Ubuntu server on Virtual PC

Earlier this week, I was installing Ubuntu server 6.06 as a virtual machine on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. When this OS boots, the screen freaks out and goes into a screen resolution that makes it impossible to do anything useful.

If you search for this in Google and others, all the information you find will point you towards X Windows configuration changes. Ubuntu server doesn’t have X Windows installed so none of that information is useful.

The only place I found that was useful was the What Works page for Virtual PC. Here is the relevant section:

At Grub press ESC and edit the kernel line to include the option vga=0×314. To make it permanent edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

So, for bad screen resolution with Ubuntu Server 6.06 on Virtual PC, this one configuration change will make the system usable.

This entry was posted on Mon, 02 Apr 2007 05:14:33 GMT . You can follow any any response to this entry through the Atom feed. You can leave a comment or a trackback from your own site.
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  1. Willie 6 days later:

    Boot Ubuntu in recovery mode ( all the text is visible) and remove “quiet splash” in the kernel statement of /boot/grub. Use sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst.

  2. Darko 19 days later:

    Thanks for this tip, had the same problem and this solved it!

  3. Thanks 25 days later:

    Just saying thanks for the tip. Worked beautifully.

  4. StuartH about 1 month later:

    Great tip. Been looking for this for ages.

  5. Lars Fischer about 1 month later:

    Thanks a lot for the hint! This also works with VMware Fusion on the Mac. I got better results (for my screen) when using vga=791.

  6. Keety about 1 month later:

    Thank you so much! This worked! Kept searching Google for “Grub options” and “virtual pc screen” but finally found this site. :D Thanks a lot.

  7. Armando 3 months later:

    Thanks for the research. I am not a linux expert nor an ubuntu expert so I would have never fixed the problem without your tip. Thanks again

  8. Koenraad Haedens 7 months later:

    Thanks, this works super.

  9. Kevin 10 months later:

    Thanks for the tip!

  10. Vigon 12 months later:

    I suppose it will be the most stupid question… I can edit the menu.lst but don’t know how to save my file and quit when done!

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