen resolution. The maximum size I managed to set up is 1280x768 (the default is just 800x600). The problem in sax2 is that it never allows me to set the correct screen resolution, instead complaining about "The selected screen resolution and/or color settings are not supported by the graphics cards framebuffer".

I have read some other posts on similar issues, which usually recommend to manually edit the file
/etc/X11/xorg.conf
which I have tried but failed so far.

Here is an abstract from xorg.conf, after sax2 setup:

Section "InputDevice"
**Driver****** "mouse"
**Identifier** "Mouse[1]"
**Option****** "Buttons" "9"
**Option****** "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
**Option****** "Name" "ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse"
**Option****** "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
**Option****** "Vendor" "Sysp"
**Option****** "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
**Option****** "CalcAlgorithm" "XServerPool"
**DisplaySize**332 207
**HorizSync****30-66
**Identifier** "Monitor[0]"
**ModelName****"1680X1050@60HZ"
**Option****** "DPMS"
**VendorName** "--> LCD"
**VertRefresh**50-61
**UseModes**** "Modes[0]"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
**Identifier** "Modes[0]"
**Modeline ****"800x600" 38.22 800 832 912 1024 600 601 604 622
EndSection

Section "Screen"
**SubSection "Display"
****Depth******15
****Modes******"default" 
**EndSubSection
**SubSection "Display"
****Depth******16
****Modes******"default" 
**EndSubSection
**SubSection "Display"
****Depth******24
****Modes******"default" 
**EndSubSection
**SubSection "Display"
****Depth******8
****Modes******"default" 
**EndSubSection
**Device****** "Device[0]"
**Identifier** "Screen[0]"
**Monitor******"Monitor[0]"
EndSection

Section "Device"
**BoardName****"Framebuffer Graphics"
**Driver****** "fbdev"
**Identifier** "Device[0]"
**VendorName** "VESA"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
**Identifier** "Layout[all]"
**InputDevice**"Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
**InputDevice**"Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
**Option****** "Clone" "off"
**Option****** "Xinerama" "off"
**Screen****** "Screen[0]"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
****Group******"video"
****Mode****** 0660
EndSection

I'm quite happy to manually change anything, but I am not smart enough to figure out exactly what!

Any advice?
Raggy

Hi, I'm running it the other way suse as host and xp as guest, so take this for what it's worth.
First thing, how much video memory have you allocated to your guest? 8 MB would be the minimum for
a resolution of 1680x1050. Now I had some resolution issues too which was magically solved
by just toggling the maximize icon, don't ask me why that worked! But I never had any problems with full screen
mode. Vesa mode will surely be the only way to go for you, there's the same limitation running it
the opposite way, no 3D!