CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cvirtual-machinevirtualboxsdl-2
Francesco
Francesco

Reputation: 650

SDL2 fails to get display mode inside virtual machine (No available video device)

Basically, SDL fails to acquire display mode when running inside a VirtualBox machine.

SDL_GetNumDisplayModes() fails reporting -1 then SDL_InitSubSystem(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) fails with No available video device.

int main(void)
{
    int numberOfDrivers = SDL_GetNumVideoDrivers();
    printf("Number of drivers: %d\n", numberOfDrivers);

    for (int i = 0; i < numberOfDrivers; i++)
        printf("Driver name: %s\n", SDL_GetVideoDriver(i));

    int numberOfDisplays = SDL_GetNumVideoDisplays();
    printf("Number of displays: %d\n", numberOfDisplays);

    printf("Display 0 mode: %d\n", SDL_GetNumDisplayModes(0));

    if (SDL_InitSubSystem(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) < 0)
        SDL_Log("SDL fails to initialize video subsystem!\n%s", SDL_GetError());

    return 0;
}

This is the output:

Number of drivers: 2
Driver name: x11
Driver name: dummy
Number of displays: 0
Display 0 mode: -1
INFO: SDL fails to initialize video subsystem!
No available video device
Unable to initialize system

VirtualBox machine running Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit guest inside Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit host. Application is 32 bit.

Is there a way to resolve?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2061

Answers (1)

Francesco
Francesco

Reputation: 650

SOLUTION

There was 2 problems, one in the example code.

  1. The first one was that SDL_GetNumDisplayModes() must be call after that video system has been initialized
  2. The second one, No available video device, a problem that is very widespread on stackoverflow and on the web, was that libgl1-mesa-glx was missing

So, for No available video device error you need xorg-dev libx11-dev libgl1-mesa-glx libraries, maybe xorg-dev installs libx11-dev

Upvotes: 2

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