RDP Rendering Broken Shows Only Top Left of screen => Fixed in SVN

[Julio Lajara]

Hi, I am using Ubuntu 10.10 64bit w/Nvida + Compiz as host running Fedora 13 32bit and Windows 7 64bit as guests. I see this issue on both guest systems when accessing them over remote desktop. The remote desktop connection only shows me the top left corner of the desktop and running setvideomodehint has no effect on its redrawing. If I run the VM's locally instead of over RDP they look fine so it seems to be a bug with the RDP server and how its rendering the display...

[Julio Lajara]

Forgot to mention I did upgrade the extension pack to 4.1 and the same for the installed vbox additions on both guests.

[sunlover]

You also forgot to attach the VBox.log file from a VM which shows the problem :) And which RDP client do you use? How big is the top left corner, 800x600? rdesktop has a known issue: it must be started with -g WxH parameter, where W and H are greater or equal to the guest resolution.

[Julio Lajara]

Yes, i use tsclient which uses rdesktop. I never had to use -g before upgrading to 4.1, but yes using this option does resolve my issue now. When i used tsclient with the use default screen size it always worked before and even resized itself automatically when i issued setvideomodehints on the remote end on pre 4.1 releases, so I dont understand what changed recently for this supposed rdesktop bug to show up for me all of a sudden now.

Regardless, thanks for the info, i can now get to work again ;-) .

[Julio Lajara]

I added a log from today, when I first kicked up the VM I was using tsclient and it didnt work then I switched over to rdesktop from the command line with the -g option to get it working again.

[sunlover]

Which version of VBox, where rdesktop worked, did you use before 4.1?

[Julio Lajara]

I was using 4.0.12 before i moved to 4.1. Also note that i just noticed this morning when starting up my vm that if I immediately connect to vm when it starts (even with the -g option set right) it still shows only a small top left corner, but if i close rdesktop and connect again once gdm shows up it ends up with the right dimensions.

[sunlover]

VRDP always had a workaround for the rdesktop issue, but I've noticed that the workaround actually did not work in 4.1.0. Will be fixed in the next maintenance release. Thanks for the report.

[Markus Duft]

i have the same issue. here are two videos i captured to show it to you :) what i'm doing in those vids worked flawlessly (with rdestop automatically resizing) in previous 4.0.* releases.

as you can see in the -xp video, if i manage to log, it returns back to normal. however on server 2008, 2008r2, vista and 7 the "black frame" stays there even when i manage to log in. the task bar appears though... clicking on "show desktop" multiple times fixes the drawing problem then...

[1] ​http://dev.gentoo.org/~mduft/rdesktop-problem-7.mp4
[2] ​http://dev.gentoo.org/~mduft/rdesktop-problem-xp.mp4

regards, markus

[Frank Mehnert]

Should be fixed in VBox 4.1.2.

[Julio Lajara]

Please reopen, does not seem to be corrected completely yet in 4.1.2 . I dont need to use the rdesktop -g option from the command line now and can revert back to having rdesktop loaded by tsclient, but I do need to reload rdesktop once the desktop login window is reached in order for the window to get resized properly as mduft shows in first video. I never had to do this before in pre 4.1 as rdesktop would always resize itself accordingly as it moved from bios to splash to gdm.

[Dan Rollo]

I can confirm the same rdesktop redraw problem still exists in 4.1.2.

Host: Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS (server) (headless) All guests: Win2k-7, Ubuntu Linux, etc.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please attach a VBox.log file of such a session. Did you upgrade the extension pack to 4.1.2?

[Julio Lajara]

New log file

[Julio Lajara]

Yes, I did, I upgraded the extension pack and the guest additions to the latest version when moving to 4.1.2 . Also if there are any daily or beta build debs available once you think its corrected could you please point me to them, i would be happy to test them out and follow up.

Thanks,

[Markus Duft]

hah, you where faster than me ;) just wanted to request reopening the bug, as the resize problem is still there :) at least drawing/refreshing now works as i had expected, which was the worse thing for me.

[sunlover]

Right, this issue will be fixed in the next VirtualBox version. Please test the new extpack:

​Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.1-4.1.3r73761.vbox-extpack

[Julio Lajara]

I think we have a winner there. Fixes the problem for me, tested on Fedora 13/Windows 7 64bit guests.

Thanks!

[Dan Rollo]

Looks good here too. Tested with Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS (amd64) host and 32 bit guests: Ubuntu 8.04.4, Ubuntu 10.10, Win 2k, Win xp, Win 7.

All are now showing entire desktop area with rdesktop after installing the new ext pack. Thanks!

[Frank Mehnert]

Thanks for testing! The extension pack of VBox 4.1.4 contains the fix.