Dynamic resizing of screen doesn't work in Parallels

Question

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?

Solution

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.