[SoaS] Blueberry SoaS Mac feedback

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Douglas,

On 17 Dec 2009, at 18:56, Douglas McClendon wrote:

> 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

Oooh, I think I recognise parts of that from my googling :-)

> 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)

Thanks, that gives me a better backstory (I feel slightly less dumb).

> 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.

Possibly, though I have been using a F11 with guest additions and sugar-jhbuild for development work on my Mac, I don't notice any regressions so far. The tweaked Blueberry image now feels a better environment than trying to work in F11 with sugar-jhbuild on top; keys all work (cursors also), faster launch/shutdown direct into Sugar, no hidden Fedora widgets getting confused and/or nagging with their information bubbles.

> 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.

I've just added my vga=0x345 to the /boot/grub/grub.conf file and it's booting into my resolution of choice with no manual intervention :-) I did notice a vga mode close to my native display 1900x1200, I'm quite tempted to give it a shot and make my little Sugar Blueberry applescript icon auto start it in fullscreen (no guest additions needed for fullscreen).

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

Thanks, yea. :-)

Regards,
--Gary