Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Change Screen Resolution of Ubuntu 12.10 Server Running on Oracle Virtual Box

Hello,

I was having problem of changing the resolution of the console of Ubuntu 12.10 Server (64bit) version, running on Oracle Virtualbox environment.

First I installed Virtualbox guest additions using the following command.

#apt-get install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso

But I still couldn't change increase the resolution of the server console. Finally I tried the below method which was successful for me. I hope it will help you also.

Step 01:

Edit the file /etc/default/grub using your favorite text editor. Here I am using "vi"

#sudo vi  /etc/default/grub

......
......

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

......
......

In the above file uncomment the line "#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480" 

You can increase the resolution by changing the values 640x480 to 800x600 or to 1024x768
Then save the file and exit.

Step 02:
Run the below command to upgrade the grub.

#sudo update-grub

Step 03:
Restart the Ubuntu server.

Note: Please note that if you host environment and/or the Virtualbox installation graphic configurations does not support specified level resolution the above steps won't work. Then try to change the resolution to a commonly used values.