HowTo: Change VMWare Player Guest OS Display Resolution
Here is one useful bit for anyone running, or thinking of running, a local test/development environment under VMWare Player version 2.0 with a guest OS Linux install.
I’ll assume you have installed VMWare Player and a VMWare Appliance similar to CentOS v5. After which, by default, the resolution will be limited to modes “800×600″ and “640×480″.
Here is how you fix that problem…
Step 1: Install X and GNOME, if not already present.
yum groupinstall "X Window System" "GNOME Desktop Environment"
[Note: to install KDE, substitute the "GNOME..." string with "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"]
Step 2: Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
You should already have…
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vmware"
EndSection
Add the following “monitor” section…
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
HorizSync 1.0 - 10000.0
VertRefresh 1.0 - 10000.0
EndSection
Modify the existing “Screen” section…
Note to replace the following “1600×1200″ string with the highest resolution your monitor can handle.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Step 3: Start X
startx
Jst as a note…
To install the vmware-tools pkg under Ubuntu 7.04
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
Unpack vmware-tools pkg and sudo ./vmware-install.pl
Run ‘/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox &’ to start the tools.
I did something similar. Guest OS is RHEL 4, on Windows XP with WMWare Player. I used the RHEL config tools to change X resolution and it works, if I log as superuser. If I log with a different user, it seems that the resolution change fail and then the output video is scrambled … it looks like some permission problem but I cant’t find it. I tried adding the normal user to all defined grups (admin, root, tty, … ) but with no success …
Thank you very much, I spent the whole day trying to fix it, now it works
Thank you. It’s work just fine
Great tip! Here are some more tips on this issue:
I use centOS 5.4 guest. I already had GNOME and X11 installed.
I couldnt fine “x11″ folder… but then realized that “X” in X11 is CAPITAL… it took me some time to figure that out….
To edit the config file, I ran “gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf”
I made the updates/changes to this file as you instructed, saved and exited gedit.
I ran “startx” but it failed and told me that I’m already in a session so I had to delete a lock file which I did by running “rm /tmp/.X0-lock”
I ran “startx” again, the screen flickered and I figured that the OS doesnt know whats going on… so I rebooted the VM. It came up with same rez as beofe 800×600 but now I was able to go into the resolution settings and select 1024×768… Perfect!
Thank you so much.
Is there no way to increase the window size of the player without installing X.
I am fine working on the CLI just want a larger are to work in…