Gnome X11 session in a VMware 16 VM does not offer the maximum screen resolution

I booted from a Manjaro Gnome 21.2rc1 ISO image via a VMware Workstation 16.2.1 VM and installed the OS from there. That went smoothly. After booting into the OS and doing a full update, I installed open-vm-tools. I’m running VMware in Full Screen Mode and have “Autofit Guest” set, so I expected a full screen Gnome desktop at that point. On this host system and display, that would be a 5120 x 2160 resolution desktop. Instead, the resolution defaulted to 800 x 600. The max resolution presented in the Display settings was 3840 x 2160 and I had to manually select that resolution.

I was eventually able to get Gnome to run at full resolution by uncommenting enable=true in the [resolutionKMS] section of: /etc/vmware-tools/tools.conf
(The file above was created by copying tools.conf.example in the same directory.)
After a systemctl restart vmtoolsd.service Gnome began running at the desired resolution.

However, after a reboot, the OS comes back up running 800 x 600 and I have to restart the vmtoolsd.service to get back to full resolution. I also have to reset scaling to 200% vs. the default 100%. :frowning_face:

Contrast the experience above to a Manjaro KDE 21.2rc1 install on the same system where the ISO not only boots into 5120 x 2160 pre-install, but post-install the OS boots into that resolution even before installing open-vm-tools.

Are there any recommendations to configure Gnome / X11 to auto-set (?) the resolution on boot - preferably to the VMware window size as I don’t always run fullscreen - as well as making 200% scaling “sticky”?

System:
  Kernel: 5.15.7-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.15-x86_64
    root=UUID=aaa3368a-5855-4487-8a0b-69a98fbfbc94 rw quiet
    udev.log_priority=3
  Desktop: GNOME 41.2 tk: GTK 3.24.30 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM 41.0
    Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Vmware System: VMware product: VMware Virtual Platform v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required> Chassis: No Enclosure type: 1
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Intel model: 440BX Desktop Reference Platform
    serial: <superuser required> BIOS: Phoenix v: 6.00 date: 11/12/2020
Memory:
  RAM: total: 7.73 GiB used: 1.51 GiB (19.5%)
  RAM Report:
    permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required.
CPU:
  Info: model: Intel Core i7-9700K bits: 64 type: SMP arch: Coffee Lake
    family: 6 model-id: 0x9E (158) stepping: 0xC (12) microcode: 0xEA
  Topology: cpus: 4x cores: 1 smt: <unsupported> cache:
    L1: 4x 64 KiB (256 KiB) desc: d-1x32 KiB; i-1x32 KiB
    L2: 4x 256 KiB (1024 KiB) desc: 1x256 KiB L3: 4x 12 MiB (48 MiB)
    desc: 1x12 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3600 min/max: N/A cores: 1: 3600 2: 3600 3: 3600 4: 3600
    bogomips: 28808
  Flags: 3dnowprefetch abm adx aes apic arat arch_capabilities arch_perfmon
    avx avx2 bmi1 bmi2 clflush clflushopt cmov constant_tsc cpuid cpuid_fault
    cx16 cx8 de f16c flush_l1d fma fpu fsgsbase fxsr hypervisor ibpb ibrs
    invpcid invpcid_single lahf_lm lm mca mce md_clear mmx movbe msr mtrr
    nonstop_tsc nopl nx pae pat pcid pclmulqdq pdpe1gb pge pni popcnt pse
    pse36 rdrand rdseed rdtscp sep smap smep ss ssbd sse sse2 sse4_1 sse4_2
    ssse3 stibp syscall tsc tsc_adjust tsc_deadline_timer tsc_known_freq
    tsc_reliable vme x2apic xgetbv1 xsave xsavec xsaveopt xsaves xtopology
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX unsupported
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT Host state unknown
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected
  Type: spec_store_bypass
    mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
  Type: spectre_v1
    mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional,
    IBRS_FW, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling
  Type: srbds status: Unknown: Dependent on hypervisor status
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: VMware SVGA II Adapter driver: vmwgfx v: 2.19.0.0 bus-ID: 00:0f.0
    chip-ID: 15ad:0405 class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.org 1.21.1.2 compositor: gnome-shell driver:
    loaded: vmware unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa
    resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo>
  Message: Unable to show advanced data. Required tool glxinfo missing.
Audio:
  Device-1: Ensoniq ES1371/ES1373 / Creative Labs CT2518 driver: snd_ens1371
    v: kernel bus-ID: 02:02.0 chip-ID: 1274:1371 class-ID: 0401
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.7-1-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.40 running: no
Network:
  Device-1: Intel 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI vendor: VMware Virtual Machine
    type: network bridge driver: N/A modules: i2c_piix4 port: N/A
    bus-ID: 00:07.3 chip-ID: 8086:7113 class-ID: 0680
  Device-2: Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet
    vendor: VMware PRO/1000 MT Single Port driver: e1000 v: kernel port: 2000
    bus-ID: 02:01.0 chip-ID: 8086:100f class-ID: 0200
  IF: ens33 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
  IP v4: <filter> type: dynamic noprefixroute scope: global
    broadcast: <filter>
  IP v6: <filter> type: noprefixroute scope: link
  WAN IP: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Message: No bluetooth data found.
Logical:
  Message: No logical block device data found.
RAID:
  Message: No RAID data found.
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 40 GiB used: 6.22 GiB (15.6%)
  SMART Message: Required tool smartctl not installed. Check --recommends
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: VMware model: Virtual S size: 40 GiB
    block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: N/A serial: N/A rev: 1.0
    scheme: MBR
  Optical-1: /dev/sr0 vendor: NECVMWar model: VMware IDE CDR10 rev: 1.00
    dev-links: cdrom
  Features: speed: 1 multisession: yes audio: yes dvd: yes
    rw: cd-r,cd-rw,dvd-r,dvd-ram state: running
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 39.99 GiB size: 39.07 GiB (97.69%) used: 6.22 GiB (15.9%)
    fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 label: N/A
    uuid: aaa3368a-5855-4487-8a0b-69a98fbfbc94
Swap:
  Alert: No swap data was found.
Unmounted:
  Message: No unmounted partitions found.
USB:
  Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Full speed or root hub ports: 6 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Full speed or root hub ports: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-3: 3-0:1 info: Hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 4 rev: 2.0
    speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Device-1: 3-1:2 info: VMware Virtual Mouse type: Mouse
    driver: hid-generic,usbhid interfaces: 1 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
    chip-ID: 0e0f:0003 class-ID: 0301
  Hub-4: 4-0:1 info: Super-speed hub ports: 4 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s
    chip-ID: 1d6b:0003 class-ID: 0900
Sensors:
  Message: No sensor data found. Is lm-sensors configured?
Info:
  Processes: 219 Uptime: 48m wakeups: 1447 Init: systemd v: 249
  tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: N/A Packages: pacman: 972 lib: 282
  Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.11