Cannot change screen resolution on VMWare

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SLES Configure-Administer
1

Hi.

I have a fresh install of SLES 12 SP2 installed on VMWare vSphere 5.5.

The install went perfectly, but following install I am stuck at a screen resolution of 800x600. Other screen resolutions are listed, but if I select them, the screen becomes scrambled and I have to revert to 800x600.

vSphere lists open-vm-tools as being installed (as it is part of the SLES distribution). I have also tried installing VM Tools manually and,
whilst it says it has installed correctly, it does not seem to do anything.

Does anyone know how I can either
[LIST]
[]Install the “proper” VMWare Tools
[]Increase the screen resolution with the built-in VM Tools running?
[/LIST]

Thanks
Stuart

2

I built a SLES 12 SP2 x86_64 VM last week in VMware 12.1.x Workstation and
everything seems to be fine. If I go to View: “Fit Guest Now” the GUI
session (Gnome) resizes properly to fit the size of my window. I have the
following packages installed:

open-vm-tools-desktop-10.0.7-6.3.x86_64
open-vm-tools-10.0.7-6.3.x86_64
libvmtools0-10.0.7-6.3.x86_64

All of this was done magically without any explicit involvement from me; I
just put in the SLES 12 SP2 media, specified a user, and then let the
software build the rest.

As far as I know, you should not need “proper” tools anymore, as they are
now part of the distribution, so you already have the proper ones. Maybe
it is a compatibility issue with 5.5, or the client connecting to it.

Note: my setup is on openSUSE using Workstation; apparently Workstation
can connect to an ESXi server, so trying that may be interesting to see if
it gives you a better experience working with the server.

–
Good luck.

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3

Thank you very much for your help.

I, too, have those same packages installed. It sounds very much like the problem might lie with the vSphere client itself rather than SLES.

I’m on a Windows 10 machine and had a bit of job getting the client to run at all. I’ll get hold of Workstation and see if I have any joy with that.

Thanks
Stuart

4

Hello,

we have exactly the same Problem. We have VSphere 5.5 and as a Guest SLES 12 SP2.
If we install SLES 12 SP1 everything is fine and we can change the screen resolution, but with SLES 12 SP2 we can only use 800x600.

Is there any update or solution for this problem?

5

Add memory to virtual hardware video card 4 MB is not enough.

6

Hi,

Same problem here, but adding more virtual video ram doesn´t help.

maybe an X driver problem. Cause running vmware-config-tools.pl skippes the x configuration due to error message " … X drivers are not included"

on the same vmware server (vsphere 5.5) SLES 11 with X GUI works including change of resolution.

CU Thomas

7

I can repot having the same issues, SLES 12.2 on vsphere 5.5, and it took me a while to figure out what the deal was.

Matt

8

[QUOTE=skunkboy;37071]I can repot having the same issues, SLES 12.2 on vsphere 5.5, and it took me a while to figure out what the deal was.

Matt[/QUOTE]

How did you resolve the problem?

9

My vSphere guy increased video memory from 4MB to 8MB and that fixed the problem. Resizing like there’s no tomorrow…