Saturday, February 2, 2013

VirtualBox with Linux guest on Windows host won't resize after installing guest additions

Before I go on a rant, here's the short answer:

Instructions from the VirtualBox manual say to install Dynamic Kernal Module System (DKMS). For my Ubuntu setup this is what worked:

sudo apt-get install dkms

For a Fedora installation it's something like this:

yum install dkms

Follow these instructions for detailed steps on Suse, CentOS, Debian, etc.
Now that DKMS is installed, you can (re)install Guest Additions. They say to install DKMS before installing Guest Additions, so if your Guest Additions are already installed and functional (ha! If they were, why would you be reading this?) you might consider a) uninstalling and rebooting; or b) just rebooting because if you had the same problem as me the reboot breaks Guest Additions anyways.

Back to my rant...

Wow, how's that for a link-bait title? And why such an obvious bait for the search engines? BECAUSE IT TOOK FOREVER TO FIND THE ANSWER. I've dealt with this issue for several months now by simply not rebooting unless it was absolutely necessary. Once a single reboot was done, my screen was stuck back at the smaller resolution that my image started at.

I would have thought that since my Ubuntu image came from VirtualBoxes.org it would play nicely with Guest Additions. Apparently those images are fairly stripped down with only what's necessary. Since those are "additions", the prerequisites aren't in place.
Don't you just love those little nuanced rat-holes you encounter as you learn? Blarg.

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