X11 additions: no EDID detection any more

[hmo]

With release 4.3.28 the X11 additions have rendered EDID detection dysfunctional. As a result, Xorg comes up with the default resolution of 1024x768 instead of sizing according to the (virtual) screen size.

Attached is a unified diff of Xorg.0.log, comparing 4.3.26 and 4.3.28 guest additions. xorg.conf is identical.

[hmo]

diff of Xorg.0.log - 4.3.26 versus 4.3.28

[Michael Thayer]

Thanks for the report. I don't think that the EDID which we are no longer reporting is the reason for this though. In fact between 4.3.26 and 4.3.28 we changed the mechanism that the Additions use to get size information from the host. To cut a long story short, the log-in screen no longer has access to the last resolution in use before the machine was shut down, and defaults to 1024x768. Instead that information is retrieved by an X11 client application (called VBoxClient) which is started after log-in, so once you log in the old resolution should be restored. Did that make sense, and can you confirm that the correct resolution is set after log-in? I hope to improve this soon.

[hmo]

Ahh... Cool feature. In fact I just didn't add VBoxClient-all to ~/.xinitrc - it wasn't needed up to now. (BTW, VBoxClient-all starts five processes where one would do?)

[Michael Thayer]

VBoxClient does a number of things (shared clipboard, seamless mode, dynamic resizing, drag and drop and host version check) in one binary but several processes. You can also use --display or other switches to just start one of these.