Monday, August 2, 2010

Changing the screen resolution

Fixing the screen resolution on Backtrack 4 is a pain. It assumes a laptop with 800x600 or 1024x736 resolution.

I recently installed the VMware version on my desktop, which has multiple monitors. I wanted to full-screen it on one monitor, which is 1280x1024. This is really cool because I can simply mouse over the window to change the focus.

The solution to the problem was to simply exit the desktop back to the command-line, type "fix-vesa", then type "startx" to bring up the desktop again. Voila, it was now 1280x1024. I hit full-screen button on VMware, and everything worked as I wanted it.

I'm not sure what fix-vesa does. I typed "xrandr" to find out what settings had been changed, it appeared to only add an entry for 1280x1024.

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