Dear Maintainer,

I am facing a screen auto-resize issue in Xfce/X11 guest in the recent versions of VirtualBox Guest Additions.

The latest working version for me is 7.2.0-dfsg-3. In all the later versions auto-resize doesn't work at all (resolution keeps the same size).

In the guest OS (Debian forky, with guest additions from sid) I use VMSVGA graphics controller with 3D acceleration.

Host OS is Windows 11 and "/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/DRMResize" property is not set. So VBoxDRMClient shouldn't be running (see https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#guestadd-resizing-linux).

If I compare running daemons in the 7.2.0-dfsg-3 and 7.2.14-dfsg-1 version, I can see:


Version: 7.2.0-dfsg-3

Before X session login:
$ pgrep -a VBoxDRMClient
$
$ pgrep -a VBoxClient
$

After X session login:
$ pgrep -a VBoxDRMClient
$
$ pgrep -a VBoxClient
1554 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
1556 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
1562 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --seamless
1564 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --seamless
1570 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --draganddrop
1572 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --draganddrop
1675 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --vmsvga
1676 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --vmsvga


Version: 7.2.14-dfsg-1

Before X session login:
$ pgrep -a VBoxDRMClient
809 /usr/bin/VBoxDRMClient
$
$ pgrep -a VBoxClient
$

After X session login:
$ pgrep -a VBoxDRMClient
809 /usr/bin/VBoxDRMClient
$
$ pgrep -a VBoxClient
1630 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
1632 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
1638 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --seamless
1640 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --seamless
1646 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --draganddrop
1649 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --draganddrop
1662 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --vmsvga-session
1663 /usr/bin/VBoxClient --vmsvga-session


If I manually kill VBoxDRMClient and run "VBoxClient --vmsvga" in the 7.2.14-dfsg-1, then auto-resize starts to work again.

There is no change in the daemon starting scripts apparently, so perhaps a binary behaviour change is involved?

Thank you
Zbynek

Hello,

VBoxDRMClient is normally executed by the "/usr/sbin/VBoxService" (run by
startup script from virtualbox-guest-utils package).

I have found a workaround for the version 7.2.14-dfsg-1 - diverting the
VBoxDRMClient binary:
# dpkg-divert --add --rename --divert /usr/bin/VBoxDRMClient.real
/usr/bin/VBoxDRMClient

After this modification, daemons will start in the same way as in
7.2.0-dfsg-3.

Regards
Zbynek