VirtualBox resolution wrong only for my user profile

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi all,
I upgraded my Mate from 16 to 18.04, unfortunately there is something wrong with virtualbox.
The application resolution seems to be stuck at 800x600 - which translates to all the guests I have as well.
I tried changing the config, deleting it, I installed and uninstalled it first via the distribution, then using a deb package from VB, tried an older package, but the problem is the same.
This only happens when running it from my user profile, if I use sudo it works fine, and using sudo -u pamela VirtualBox funnily enough works well.
I am part of the vbox users group, the permissions are right as well.
Running it as myself I get this on the terminal:
pamela@zombie:~$ virtualbox
Gtk-Message: 11:42:57.573: Failed to load module “topmenu-gtk-module”
Qt WARNING: QApplication: invalid style override passed, ignoring it.

I tried getting “topmenu-gtk-module” but didn’t succeed, even when activating the Xenial repository in my sources.

Any ideas?
Thanks a lot!

#2

##Do not activate Xenial repositories on Bionic! It may completely break the system.

Your error message looks very similar to the other thread.

The error about "topmenu-gtk-module" will get fixed if you remove (or move) one file:

sudo mv /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99mate-environment ~

(it came from 16.04 LTS installation, it is not actual for 18.04 LTS).

#3

Thanks Norbert, I took away Xenial and did what you said. Will reboot and see what happens.

#4

Nope that didn’t help.
Resolution of VB is still 800x600.

#5

What if you forgot to install Extension Pack?

Check from terminal with

VBoxManage list extpacks

If extpack is installed then it will return something like:

$ VBoxManage list extpacks
Extension Packs: 1
Pack no. 0:   Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack
Version:      5.1.38
Revision:     122592
Edition:      
Description:  USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 Host Controller, Host Webcam, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM, Disk Encryption, NVMe.
VRDE Module:  VBoxVRDP
Usable:       true 
Why unusable:

You can follow solution from AskUbuntu to install it.

#6

Thanks, no, it’s installed, same problem.

#7

Hi @pamkiew, VBox resolution is a strange animal.

Can you run a guest and inside that guest change its resolution to your liking? Or is the largest you can select 600x800?

Alternately, if you change the window size of the running guest does it follow? This behavior may depend on the guest.

VBox seems to remember the monitor size to tell each guest and independently saves it. If the guest itself selects a new resolution, this new value is clumsily stored (I remember having to reboot guests a few times). I find this monitor resolution it tells guests is NOT stored in snapshots.

If the largest the guest can set is 800x600 that’s quite a different problem.

#8

No, thanks. Can’t change any resolution in any of my guests either.