How do I switch to a higher resolution in Centos 6 installed on a virtual machine (VirtualBox)?

Question

I have installed Centos 6 on a virtual machine (virtualbox). Maximum available screen resolution is 800x600. How do I get higher resolutions?

Solution 1

Install the VirtualBox Guest Additions in the virtual machine. You can do this by selecting "Install Guest Additions" from the Devices menu. This will install a device driver into the guest OS that will dynamically adjust the screen resolution as you resize the VirtualBox window.

Solution 2

You need Virtual Box guest extensions.

In order to install them you first need the RPMForge repository added for yum, follow these instructions:

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/RPMForge#head-f0c3ecee3dbb407e4eed79a56ec0ae92d1398e01

Then run this command in a terminal:

yum install dkms

Solution 3

VirtualBox Guest Additions includes the screen drivers for auto-resizing.

I find I occasionally need to rerun the GuestAdditions after installing software, and frequently so after doing a system update. Following re-install of GuestAdditions, auto-resizing still unavailable until I do a system restart on the guest. Then auto-resize is available again.

Comments

[Ankit Sagar]

This might be a bug in CentOS 6. Look at the release-notes for RedHat 6.1 regarding problems with 800 x 600.

[Omar Malas]

Thanks. I had edited xorg.conf file under /etc/X11 to get custom resolutions. I had added 1920x1080. When I rebooted, it couldn't start X window. Then I entered rescue mode and deleted xorg.conf file. Because I read that it creates a default xorg.conf file if it is deleted. I rebooted again, X window started, but there were no xorg.conf file under /etc/X11. Why wasn't it created? And, isn't this file necessary for X window to start? Why didn't the absence of xorg.conf result in any errors?

[juggler]

One of the recent versions of xorg eliminated the need for xorg.conf. You only need xorg.conf now if the default settings guessed by xorg are not to your liking.

[Mohammed Sufian]

thank you so much @Beachhouse Sir.. work like charm for me.. i am using CentOS 6.5