VirtualBox Graphics Corruption

Today I was setting up a VirtualBox instance to run Linux Mint 19 in a Linux Mint 19 host. After boot, I was greeted with an unreadable graphics issue.

Turns out sometimes VirtualBox, when running on Linux based hosts, will exhibit a screen buffer corruption in the guest when first starting. The solution, found on StackOverflow, is triggering a kernel graphics buffer refresh.

Hit Right Ctrl+F1 (you will see the shell) and then Right Ctrl+F7. Depending on the Virtualbox configuration use Left Ctrl+Alt together instead of Right Ctrl.

This works by forcing the kernel's graphics buffer / X / XRandR to re-detect the monitor and display in the proper resolution.

-- Gipnokote

Normally, Ctrl+Alt+F1 and equivalent Ctrl+Alt+F7 would switch a Linux system from the Gui->TTY Text Console->Gui. In the above case, we use the VirtualBox host key, Right Ctrl to trigger this process in the guest.

This is one of those posts for my own documentation.