NetBSD on VB - no more hacks! (or at least a lot less)

 Normally doing a NetBSD desktop on VirtualBox involves a convoluted ritual on both host and guest. I still need to do VBoxManage for the host setup, but I've discovered something interesting. For the guest, all I need to do is specify a vesa setting, like this: 

menu=Boot normally:rndseed /var/db/entropy-file;vesa 0x160;boot

...and I get a nice, rich but readable console, and a 1920x180 desktop in X too; without configuring X in any way. This works in VBoxSVGA and VMSVGA. 

Best of all, I get a respectable sized console in full-screen mode -without X. Instead of a tiny 640x480 screen I get a console like this:

 

 

This is a game-changer! No more X (at least, it's optional), no more scaled mode. It's not perfect, but it's a serious improvement!