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John McDermon
Asked: 2012-04-16 22:43:53 +0800 CST

Dynamic resizing of screen doesn't work in Parallels

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I was already running the latest Parallels 7 build when I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. Dynamic resizing of the screen was working in prior versions of Ubuntu. In the process of trying to fix this I reinstalled the Parallels Tools and it made no difference. The screen resolution is "stuck" at 800x600 -- Thats all that the system can detect. I have 256MB configured for video memory in the VM.

Output from xrandr:

xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 800 x 600, current 800 x 600, maximum 800 x 600
default connected 800x600+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   800x600        75.0*

I would try to add a screen resolution, but I don't know what the Parallels VM supports.

Has anyone figured this out?

virtualization mac resolution screen parallels

2 Answers

  1. The version of Parallels Tools that comes with Parallels 7 doesn't support Ubuntu 12.10, but it's possible to install the version that comes with Parallels 8.

    If you download the trial version of Parallels Desktop 8 and mount the disk image, you'll find the Parallels Tools ISO at /Volumes/Parallels Desktop 8/Parallels Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/Tools/prl-tools-lin.iso. Mount this ISO in your Ubuntu VM and follow the usual instructions to install/upgrade the tools.

    ("Parallels Desktop.app" is flagged as hidden and doesn't appear in Finder, but you can still copy the ISO out of the disk image using terminal.)

    I did this with my Ubuntu 12.10 VM on Parallels 7 and dynamic screen resizing works fine.

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  2. I would add to the answer about using parallels 8 tools (which works great by the way) how to mount the ISO, it can be a bit tricky on OS X. In parallels desktop, go to the Device menu>CD/DVD1>Connect Image… To get to the iso specified above, from an OS X terminal, simply run open /Volumes/Parallels Desktop 8/Parallels Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/Tools/ This will open a folder to the location of the iso. Simply drag the folder to parallels's file chooser screen, it will allow you to select the right iso from within this file chooser. In the Ubuntu vm, using the Disk app, mount the CD you have just inserted, then cd into the media and run as root the install script.

    Hope this helps.

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