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23

So I've installed Ubuntu inside of Virtualbox, and I resized the window of Virtualbox to be full-size, but the Ubuntu Desktop stays the same standard size. How do I make the width of Ubuntu stretch 100% across the Virtualbox window?

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If you don't have X (i.e. you only installed server) and don't want to install it, you need to change the resolution for grub - see those instructions here: askubuntu.com/q/54067/247661 – Aaron Hall Feb 12 '16 at 20:46
up vote 83 down vote accepted

Inside the virtual machine, install the virtualbox-guest-dkms, virtualbox-guest-utils and virtualbox-guest-x11 packages. These "guest additions" include a video driver that will do what you ask, plus a mouse driver that interacts with the host system so you don't have to use the host key to "uncapture" the mouse; it just works when you're on the virtual machine's window.

There are 2 ways to do this:

  1. From the VirtualBox top menu choose Devices, Install guest additions, then wait for a mock-CD ROM to appear and run the install from there, or

  2. just type

    sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11

(personal recommendation: the second (apt-get) option is very simple and quick).

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Fantastic. I was in the process of installing the Guest Additions via the link in Virtualbox when you wrote this. However, I believe I watched as those packages were installed as well. I appreciate your help. – willbeeler Feb 15 '12 at 15:31
4  
+1 - thanks! It seems that just sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms is required as that automatically installs the utils and x11 packages. – Mark Whitaker Aug 27 '13 at 10:34
    
This tip is really helpful. On 14.04 trusty fails to load screen vbox screen resolutions. Installing the applets fixes the bug and the X server behaves like XP inside virtualbox. – user43787 Feb 20 '14 at 8:01
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Also note you have to give enough video RAM (more than 17 MB) to have this work – Claudiu Jul 17 '14 at 19:28
    
Also note that, as of the newer versions (14.04), ubuntu supports mouse and keyboard capture without any guest additions. But display is still in question. – Subin Sebastian Aug 29 '14 at 7:11
up vote 6 down vote

Shutdown your virtual box and in a terminal shell type the following command

VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution 1366,768

the 1366,768 is just what i have set for my screen resolution on my laptop, change this to whatever your current resolution is on the machine your running. This should maximize all screens to full 100% on all guest os's

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Cool. Thanks. I like learning different ways to do things. – willbeeler Feb 15 '12 at 15:37
    
I tried everything else, no luck. But this answer worked perfect. Nice answer :) TX :) – antmw1361 Dec 11 '14 at 11:18
up vote 3 down vote

Using Ubuntu inside VirtualBox on Win7 you need to reboot Ubuntu after the virtualbox-guest-dkms install before resizing would work.

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Actually, the guest additions installer itself ask the user to reboot, no matter what host is involved. Without rebooting the screen won't re-size. – Luís de Sousa Feb 18 '14 at 19:21
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I wasn't asked to reboot after installing guest additions via apt-get. Couldn't resize to full screen until I rebooted the guest system. +1 (host: Win 7; guest: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) – km1 Jul 2 '14 at 19:40
    
Same here. Wouldn't resize before a reboot. – Lemmings19 Jan 29 '15 at 17:08
up vote 1 down vote

Once you have installed the vbox extensions use host+G or the menu option under View > Auto-resize Guest Display.

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protected by Community♦ Nov 23 '15 at 17:03

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