Comment 8 for bug 1273276

I was able to get some help and direction from darkxst (Tim) on the #ubuntu-gnome IRC channel.

It seems that there is an incompatibility between some of the gnome stuff that was updated a couple of weeks ago, and some stuff that was not. When I upgraded using Tim's ppa ( https://launchpad.net/~darkxst/+archive/gnome310 ), then everything was fine.

So, and for the main VM that I actually want to use, I will just have to wait for the upgrades that will sync up everything. Meanwhile, I should be able to use "xrandr -s 1680x1050' (that Tim suggested) to set the display size to something useful.