[SoaS] Blueberry SoaS Mac feedback

[Douglas McClendon]

Gary C Martin wrote:
> Getting bored and answering some of my own email (I can't sleep)...

Been there...

> 
> On 17 Dec 2009, at 08:21, Gary C Martin wrote:
> 
>> Hi Wade,
>> 
>> On 13 Dec 2009, at 22:23, Wade Brainerd wrote:

>>>> - Without some VM hacking, VirtualBox displays Sugar in an
>>>> 800x600 window. The interface scales reasonably well, all
>>>> things considered, but toolbars often have missing widgets, or
>>>> widgets in drop down overflow menus. Fonts are also very large
>>>> for an 800x600 view.
>>> Anyone know how to bake in the VirtualBox Guest Tools?  Is there
>>> an RPM I can just add in?  In my experience, they have to be
>>> compiled locally against whatever kernel you're running.

Now I'm having bad flashbacks to my time working at vmware on their 
guest tools linux packaging.


>> No, I've always had to follow the VB documentation to compile them
>> each time.
>> 
>> However, I did stumble over a VirtualBox trick today I didn't think
>> would work (well it didn't quite, but...). If you hit F12 you can
>> get to fiddle with the kernel boot parameters, in my ignorance I
>> tried adding vga=0x117 hoping to get a 1024x768x16. It came back
>> with an error about unknown video mode, and then provided me an
>> option to see a list of them to choose from. I managed to boot it
>> into a 1024x768x32 display (with no guest additions). It booted all
>> the way to X starting, at which point it switched itself back to
>> 800x600. So I'm guessing there is some other X setting, or some
>> trick to tell X to use the current resolution. On stopping Sugar
>> the display resized back up to 1024x768x32 just before closing, so
>> pretty sure it's something X.
> 
> I really don't know what I'm doing here, so this is likely not the
> right way, but after booting with the kernel parameters set to
> vga=0x345 for a 1280x1024 display (a choice close to the XO default
> of 1200x900), I then did:
> 
> sudo Xorg -configure :1 cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> 
> [there's no xorg.conf by default, and I couldn't fathom how else to
> get X to use a higher resolution]


This is related to a fedora bug I filed a little over two years ago-

(qemu/kvm not vb, but same issue)

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251264

My incomplete knowledge/summary of the subsequent history was-

- everybody else (other live linux distros) used 'hacks' of some nature 
or another to detect and better configure X in this situation.

- redhat X folks were on a set of rails towards a configurationless X 
nirvana

- some issue with qemu's pci vga emulation made it not work 
automagically in the new world order

- fedora for at least one release added in the same kind of hack that I 
originally asked for

- somehow that got reverted and it appears we are back to the old 
behavior.  (despite ajax's comment #16 in my bug, and other comments in 
the subsequent cloned bug)

----

What you are doing with the vga=0x317 etc, is triggering a vesa mode 
with a higher resolution.  These vesa modes are a kind of fallback. 
Also it sounds like the behavior you are getting is that the new 
bootsplash infrastructure (plymouth) is utilizing the vesa mode, but 
then X when it autoconfigures does not.

In my own fedora derivatives, to fight this, I basically add to the 
initscripts to detect qemu, and write out an xorg config (much like it 
sounds like you did).  Probably there is some better solution coming 
from upstream 'eventually'.


> 
> ...and rebooted. On subsequent boots (I'm still manually hitting F12
> and adding a kernel vga parameter) Sugar now shows up in 1200x900,
> all without installing any VB guest additions :-)

The only issue is that like the vmware guest additions, the VB guest 
additions probably do add performance improvements.  My vague 
recollection is that the vmware guest additions were sufficiently open 
sourced such that they would eventually land upstream, and thus not have 
this problem (except for the zillions of vmware customers using 
virtualization to run distros that are older and thus won't see the open 
source version come from a newer X version).

Also, you should be able to add the kernel vga parameter to your 
bootloader config so you don't have to type it manually.  Though since 
it is really the xorg.conf that sets the resolution for real use (not 
just the splash), that should be sufficient.

Executive summary- blah.  I hope that rambling reduces more confusion 
than it creates.

-dmc