More EFI GOP video modes wanted -> fixed in 5.2

[Bengt-Arne Fjellner]

An EFI GOP video mode like 1024x700 would be very nice for us with 13" macs as they have a resolution of 1280x800 and after removing menubar and such you can't use a guest with 1024x768 with getting scrollbars. Even better would be if it was settable like for custom VESA resolutions

[vasily Levchenko]

Replying to baf:

An EFI GOP video mode like 1024x700 would be very nice for us with 13" macs as they have a resolution of 1280x800 and after removing menubar and such you can't use a guest with 1024x768 with getting scrollbars. Even better would be if it was settable like for custom VESA resolutions

you might try to switch EFI to 800x600 mode:

VBoxManage setextradata mac "VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode" 1

please see ​efividmode for details.

[Bengt-Arne Fjellner]

I use that mode now (800x600) but I would like to have it wider if that is possible.

[Graham Perrin]

This ticket #6783 was duplicated by #9116,

allow resolutions other than 1024 x 768 for Mac OS X Server guests

[Graham Perrin]

To reduce the likelihood of future duplication, please change the guest type of this ticket from other to OSX Server.

(OSX Server is one of the criterion that I used for my search before creating #9116.)

Thanks

[kimus]

Unfortunately this is not yet resolved. Is there any workaround for this? I have a MBP with 13" and using Linux host and installed OS X 10.9 has guest and can't change to a 'custom' resolution... :-S

[mihi42]

In fact, it seems that not only GOP but also UGA will stick to the "nearest" supported GOP mode. So all OSes that have no guest additions and use EFI (becoming more and more, especially small tools that run directly from UEFI and use GOP or UGA) will be limited, while we have CustomVideoMode for VESA which supports everything...

When digging through the EFI Vbox Graphics driver, it first seems to be hard to change, since every mode links hardware related blobs (CrtcSettings, SeqSettings) which are different for each GOP mode, but it seems they are not used at all - just remaining from the Cirrus Logic driver which was used as a boilerplate for implementing Vbox Graphics (and not cleaned out afterwards...).

So, I think it should not be hard to make Gop Mode 4 for example (which is the most exotic one with 1440x900 anyway) configurable via extradata (only obstacle is that these extradata have to be routed down to the driver, through a few layers like EFI_INFO_PORT :D). It is even possible with a custom bootloader to patch the EFI modes in the driver on the fly (they are there twice, but one offset is relative to the GOP handle and the other is static within the memory block) and re-initialize them just before handing over the control to the actual bootloader (the current implementation breaks ClearScreen in Text mode, but most apps that use GOP or UGA will not use text mode anyway).

So @kimus if you are still looking for solutions, have a look at:

​https://gist.github.com/schierlm/0f7449ac488c84a874df501fb153ab26

Has been tested with GRUB2's UGA and GOP implementations, along with some other small tools. Cannot really test OSX as I don't own a Mac though.

And hopefully somebody can include this code into the actual GOP driver (and route the extradata through accordingly) :)

[geraldaistleitner]

mihi42 did a great job with that hack, but for macOS the hack is not working, as I think there is a problem with frame buffers. It would be great to support 3840x2160 in a new mode 6.

best regards

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Forget the hacks... the very latest trunk test build (sorry, it didn't make it for 5.2.0_RC1) has a much improved EFI video mode handling. Make sure you read the docs included in the package, not something old. 31 standard modes up to UHD2 8K, and custom video modes as the icing on the cake. Don't forget to check if you picked enough VRAM in the VM settings before complaining that you still get 1024x768 - UHD2 needs the full 128MB for just a single screen.