Firstly, power down the image and edit the configuration options for your image, click on the “Video options”. Check ‘Enable custom screen resolutions’ and add the resolution (in this case, 1280×800). Make sure the resolution is enabled (checked). See the screenshot below for an example of what it should look like:

Next, boot into the VM image and let’s take a look at the xorg.conf file, here are the lines I changed that actually matter:

#HorizSync 31.5 - 48.5
HorizSync 30.0 - 82.0
#VertRefresh 50.0 - 90.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 90.0
#Option "DPMS"
ModeLine "1280x800" 80.58 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 827 -HSync -VSync

These should be in the section right after ‘Section “Monitor”‘. After changing the hsync and vsync as well as adding the mode, I changed the display section from:

SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
to:
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

It’s a good idea to change the modes for each of the depths (at least 8, 15, 16 and 24) also.

After rebooting (or killing X with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace), your screen should come up in 1280×800 resolution. Hurray!

You can see an example of my desktop setup for Hex 1.0.3-RC2 here:

You can get a copy of my entire xorg.conf file here. (Note that in this xorg.conf, CapsLock is remapped to additional control because I hate capslock with a passion).

Hope this helps someone out there

1. Power the image down
2. Right-click and edit the settings for the VM image (if you don’t know how to do this, this article is beyond your scope)
3. Change the CPU settings from 1 to >1 (2 or 4 or 8 or whatever you want to use) (see picture)
   
4. Power the VM image back on
5. Put the RedHat CD #2 in your desktop CD drive (or using the ISO), connect the disc to the VM image (see picture, note that I selected the wrong ISO, should be disc #2)
   
6. On the vmware image, mount the cd with: mount /media/cdrom
7. Enter the directory: cd /media/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS
8. In my case, I’m using a 64-bit kernel, so I would use the 64-bit SMP kernel:
   [root@lava2057 RPMS]# rpm -Uvh kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.EL.x86_64.rpm
9. Unmount the CD, dettach the CD/ISO
10. Run up2date to make sure the new kernel you installed is up to date (chances are that it isn’t, since RedHat has pushed out a new kernel since putting out the CDs)
11. Edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file, mine looks something like this before changes:
    default=2
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-67.0.1.ELsmp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-67.0.1.ELsmp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-67.0.1.ELsmp.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-42.ELsmp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-42.ELsmp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-42.ELsmp.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-67.0.1.EL)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-42.EL)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-42.EL ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-42.EL.img
12. I have 4 kernels installed, the initial install 64-bit (non-SMP), the 64-bit SMP I just installed and the most recently updated versions of each of these, as you can see, the line “default=2” is still pointing to our non-SMP image. We need to use the 2.6.9-67.0.1.ELsmp kernel, so I’m going to change it to “default=0“
13. Reboot the machine
14. After it’s rebooted, log in and check ‘uname -a‘, mine shows:
    Linux lava2057.lss.emc.com 2.6.9-67.0.1.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Nov 30 11:57:43 EST 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Simple eh? I know it’s not related to security, but I figured it’d be helpful to someone out there.