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Alexis Wilke
Asked: 2022-09-17 05:10:46 +0800 CST

When I reboot my Ubuntu 22.04 VirtualBox, I have to set the screen resolution again. How do I make the resolution stick?

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I've installed a new Ubuntu 22.04 server with Gnome on a VirtualBox system and the size of the screen is reset to 800x600 on each reboot (both in the login screen and once logged in).

I change the screen resolution to say 1920x1600 and that works great. I can use the system for days without an issue.

The next time I reboot, though, that larger resolution is lost. It will be reset back to the 800x600.

Am I doing something wrong?

Note 1: I can see that the ~/.config/monitors.xml is there and properly defined:

<monitors version="2">
  <configuration>
    <logicalmonitor>
      <x>0</x>
      <y>0</y>
      <scale>2</scale>
      <primary>yes</primary>
      <monitor>
        <monitorspec>
          <connector>Virtual-1</connector>
          <vendor>unknown</vendor>
          <product>unknown</product>
          <serial>unknown</serial>
        </monitorspec>
        <mode>
          <width>1920</width>
          <height>1200</height>
          <rate>59.884601593017578</rate>
        </mode>
      </monitor>
    </logicalmonitor>
  </configuration>
</monitors>

Note 2: As mentioned in a few places, I can copy the monitors.xml file to /var/lib/gdm3/.config/. and the Login screen works as expected. But once logged in, that resolution is lost again.

sudo cp ~/.config/monitors.xml /var/lib/gdm3/.config/.

Note 3: I have other versions of Ubuntu (18.04, 20.04) with similar setups and the resolution sticks just fine.

Note 4: I have a single "monitor".

Updates:

When I run xrandr --verbose, I see modes such as this one:

1920x1440 (0x53b) 233.500MHz -HSync +VSync *current +preferred
    h: width  1920 start 2064 end 2264 total 2608 skew    0 clock  89.53KHz
    v: height 1440 start 1443 end 1447 total 1493           clock  59.97Hz

I transformed that into a script like so:

xrandr --newmode "1920x1440_59.97"   233.50  1920 2064 2264 2608  1440 1443 1447 1493 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode XWAYLAND0 1920x1440_59.97
xrandr --output XWAYLAND0 --mode 1920x1440_59.97

But the first and last xrandr generate errors:

$ sh xrandr1.sh
X Error of failed request:  BadName (named color or font does not exist)
  Major opcode of failed request:  139 (RANDR)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  16 (RRCreateMode)
  Serial number of failed request:  20
  Current serial number in output stream:  20
X Error of failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
  Major opcode of failed request:  139 (RANDR)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  7 (RRSetScreenSize)
  Serial number of failed request:  22
  Current serial number in output stream:  23

Now I've seen some people having issues with XWAYLAND0. Maybe that's what I'm running into...

Some logs found in the /var/log/syslog file:

Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 colord[2535]: failed to get edid data: EDID length is too small
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 dbus-daemon[1214]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.ColorManager'
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 systemd[1]: Started Manage, Install and Generate Color Profiles.
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 xbrlapi.desktop[2550]: openConnection: connect: No such file or directory
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 xbrlapi.desktop[2550]: cannot connect to braille devices daemon brltty at :0
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[2196]: dbus-daemon[2196]: [session uid=130 pid=2196] Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.ScreenSaver'
Sep 15 23:31:48 ubuntu22 gsd-color[2356]: failed to get edid: unable to get EDID for output
Sep 15 23:31:48 ubuntu22 gsd-color[2356]: unable to get EDID for xrandr-Virtual-1: unable to get EDID for output
Sep 17 01:10:40 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[2665]: XWAYLAND: mode 1024x600 is not available
Sep 17 01:16:20 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[2665]: message repeated 2 times: [ XWAYLAND: mode 1024x600 is not available]

The last one seems to indicate that by default the system expects a display named Virtual-1. Unfortunately, my display seems to be named XWAYLAND0 instead.

In that regard, I also found these:

Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[2303]: Registering session with GDM
Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[1764]: Connection to xwayland lost
Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-session[1742]: gnome-session-binary[1742]: WARNING: Lost name on bus: org.gnome.SessionManager
Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-session-binary[1742]: WARNING: Lost name on bus: org.gnome.SessionManager

For that one, I can find a bug on launchpad.

I tried to turn off wayland but that did not help...

[daemon]
# Uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg
WaylandEnable=false

...in that the screen still comes up with the wrong resolution on a reboot. However, the xrandr command now works. If you'd like to make it work with Wayland, you may be able to use the gnome-randr.py script. Note that I did a reboot after changing the WaylandEnable=false (I think it goes without saying).

virtualbox

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In the "not elegant but works" category of fixes -

    I faced this too with a VM that was a clone of a netbook with an odd screen size. I couldn't get the VM to retain the screen size setting. So I wrote a script to resize the screen and added the script to the startup items.

    In my case the script was

    xrandr --newmode "1024x600_60.00"   49.00  1024 1072 1168 1312  600 603 613 624 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode Virtual1 1024x600_60.00
xrandr --output Virtual1 --mode 1024x600_60.00

    Your values will likely differ.

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