# Small FreeBSD window size in VirtualBox



## Alien (Jan 4, 2013)

Hello FreeBSD community.

I installed FreeBSD 9.1 on a MacBook Pro '15 late 2011 in VirtualBox. Installation was quick and fine, the new installer is great!

Just the window size of FreeBSD stays very small even if I change the virtual machine window size to fullscreen.

So what did I have to do to enlarge that window?

Thanks.


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## roddierod (Jan 4, 2013)

Did you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions in the guest OS? I had this issue and had to run the guest addition installer inside the guest OS to correct it.


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## wblock@ (Jan 4, 2013)

When the FreeBSD VM is running a text console, use "Scale Mode" in VirtualBox.  On the VM window menus, View/Switch to Scale Mode.  Or press right-ctrl-C.  Then resize the window.


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## Alien (Jan 4, 2013)

Yes I installed the guest additions. If I:


```
startx
```

the window size changes and everything is fine. Just if use the text console it stays small.

The scale mode looks awful so thats not an option for me.


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## wblock@ (Jan 4, 2013)

The reason the console is small is because it's shown dot-for-dot.  A real console would only be 640x480, or whatever standard VESA mode is used.  Scaling works okay if you have a high resolution X screen.  It actually looks better than I would expect.  This is the same thing as showing a 1024x768 image on a 1280x1024 monitor.

One other possibility is to ignore the VM window or run the VM headless and connect to it with ssh(1).


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## Alien (Jan 6, 2013)

I played around now with some window managers / desktop environments and I can use the terminal very well there.

Thanks.


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## Alien (Jan 8, 2013)

I installed a second FreeBSD virtual machine in VirtualBox. I am not able to switch to fullscreen in X now. I read some articles about that and all said that I need to put the following into my xorg.conf.


```
Section "Screen"
        DefaultDepth 24
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport    0 0
		Depth       24
                Modes       "1440x900"
	EndSubSection
EndSection
```

I have it inside but I don't get 1440x900. I think it switches to 1024x768.

Is /etc/X11/xorg.conf the correct path? I think my machine don't read that file there, whatever I change.


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## wblock@ (Jan 8, 2013)

/etc/X11/xorg.conf will work.  The more correct location in FreeBSD is /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.

In the guest, you may not be able to do much unless the VirtualBox guest additions are installed.  The port is emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions.


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## Alien (Jan 8, 2013)

What do you mean with more correct?

I already installed the guest additions but something went wrong while building it.

I installed it again and its working fine now.


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## wblock@ (Jan 8, 2013)

"More correct" means the better place according to FreeBSD standards (hier(7)).  /etc is for system stuff, and X11 is an add-on.


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