User Manual

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Content

Sun VirtualBox R
User Manual
Version 3.1.0 c 2004-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://www.virtualbox.org

Contents
1 First steps 1.1 Why is virtualization useful? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Some terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Features overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Supported host operating systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Installing and starting VirtualBox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Running your virtual machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7.1 Keyboard and mouse support in virtual machines . 1.7.2 Changing removable media . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7.3 Saving the state of the machine . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 Snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 Virtual machine conﬁguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.10 Deleting virtual machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11 Importing and exporting virtual machines . . . . . . . . . 1.12 Alternative front-ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Installation details 2.1 Installing on Windows hosts . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Performing the installation . . . . . . . 2.1.3 Uninstallation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.4 Unattended installation . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Installing on Mac OS X hosts . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Performing the installation . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Uninstallation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Unattended installation . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Installing on Linux hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 The VirtualBox kernel module . . . . . 2.3.3 USB and advanced networking support 2.3.4 Performing the installation . . . . . . . 2.3.5 Starting VirtualBox on Linux . . . . . . 2.4 Installing on Solaris hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Performing the installation . . . . . . . 2.4.2 Starting VirtualBox on Solaris . . . . . 2.4.3 Uninstallation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 10 11 12 14 15 17 21 21 23 24 25 27 29 29 31 32 32 32 32 33 33 33 33 34 34 34 34 34 36 36 41 41 41 42 42

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Contents 2.4.4 2.4.5 Unattended installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Conﬁguring a zone for running VirtualBox . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 44 45 46 46 46 47 47 47 48 49 51 51 54 54 55 56 56 58 58 58 60 60 61 62 62 63 64 64 64 65 65 66 67 67 67 68 68 68 68 71

3 Conﬁguring virtual machines 3.1 Supported guest operating systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 64-bit guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 General settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 “Basic” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 “Advanced” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 “Description” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 System settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 “Motherboard” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2 “Processor” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3 “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization 3.5 Display settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Storage settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Audio settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 Network settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9 Serial ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10 USB support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10.1 USB settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10.2 Implementation notes for Windows and Linux hosts . . 3.11 Shared folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.12 Alternative ﬁrmware (EFI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Guest Additions 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Windows Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Unattended Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.4 Manual ﬁle extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.5 Windows Vista networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Linux Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Installing the Linux Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Video acceleration and high resolution graphics modes 4.4.3 Updating the Linux Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 Installing the Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Uninstalling the Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . 4.5.3 Updating the Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 OS/2 Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Folder sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Seamless windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents 4.9 Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9) . . . . . . . . . 72 4.10 Hardware 2D video acceleration for Windows guests . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.11 Guest properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 5 Virtual storage 5.1 Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI . . . 5.2 Disk image ﬁles (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD) . . . . . . 5.3 The Virtual Media Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Special image write modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Differencing images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Cloning disk images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 CD/DVD drive operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Writing CDs and DVDs using the host drive . . . . . 5.9 iSCSI servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9.1 Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking 6 Virtual networking 6.1 Virtual networking hardware . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Introduction to networking modes . . . . . . . 6.3 Network Address Translation (NAT) . . . . . . 6.3.1 Conﬁguring port forwarding with NAT . 6.3.2 PXE booting with NAT . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.3 NAT limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Bridged networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Internal networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Host-only networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 76 79 80 81 83 85 86 87 87 88 89 89 90 91 92 92 93 93 95 96

7 Remote virtual machines 7.1 Remote display (VRDP support) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Common third-party RDP viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Step by step: creating a virtual machine on a headless server 7.1.4 Remote USB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.5 RDP authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.6 RDP encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.7 VRDP multiple connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Teleporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 VBoxManage 8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Commands overview . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 VBoxManage list . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 VBoxManage showvminfo . . . . . . . . 8.5 VBoxManage registervm / unregistervm 8.6 VBoxManage createvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

98 . 98 . 98 . 99 . 100 . 102 . 102 . 103 . 104 . 104 106 . 106 . 107 . 113 . 114 . 115 . 115

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Contents 8.7 VBoxManage modifyvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.7.1 General settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.7.2 Networking settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.7.3 Serial port, audio, clipboard, VRDP and USB settings 8.7.4 Remote machine settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.7.5 Teleporting settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage startvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage controlvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage discardstate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage openmedium / closemedium . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage storagectl / storageattach . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.15.1 VBoxManage storagectl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.15.2 VBoxManage storageattach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage showhdinfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage createhd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage modifyhd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage clonehd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage convertfromraw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage addiscsidisk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage getextradata/setextradata . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage setproperty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage usbﬁlter add/modify/remove . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage sharedfolder add/remove . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage guestproperty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VBoxManage dhcpserver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 . 116 . 118 . 119 . 120 . 120 . 121 . 122 . 122 . 123 . 125 . 125 . 125 . 126 . 126 . 127 . 128 . 128 . 129 . 129 . 130 . 131 . 132 . 132 . 133 . 133 . 133 . 135 . 136 138 . 138 . 140 . 141 . 142 . 144 . 145 . 146 . 146 . 147 . 148 . 148 . 149 . 149 . 150

8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15

8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19 8.20 8.21 8.22 8.23 8.24 8.25 8.26 8.27 8.28

9 Advanced topics 9.1 VirtualBox conﬁguration data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Automated Windows guest logons . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Automated Windows system preparation . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Custom external VRDP authentication . . . . . . . . . . 9.5 VBoxSDL, the simpliﬁed VM displayer . . . . . . . . . . 9.6 Secure labeling with VBoxSDL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7 Custom VESA resolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.8 Multiple monitors for the guest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.9 Releasing modiﬁers with VBoxSDL on Linux . . . . . . . 9.10 Launching more than 120 VMs on Solaris hosts . . . . . 9.11 Using serial ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.12 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest . . . . . . . . . 9.12.1 Access to entire physical hard disk . . . . . . . . 9.12.2 Access to individual physical hard disk partitions

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Contents 9.13 Allowing a virtual machine to start even with unavailable CD/DVD/ﬂoppy devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 9.14 Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 9.14.1 Conﬁguring the address of a NAT network interface . . . . . . . 152 9.14.2 Conﬁguring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 9.14.3 Tuning TCP/IP buffers for NAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 9.14.4 Binding NAT sockets to a speciﬁc interface . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 9.14.5 Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 9.14.6 Using the host’s resolver as a DNS proxy in NAT mode . . . . . . 154 9.15 Conﬁguring the maximum resolution of guests when using the graphical frontend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 9.16 Conﬁguring the BIOS DMI information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 9.17 Conﬁguring the guest time stamp counter (TSC) to reﬂect guest execution155 9.18 Conﬁguring the hard disk vendor product data (VPD) . . . . . . . . . . 156 10 VirtualBox programming interfaces 11 Troubleshooting 11.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.1 Collecting debugging information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.2 Guest shows IDE/SATA errors for ﬁle-based images on slow host ﬁle system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.3 Responding to guest IDE/SATA ﬂush requests . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Windows guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.1 Windows bluescreens after changing VM conﬁguration . . . . 11.2.2 Windows 0x101 bluescreens with SMP enabled (IPI timeout) . 11.2.3 Windows 2000 installation failures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.4 How to record bluescreen information from Windows guests . 11.2.5 No networking in Windows Vista guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.6 Windows guests may cause a high CPU load . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 Linux and X11 guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.1 Linux guests may cause a high CPU load . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.2 AMD Barcelona CPUs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.3 Buggy Linux 2.6 kernel versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.4 Shared clipboard, auto-resizing and seamless desktop in X11 guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4 Windows hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4.1 VBoxSVC out-of-process COM server issues . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4.2 CD/DVD changes not recognized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4.3 Sluggish response when using Microsoft RDP client . . . . . . 11.4.4 Running an iSCSI initiator and target on a single system . . . . 11.5 Linux hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.1 Linux kernel module refuses to load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.2 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 158 . 158 . 158 . 158 . 159 . 160 . 160 . 160 . 161 . 161 . 161 . 162 . 162 . 162 . 162 . 162 . 163 . 163 . 163 . 164 . 164 . 164 . 165 . 165 . 165

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Contents 11.5.3 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found (older distributions) . 11.5.4 Linux host ﬂoppy not found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.5 Strange guest IDE error messages when writing to CD/DVD 11.5.6 VBoxSVC IPC issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.7 USB not working . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.8 PAX/grsec kernels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5.9 Linux kernel vmalloc pool exhausted . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.6 Solaris hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.6.1 Cannot start VM, not enough contiguous memory . . . . . 11.6.2 VM aborts with out of memory errors on Solaris 10 hosts . 12 Change log 12.1 Version 3.1.0 (2009-11-30) . 12.2 Version 3.0.12 (2009-11-10) 12.3 Version 3.0.10 (2009-10-29) 12.4 Version 3.0.8 (2009-10-02) . 12.5 Version 3.0.6 (2009-09-09) . 12.6 Version 3.0.4 (2009-08-04) . 12.7 Version 3.0.2 (2009-07-10) . 12.8 Version 3.0.0 (2009-06-30) . 12.9 Version 2.2.4 (2009-05-29) . 12.10Version 2.2.2 (2009-04-27) . 12.11Version 2.2.0 (2009-04-08) . 12.12Version 2.1.4 (2009-02-16) . 12.13Version 2.1.2 (2009-01-21) . 12.14Version 2.1.0 (2008-12-17) . 12.15Version 2.0.8 (2009-03-10) . 12.16Version 2.0.6 (2008-11-21) . 12.17Version 2.0.4 (2008-10-24) . 12.18Version 2.0.2 (2008-09-12) . 12.19Version 2.0.0 (2008-09-04) . 12.20Version 1.6.6 (2008-08-26) . 12.21Version 1.6.4 (2008-07-30) . 12.22Version 1.6.2 (2008-05-28) . 12.23Version 1.6.0 (2008-04-30) . 12.24Version 1.5.6 (2008-02-19) . 12.25Version 1.5.4 (2007-12-29) . 12.26Version 1.5.2 (2007-10-18) . 12.27Version 1.5.0 (2007-08-31) . 12.28Version 1.4.0 (2007-06-06) . 12.29Version 1.3.8 (2007-03-14) . 12.30Version 1.3.6 (2007-02-20) . 12.31Version 1.3.4 (2007-02-12) . 12.32Version 1.3.2 (2007-01-15) . 12.33Version 1.2.4 (2006-11-16) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 . 166 . 166 . 167 . 167 . 168 . 168 . 168 . 168 . 169 170 . 170 . 173 . 174 . 175 . 177 . 180 . 181 . 183 . 186 . 187 . 189 . 192 . 194 . 198 . 200 . 201 . 202 . 203 . 205 . 206 . 208 . 209 . 211 . 213 . 215 . 217 . 219 . 222 . 225 . 226 . 227 . 228 . 229

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Contents 12.34Version 1.2.2 (2006-11-14) . 12.35Version 1.1.12 (2006-11-14) 12.36Version 1.1.10 (2006-07-28) 12.37Version 1.1.8 (2006-07-17) . 12.38Version 1.1.6 (2006-04-18) . 12.39Version 1.1.4 (2006-03-09) . 12.40Version 1.1.2 (2006-02-03) . 12.41Version 1.0.50 (2005-12-16) 12.42Version 1.0.48 (2005-11-23) 12.43Version 1.0.46 (2005-11-04) 12.44Version 1.0.44 (2005-10-25) 12.45Version 1.0.42 (2005-08-30) 12.46Version 1.0.40 (2005-06-17) 12.47Version 1.0.39 (2005-05-05) 12.48Version 1.0.38 (2005-04-27) 12.49Version 1.0.37 (2005-04-12) 13 Known limitations 14 Third-party licenses 14.1 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2 Licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.1 GNU General Public License (GPL) . . . . . 14.2.2 GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) 14.2.3 Mozilla Public License (MPL) . . . . . . . . 14.2.4 MIT License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.5 X Consortium License (X11) . . . . . . . . 14.2.6 zlib license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.7 OpenSSL license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.8 Slirp license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.9 liblzf license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.10libpng license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.11lwIP license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.12libxml license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.13libxslt licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.14gSOAP Public License Version 1.3a . . . . . 14.2.15Chromium licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.16curl license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.17libgd license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 VirtualBox privacy policy Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 . 230 . 231 . 231 . 232 . 232 . 233 . 235 . 235 . 236 . 236 . 237 . 238 . 239 . 239 . 240 241 244 . 244 . 246 . 246 . 251 . 258 . 265 . 266 . 266 . 266 . 267 . 268 . 268 . 269 . 269 . 270 . 271 . 277 . 280 . 280 282 284

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1 First steps
Welcome to Sun VirtualBox! VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization application. What does that mean? For one thing, it installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris operating systems. Secondly, it extends the capabilities of your existing computer so that it can run multiple operating systems (inside multiple virtual machines) at the same time. So, for example, you can run Windows and Linux on your Mac, run Windows Server 2008 on your Linux server, run Linux on your Windows PC, and so on, all alongside your existing applications. You can install and run as many virtual machines as you like – the only practical limits are disk space and memory. VirtualBox is deceptively simple yet also very powerful. It can run everywhere from small embedded systems or desktop class machines all the way up to datacenter deployments and even Cloud environments. The following screenshot shows you how VirtualBox, installed on a Linux machine, is running Windows 7 in a virtual machine window:

In this User Manual, we’ll begin simply with a quick introduction to virtualization and how to get your ﬁrst virtual machine running with the easy-to-use VirtualBox graphical user interface. Subsequent chapters will go into much more detail covering more powerful tools and features, but fortunately, it is not necessary to read the entire User Manual before you can use VirtualBox.

9

1 First steps You can ﬁnd a summary of VirtualBox’s capabilities in chapter 1.3, Features overview, page 12. For existing VirtualBox users who just want to see what’s new in this release, there is a detailed list in chapter 12, Change log, page 170.

1.1 Why is virtualization useful?
The techniques and features that VirtualBox provides are useful for several scenarios: • Operating system support. With VirtualBox, one can run software written for one operating system on another (for example, Windows software on Linux or a Mac) without having to reboot to use it. Since you can conﬁgure what kinds of hardware should be presented to each virtual machine, you can even install an old operating system such as DOS or OS/2 in a virtual machine if your real computer’s hardware is no longer supported by that operating system. • Testing and disaster recovery. Once installed, a virtual machine and its virtual hard disks can be considered a “container” that can be arbitrarily frozen, woken up, copied, backed up, and transported between hosts. On top of that, with the use of another VirtualBox feature called “snapshots”, one can save a particular state of a virtual machine and revert back to that state, if necessary. This way, one can freely experiment with a computing environment. If something goes wrong (e.g. after installing misbehaving software or infecting the guest with a virus), one can easily switch back to a previous snapshot and avoid the need of frequent backups and restores. Any number of snapshots can be created, allowing you to travel back and forward in virtual machine time. • Infrastructure consolidation. Virtualization can signiﬁcantly reduce hardware and electricity costs. Servers today typically run with fairly average low system loads and are rarely used to their full potential. A lot of hardware potential as well as electricity is thereby wasted. So, instead of running many such physical computers that are only partially used, one can pack many virtual machines onto a few powerful hosts and balance the loads between them. With VirtualBox, you can even run virtual machines as mere servers for the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP), with full client USB support. This allows for consolidating the desktop machines in an enterprise on just a few RDP servers, while the actual clients only have to be capable of displaying VRDP data. • Easier software installations. Virtual machines can be used by software vendors to ship entire software conﬁgurations. For example, installing a complete mail server solution on a real machine can be a tedious task. With virtualization it becomes possible to ship an entire software solution, possibly consisting of many different components, in a virtual machine, which is then often called an “appliance”. Installing and running a mail server becomes as easy as importing such an appliance into VirtualBox.

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1 First steps

1.2 Some terminology
When dealing with virtualization (and also for understanding the following chapters of this documentation), it helps to acquaint oneself with a bit of crucial terminology, especially the following terms: Host operating system (host OS): the operating system of the physical computer on which VirtualBox was installed. There are versions of VirtualBox for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris hosts; for details, please see chapter 1.4, Supported host operating systems, page 14. While the various VirtualBox versions are usually discussed together in this document, there may be platform-speciﬁc differences which we will point out where appropriate. Guest operating system (guest OS): the operating system that is running inside the virtual machine. Theoretically, VirtualBox can run any x86 operating system (DOS, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD, OpenBSD), but to achieve near-native performance of the guest code on your machine, we had to go through a lot of optimizations that are speciﬁc to certain operating systems. So while your favorite operating system may run as a guest, we ofﬁcially support and optimize for a select few (which, however, include the most common ones). See chapter 3.1, Supported guest operating systems, page 44 for details. Virtual machine (VM). When running, a VM is the special environment that VirtualBox creates for your guest operating system. So, in other words, you run your guest operating system “in” a VM. Normally, a VM will be shown as a window on your computer’s desktop, but depending on which of the various frontends of VirtualBox you use, it can be displayed in full-screen mode or remotely by use of the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP). Sometimes we also use the term “virtual machine” in a more abstract way. Internally, VirtualBox thinks of a VM as a set of parameters that determine its behavior. They include hardware settings (how much memory the VM should have, what hard disks VirtualBox should virtualize through which container ﬁles, what CDs are mounted etc.) as well as state information (whether the VM is currently running, saved, its snapshots etc.). These settings are mirrored in the VirtualBox graphical user interface as well as the VBoxManage command line program; see chapter 8, VBoxManage, page 106. In other words, a VM is also what you can see in its settings dialog. Guest Additions. With “Guest Additions”, we refer to special software packages that are shipped with VirtualBox. Even though they are part of VirtualBox, they are designed to be installed inside a VM to improve performance of the guest OS and to add extra features. This is described in detail in chapter 4, Guest Additions, page 60.

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1 First steps

1.3 Features overview
Here’s a brief outline of VirtualBox’s main features: • Portability. VirtualBox runs on a large number of 32-bit and 64-bit host operating systems (again, see chapter 1.4, Supported host operating systems, page 14 for details). To a very large degree, VirtualBox is functionally identical on all of the host platforms, and the same ﬁle and image formats are used. This allows you to run virtual machines created on one host on another host with a different host operating system; for example, you can create a virtual machine on Windows and then run it under Linux. In addition, virtual machines can easily be imported and exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF, see chapter 1.11, Importing and exporting virtual machines, page 29), an industry standard created for this purpose. You can even import OVFs that were created with a different virtualization software. • No hardware virtualization required. For many scenarios, VirtualBox does not require the processor features built into newer hardware like Intel VT-x or AMD-V. As opposed to many other virtualization solutions, you can therefore use VirtualBox even on older hardware where these features are not present. More details can be found in chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49. • Guest Additions: shared folders, seamless windows, 3D virtualization. The VirtualBox Guest Additions are software packages which can be installed inside of supported guest systems to improve their performance and to provide additional integration and communication with the host system. After installing the Guest Additions, a virtual machine will support automatic adjustment of video resolutions, seamless windows, accelerated 3D graphics and more. The Guest Additions are described in detail in chapter 4, Guest Additions, page 60. In particular, Guest Additions provide for “shared folders”, which let you access ﬁles from the host system from within a guest machine. Shared folders are described in chapter 4.7, Folder sharing, page 68. • Great hardware support. Among others, VirtualBox supports: – Guest multiprocessing (SMP). VirtualBox can present up to 32 virtual CPUs to a virtual machine, irrespective of how many CPU cores are actually present in your host. – USB 2.0 device support. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device-speciﬁc drivers on the host. USB support is not limited to certain device categories. For details, see chapter 3.10.1, USB settings, page 56.

12

1 First steps – Hardware compatibility. VirtualBox virtualizes a vast array of virtual devices, among them many devices that are typically provided by other virtualization platforms. That includes IDE, SCSI and SATA hard disk controllers, several virtual network cards and sound cards, virtual serial and parallel ports and an Input/Output Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (I/O APIC), which is found in many modern PC systems. This eases cloning of PC images from real machines and importing of third-party virtual machines into VirtualBox. – Full ACPI support. The Advanced Conﬁguration and Power Interface (ACPI) is fully supported by VirtualBox. This eases cloning of PC images from real machines or third-party virtual machines into VirtualBox. With its unique ACPI power status support, VirtualBox can even report to ACPIaware guest operating systems the power status of the host. For mobile systems running on battery, the guest can thus enable energy saving and notify the user of the remaining power (e.g. in fullscreen modes). – Multiscreen resolutions. VirtualBox virtual machines support screen resolutions many times that of a physical screen, allowing them to be spread over a large number of screens attached to the host system. – Built-in iSCSI support. This unique feature allows you to connect a virtual machine directly to an iSCSI storage server without going through the host system. The VM accesses the iSCSI target directly without the extra overhead that is required for virtualizing hard disks in container ﬁles. For details, see chapter 5.9, iSCSI servers, page 87. – PXE Network boot. The integrated virtual network cards of VirtualBox fully support remote booting via the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE). • Multigeneration branched snapshots. VirtualBox can save arbitrary snapshots of the state of the virtual machine. You can go back in time and revert the virtual machine to any such snapshot and start an alternative VM conﬁguration from there, effectively creating a whole snapshot tree. For details, see chapter 1.8, Snapshots, page 25. • Clean architecture; unprecedented modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-deﬁned internal programming interfaces and a clean separation of client and server code. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a VM simply by clicking on a button in the VirtualBox graphical user interface and then control that machine from the command line, or even remotely. See chapter 1.12, Alternative front-ends, page 31 for details. Due to its modular architecture, VirtualBox can also expose its full functionality and conﬁgurability through a comprehensive software development kit (SDK), which allows for integrating every aspect of VirtualBox with other software systems. Please see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 157 for details.

13

1 First steps • Remote machine display. You can run any virtual machine in a special VirtualBox program that acts as a server for the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP), a backward-compatible extension of the standard Remote Desktop Protocol. With this unique feature, VirtualBox provides high-performance remote access to any virtual machine. VirtualBox’s VRDP support does not rely on the RDP server that is built into Microsoft Windows. Instead, a custom VRDP server has been built directly into the virtualization layer. As a result, it works with any operating system (even in text mode) and does not require application support in the virtual machine either. VRDP support is described in detail in chapter 7.1, Remote display (VRDP support), page 98. On top of this special capacity, VirtualBox offers you more unique features: – Extensible RDP authentication. VirtualBox already supports Winlogon on Windows and PAM on Linux for RDP authentication. In addition, it includes an easy-to-use SDK which allows you to create arbitrary interfaces for other methods of authentication; see chapter 9.4, Custom external VRDP authentication, page 142 for details. – USB over RDP. Via RDP virtual channel support, VirtualBox also allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices locally to a virtual machine which is running remotely on a VirtualBox RDP server; see chapter 7.1.4, Remote USB, page 102 for details.

1.4 Supported host operating systems
Currently, VirtualBox runs on the following host operating systems: • Windows hosts: – Windows XP, all service packs (32-bit) – Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) – Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit1 ). – Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) – Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) • Mac OS X hosts:2 – 10.5 (Leopard, 32-bit)
1 Support 2 Preliminary

for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox 1.5. Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) support was removed with VirtualBox 3.1.

14

1 First steps – 10.6 (Snow Leopard, 32-bit and 64-bit) Intel hardware is required; please see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241 also. • Linux hosts (32-bit and 64-bit3 ). Among others, this includes: – Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (“sarge”), 4.0 (“etch”) and 5.0 (“lenny”) – Fedora Core 4 to 11 – Gentoo Linux – Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 – SUSE Linux 9 and 10, openSUSE 10.3, 11.0 and 11.1 – Ubuntu 6.06 (“Dapper Drake”), 6.10 (“Edgy Eft”), 7.04 (“Feisty Fawn”), 7.10 (“Gutsy Gibbon”), 8.04 (“Hardy Heron”), 8.10 (“Intrepid Ibex”), 9.04 (“Jaunty Jackalope”). – Mandriva 2007.1, 2008.0 and 2009.1 It should be possible to use VirtualBox on most systems based on Linux kernel 2.6 using either the VirtualBox installer or by doing a manual installation; see chapter 2.3, Installing on Linux hosts, page 34. Note that starting with VirtualBox 2.1, Linux 2.4-based host operating systems are no longer supported. • Solaris hosts (32-bit and 64-bit4 ) are supported with the restrictions listed in chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241: – OpenSolaris (2008.05 and higher, “Nevada” build 86 and higher) – Solaris 10 (u5 and higher)

1.5 Installing and starting VirtualBox
VirtualBox comes in many different packages, and installation depends on your host platform. If you have installed software before, installation should be straightforward as on each host platform, VirtualBox uses the installation method that is most common and easy to use. If you run into trouble or have special requirements, please refer to chapter 2, Installation details, page 32 for details about the various installation methods. After installation, you can start VirtualBox as follows: • On a Windows host, in the standard “Programs” menu, click on the item in the “VirtualBox” group. On Vista or Windows 7, you can also type “VirtualBox” in the search box of the “Start” menu.
3 Support 4 Support

for 64-bit Linux was added with VirtualBox 1.4. for OpenSolaris was added with VirtualBox 1.6.

15

1 First steps • On a Mac OS X host, in the Finder, double-click on the “VirtualBox” item in the “Applications” folder. (You may want to drag this item onto your Dock.)

• On a Linux or Solaris host, depending on your desktop environment, a “VirtualBox” item may have been placed in either the “System” or “System Tools” group of your “Applications” menu. Alternatively, you can type VirtualBox in a terminal.

When you start VirtualBox for the ﬁrst time, a window like the following should come up:

On the left, you can see a pane that will later list all your virtual machines. Since you have not created any, the list is empty. A row of buttons above it allows you to create new VMs and work on existing VMs, once you have some. The pane on the right displays the properties of the virtual machine currently selected, if any. Again, since you don’t have any machines yet, the pane displays a welcome message. To give you an idea what VirtualBox might look like later, after you have created many machines, here’s another example:

16

1 First steps

1.6 Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine
Click on the “New” button at the top of the VirtualBox window. A wizard will pop up to guide you through setting up a new virtual machine (VM):

17

1 First steps On the following pages, the wizard will ask you for the bare minimum of information that is needed to create a VM, in particular: 1. A name for your VM, and the type of operating system (OS) you want to install. The name is what you will later see in the VirtualBox main window, and what your settings will be stored under. It is purely informational, but once you have created a few VMs, you will appreciate if you have given your VMs informative names. “My VM” probably is therefore not as useful as “Windows XP SP2”. For “Operating System Type”, select the operating system that you want to install later. Depending on your selection, VirtualBox will enable or disable certain VM settings that your guest operating system may require. This is particularly important for 64-bit guests (see chapter 3.2, 64-bit guests, page 45). It is therefore recommended to always set it to the correct value. 2. The amount of memory (RAM) that the virtual machine should have for itself. Every time a virtual machine is started, VirtualBox will allocate this much memory from your host machine and present it to the guest operating system, which will report this size as the (virtual) computer’s installed RAM.

Note: Choose this setting carefully! The memory you give to the VM will not be available to your host OS while the VM is running, so do not specify more than you can spare. For example, if your host machine has 1 GB of RAM and you enter 512 MB as the amount of RAM for a particular virtual machine, while that VM is running, you will only have 512 MB left for all the other software on your host. If you run two VMs at the same time, even more memory will be allocated for the second VM (which may not even be able to start if that memory is not available). On the other hand, you should specify as much as your guest OS (and your applications) will require to run properly.

A Windows XP guest will require at least a few hundred MB RAM to run properly, and Windows Vista will even refuse to install with less than 512 MB. Of course, if you want to run graphics-intensive applications in your VM, you may require even more RAM. So, as a rule of thumb, if you have 1 GB of RAM or more in your host computer, it is usually safe to allocate 512 MB to each VM. But, in any case, make sure you always have at least 256 to 512 MB of RAM left on your host operating system. Otherwise you may cause your host OS to excessively swap out memory to your hard disk, effectively bringing your host system to a standstill. As with the other settings, you can change this setting later, after you have created the VM. 3. Next, you must specify a virtual hard disk for your VM.

18

1 First steps There are many and potentially complicated ways in which VirtualBox can provide hard disk space to a VM (see chapter 5, Virtual storage, page 76 for details), but the most common way is to use a large image ﬁle on your “real” hard disk, whose contents VirtualBox presents to your VM as if it were a complete hard disk. The wizard shows you the following window:

The wizard allows you to create an image ﬁle or use an existing one. Note also that the disk images can be separated from a particular VM, so even if you delete a VM, you can keep the image, or copy it to another host and create a new VM for it there. In the wizard, you have the following options: • If you have previously created any virtual hard disks which have not been attached to other virtual machines, you can select those from the dropdown list in the wizard window. • Otherwise, to create a new virtual hard disk, press the “New” button. • Finally, for more complicated operations with virtual disks, the “Existing...“ button will bring up the Virtual Media Manager, which is described in more detail in chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80. Most probably, if you are using VirtualBox for the ﬁrst time, you will want to create a new disk image. Hence, press the “New” button. This brings up another window, the “Create New Virtual Disk Wizard”. VirtualBox supports two types of image ﬁles:

19

1 First steps • A dynamically expanding ﬁle will only grow in size when the guest actually stores data on its virtual hard disk. It will therefore initially be small on the host hard drive and only later grow to the size speciﬁed as it is ﬁlled with data. • A ﬁxed-size ﬁle will immediately occupy the ﬁle speciﬁed, even if only a fraction of the virtual hard disk space is actually in use. While occupying much more space, a ﬁxed-size ﬁle incurs less overhead and is therefore slightly faster than a dynamically expanding ﬁle. For details about the differences, please refer to chapter 5.2, Disk image ﬁles (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD), page 79. To prevent your physical hard disk from running full, VirtualBox limits the size of the image ﬁle. Still, it needs to be large enough to hold the contents of your operating system and the applications you want to install – for a modern Windows or Linux guest, you will probably need several gigabytes for any serious use:

After having selected or created your image ﬁle, again press “Next” to go to the next page. 4. After clicking on “Finish”, your new virtual machine will be created. You will then see it in the list on the left side of the main window, with the name you have entered.

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1 First steps

1.7 Running your virtual machine
You will now see your new virtual machine in the list of virtual machines, at the left of the VirtualBox main window. To start the virtual machine, simply double-click on it, or select it and press the “Start” button at the top. This opens up a new window, and the virtual machine which you selected will boot up. Everything which would normally be seen on the virtual system’s monitor is shown in the window, as can be seen with the image in chapter 1.2, Some terminology, page 11. Since this is the ﬁrst time you are running this VM, another wizard will show up to help you select an installation medium. Since the VM is created empty, it would otherwise behave just like a real computer with no operating system installed: it will do nothing and display an error message that it cannot boot an operating system. For this reason, the “First Start Wizard” helps you select an operating system medium to install an operating system from. In most cases, this will either be a real CD or DVD (VirtualBox can then conﬁgure the virtual machine to use your host’s drive), or you might have an ISO image of a CD or DVD handy, which VirtualBox can then present to the virtual machine. In both cases, after making the choices in the wizard, you will be able to install your operating system. In general, you can use the virtual machine much like you would use a real computer. There are couple of points worth mentioning however.

1.7.1 Keyboard and mouse support in virtual machines
1.7.1.1 Capturing and releasing keyboard and mouse Since the operating system in the virtual machine does not “know” that it is not running on a real computer, it expects to have exclusive control over your keyboard and mouse. This is, however, not the case since, unless you are running the VM in fullscreen mode, your VM needs to share keyboard and mouse with other applications and possibly other VMs on your host. As a result, initially after installing a host operating system and before you install the guest additions (we will explain this in a minute), only one of the two – your VM or the rest of your computer – can “own” the keyboard and the mouse. You will see a second mouse pointer which will always be conﬁned to the limits of the VM window. Basically, you activate the VM by clicking inside it. To return ownership of keyboard and mouse to your host operating system, VirtualBox reserves a special key on your keyboard for itself: the “host key”. By default, this is the right Control key on your keyboard; on a Mac host, the default host key is the left Command key. You can change this default in the VirtualBox Global Settings. In any case, the current setting for the host key is always displayed at the bottom right of your VM window, should you have forgotten about it:

21

1 First steps

In detail, all this translates into the following: • Your keyboard is owned by the VM if the VM window on your host desktop has the keyboard focus (and then, if you have many windows open in your guest operating system as well, the window that has the focus in your VM). This means that if you want to type within your VM, click on the title bar of your VM window ﬁrst. To release keyboard ownership, press the Host key (as explained above, typically the right Control key). Note that while the VM owns the keyboard, some key sequences (like Alt-Tab for example) will no longer be seen by the host, but will go to the guest instead. After you press the host key to re-enable the host keyboard, all key presses will go through the host again, so that sequences like Alt-Tab will no longer reach the guest. • Your mouse is owned by the VM only after you have clicked in the VM window. The host mouse pointer will disappear, and your mouse will drive the guest’s pointer instead of your normal mouse pointer. Note that mouse ownership is independent of that of the keyboard: even after you have clicked on a titlebar to be able to type into the VM window, your mouse is not necessarily owned by the VM yet. To release ownership of your mouse by the VM, also press the Host key. As this behavior can be inconvenient, VirtualBox provides a set of tools and device drivers for guest systems called the “VirtualBox Guest Additions” which make VM keyboard and mouse operation a lot more seamless. Most importantly, the Additions will get rid of the second “guest” mouse pointer and make your host mouse pointer work directly in the guest. This will be described later in chapter 4, Guest Additions, page 60. 1.7.1.2 Typing special characters Operating systems expect certain key combinations to initiate certain procedures. Some of these key combinations may be difﬁcult to enter into a virtual machine, as

22

1 First steps there are three candidates as to who receives keyboard input: the host operating system, VirtualBox, or the guest operating system. Who of these three receives keypresses depends on a number of factors, including the key itself. • Host operating systems reserve certain key combinations for themselves. For example, it is impossible to enter the Ctrl+Alt+Delete combination if you want to reboot the guest operating system in your virtual machine, because this key combination is usually hard-wired into the host OS (both Windows and Linux intercept this), and pressing this key combination will therefore reboot your host. Also, on Linux and Solairs hosts, which use the X Window System, the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Backspace normally resets the X server (to restart the entire graphical user interface in case it got stuck). As the X server intercepts this combination, pressing it will usually restart your host graphical user interface (and kill all running programs, including VirtualBox, in the process). Third, on Linux hosts supporting virtual terminals, the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Fx (where Fx is one of the function keys from F1 to F12) normally allows to switch between virtual terminals. As with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, these combinations are intercepted by the host operating system and therefore always switch terminals on the host. If, instead, you want to send these key combinations to the guest operating system in the virtual machine, you will need to use one of the following methods: – Use the items in the “Machine” menu of the virtual machine window. There you will ﬁnd “Insert Ctrl+Alt+Delete” and “Ctrl+Alt+Backspace”; the latter will only have an effect with Linux or Solaris guests, however. – Press special key combinations with the Host key (normally the right Control key), which VirtualBox will then translate for the virtual machine: ∗ Host key + Del to send Ctrl+Alt+Del (to reboot the guest); ∗ Host key + Backspace to send Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (to restart the graphical user interface of a Linux or Solaris guest); ∗ Host key + F1 (or other function keys) to simulate Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or other function keys, i.e. to switch between virtual terminals in a Linux guest). • For some other keyboard combinations such as Alt-Tab (to switch between open windows), VirtualBox allows you to conﬁgure whether these combinations will affect the host or the guest, if a virtual machine currently has the focus. This is a global setting for all virtual machines and can be found under “File” -> “Preferences” -> “Input” -> “Auto-capture keyboard”.

1.7.2 Changing removable media
While a virtual machine is running, you can change removable media in the “Devices” menu of the VM’s window. Here you can select in detail what VirtualBox presents to your VM as a CD, DVD, or ﬂoppy.

23

1 First steps The settings are the same as would be available for the VM in the “Settings” dialog of the VirtualBox main window, but since that dialog is disabled while the VM is in the “running” or “saved” state, this extra menu saves you from having to shut down and restart the VM every time you want to change media. Hence, in the “Devices” menu, VirtualBox allows you to attach the host drive to the guest or select a ﬂoppy or DVD image using the Disk Image Manager, all as described in chapter 1.9, Virtual machine conﬁguration, page 27.

1.7.3 Saving the state of the machine
When you click on the “Close” button of your virtual machine window (at the top right of the window, just like you would close any other window on your system) (or press the Host key together with “Q”), VirtualBox asks you whether you want to “save” or “power off” the VM.

The difference between these three options is crucial. They mean: • Save the machine state: With this option, VirtualBox “freezes” the virtual machine by completely saving its state to your local disk. When you later resume the VM (by again clicking the “Start” button in the VirtualBox main window), you will ﬁnd that the VM continues exactly where it was left off. All your programs will still be open, and your computer resumes operation. Saving the state of a virtual machine is thus in some ways similar to suspending a laptop computer (e.g. by closing its lid). • Send the shutdown signal. This will send an ACPI shutdown signal to the virtual machine, which has the same effect as if you had pressed the power button on a real computer. So long as a fairly modern operating system is installed and running in the VM, this should trigger a proper shutdown mechanism in the VM. • Power off the machine: With this option, VirtualBox also stops running the virtual machine, but without saving its state.

24

1 First steps This is equivalent to pulling the power plug on a real computer without shutting it down properly. If you start the machine again after powering it off, your operating system will have to reboot completely and may begin a lengthy check of its (virtual) system disks. As a result, this should not normally be done, since it can potentially cause data loss or an inconsistent state of the guest system on disk. As an exception, if your virtual machine has any snapshots (see the next chapter), you can use this option to quickly restore the current snapshot of the virtual machine. Only in that case, powering off the machine is not harmful. The “Discard” button in the main VirtualBox window discards a virtual machine’s saved state. This has the same effect as powering it off, and the same warnings apply.

1.8 Snapshots
With snapshots, you can save a particular state of a virtual machine for later use. At any later time, you can revert to that state, even though you may have changed the VM considerably since then. You can see the snapshots of a virtual machine by ﬁrst selecting a machine from the list on the left of the VirtualBox main window and then selecting the “Snapshots” tab on the right. Initially, until you take a snapshot of the machine, that list is empty except for the “Current state” item, which represents the “Now” point in the lifetime of the virtual machine. There are three operations related to snapshots: 1. You can take a snapshot. • If your VM is currently running, select “Take snapshot” from the “Machine” pull-down menu of the VM window. • If your VM is currently in either the “saved” or the “powered off” state (as displayed next to the VM in the VirtualBox main window), click on the “Snapshots” tab on the top right of the main window, and then – either on the small camera icon (for “Take snapshot”) or – right-click on the “Current State” item in the list and select “Take snapshot” from the menu. In any case, a window will pop up and ask you for a snapshot name. This name is purely for reference purposes to help you remember the state of the snapshot. For example, a useful name would be “Fresh installation from scratch, no external drivers”. You can also add a longer text in the “Description” ﬁeld if you want. Your new snapshot will then appear in the list of snapshots under the “Snapshots” tab. Underneath, you will see an item called “Current state”, signifying that the

25

1 First steps current state of your VM is a variation based on the snapshot you took earlier. If you later take another snapshot, you will see that they will be displayed in sequence, and each subsequent snapshot is a derivation of the earlier one:

VirtualBox allows you to take an unlimited number of snapshots – the only limitation is the size of your disks. Keep in mind that each snapshot stores the state of the virtual machine and thus takes some disk space. 2. You can restore a snapshot by right-clicking on any snapshot you have taken in the list of snapshots. By restoring a snapshot, you go back (or forward) in time: the current state of the machine is lost, and the machine is restored to exactly the same state as it was when then snapshot was taken.5

Note: Restoring a snapshot will affect the virtual hard drives that are connected to your VM, as the entire state of the virtual hard drive will be reverted as well. This means also that all ﬁles that have been created since the snapshot and all other ﬁle changes will be lost. In order to prevent such data loss while still making use of the snapshot feature, it is possible to add a second hard drive in “write-through” mode using the VBoxManage interface and use it to store your data. As write-through hard drives are not included in snapshots, they remain unaltered when a machine is reverted. See chapter 5.4, Special image write modes, page 81 for details.
5 Both the terminology and the functionality of restoring snapshots has changed with VirtualBox 3.1.

Before that version, it was only possible to go back to the very last snapshot taken – not earlier ones, and the operation was called “Discard current state” instead of “Restore last snapshot”. The limitation has been lifted with version 3.1. It is now possible to restore any snapshot, going backward and forward in time.

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1 First steps By restoring an earlier snapshot and taking more snapshots from there, it is even possible to create a kind of alternate reality and to switch between these different histories of the virtual machine. This can result in a whole tree of virtual machine snapshots, as shown in the screenshot above. 3. You can also delete a snapshot, which will not affect the state of the virtual machine, but only release the ﬁles on disk that VirtualBox used to store the snapshot data, thus freeing disk space. Think of a snapshot as a point in time that you have preserved. More formally, a snapshot consists of three things: • It contains a complete copy of the VM settings, so that when you restore a snapshot, the VM settings are restored as well. (For example, if you changed the hard disk conﬁguration, that change is undone when you restore the snapshot.) • The state of all the virtual disks attached to the machine is preserved. Going back to a snapshot means that all changes, bit by bit, that had been made to the machine’s disks will be undone as well. (Strictly speaking, this is only true for virtual hard disks in “normal” mode. As mentioned above, you can conﬁgure disks to behave differently with snapshots; see chapter 5.4, Special image write modes, page 81. Even more formally and technically correct, it is not the virtual disk itself that is restored when a snapshot is restored. Instead, when a snapshot is taken, VirtualBox creates differencing images which contain only the changes since the snapshot were taken, and when the snapshot is restored, VirtualBox throws away that differencing image, thus going back to the previous state. This is both faster and uses less disk space. For the details, which can be complex, please see chapter 5.5, Differencing images, page 83.) • Finally, if you took a snapshot while the machine was running, the memory state of the machine is also saved in the snapshot (the same way the memory can be saved when you close the VM window) so that when you restore the snapshot, execution resumes at exactly the point when the snapshot was taken.

1.9 Virtual machine conﬁguration
When you select a virtual machine from the list in the main VirtualBox window, you will see a summary of that machine’s settings on the right of the window, under the “Details” tab. Clicking on the “Settings” button in the toolbar at the top of VirtualBox main window brings up a detailed window where you can conﬁgure many of the properties of the VM that is currently selected. But be careful: even though it is possible to change all VM settings after installing a guest operating system, certain changes might prevent a guest operating system from functioning correctly if done after installation.

27

1 First steps Note: The “Settings” button is disabled while a VM is either in the “running” or “saved” state. This is simply because the settings dialog allows you to change fundamental characteristics of the virtual computer that is created for your guest operating system, and this operating system may not take it well when, for example, half of its memory is taken away from under its feet. As a result, if the “Settings” button is disabled, shut down the current VM ﬁrst. VirtualBox provides a plethora of parameters that can be changed for a virtual machine. The various settings that can be changed in the “Settings” window are described in detail in chapter 3, Conﬁguring virtual machines, page 44. Even more parameters are available with the command line interface; see chapter 8, VBoxManage, page 106. For now, if you have just created an empty VM, you will probably be most interested in the settings presented by the “CD/DVD-ROM” section if you want to make a CD or a DVD available the ﬁrst time you start it, in order to install your guest operating system. For this, you have two options: • If you have actual CD or DVD media from which you want to install your guest operating system (e.g. in the case of a Windows installation CD or DVD), put the media into your host’s CD or DVD drive. Then, in the settings dialog, go to the “CD/DVD-ROM” section and select “Host drive” with the correct drive letter (or, in the case of a Linux host, device ﬁle). This will allow your VM to access the media in your host drive, and you can proceed to install from there. • If you have downloaded installation media from the Internet in the form of an ISO image ﬁle (most probably in the case of a Linux distribution), you would normally burn this ﬁle to an empty CD or DVD and proceed as just described. With VirtualBox however, you can skip this step and mount the ISO ﬁle directly. VirtualBox will then present this ﬁle as a CD or DVD-ROM drive to the virtual machine, much like it does with virtual hard disk images. In this case, in the settings dialog, go to the “CD/DVD-ROM” section and select “ISO image ﬁle”. This brings up the Virtual Media Manager, where you perform the following steps: 1. Press the “Add” button to add your ISO ﬁle to the list of registered images. This will present an ordinary ﬁle dialog that allows you to ﬁnd your ISO ﬁle on your host machine. 2. Back to the manager window, select the ISO ﬁle that you just added and press the “Select” button. This selects the ISO ﬁle for your VM. The Virtual Media Manager is described in detail in chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80.

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1 First steps

1.10 Deleting virtual machines
To remove a virtual machine which you no longer need, right-click on it in the list of virtual machines in the main window and select “Delete” from the context menu that comes up. All settings for that machine will be lost. The “Delete” menu item is disabled while a machine is in “Saved” state. To delete such a machine, discard the saved state ﬁrst by pressing on the “Discard” button. However, any hard disk images attached to the machine will be kept; you can delete those separately using the Virtual Media Manager; see chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80. You cannot delete a machine which has snapshots or is in a saved state, so you must discard these ﬁrst.

1.11 Importing and exporting virtual machines
Starting with version 2.2, VirtualBox can import and export virtual machines in the industry-standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF). OVF is a cross-platform standard supported by many virtualization products which allows for creating ready-made virtual machines that can then be imported into a virtualizer such as VirtualBox. As opposed to other virtualization products, VirtualBox now supports OVF with an easy-to-use graphical user interface as well as using the command line. This allows for packaging so-called virtual appliances: disk images together with conﬁguration settings that can be distributed easily. This way one can offer complete ready-to-use software packages (operating systems with applications) that need no conﬁguration or installation except for importing into VirtualBox. Note: The OVF standard is complex, and support in VirtualBox is an ongoing process. In particular, no guarantee is made that VirtualBox supports all appliances created by other virtualization software. For a list of know limitations, please see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241. An appliance in OVF format will typically consist of several ﬁles: 1. one or several disk images, typically in the widely-used VMDK format (see chapter 5.2, Disk image ﬁles (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD), page 79) and 2. a textual description ﬁle in an XML dialect with an .ovf extension. These ﬁles must reside in the same directory for VirtualBox to be able to import them. A future version of VirtualBox will also support packages that include the OVF XML ﬁle and the disk images packed together in a single archive. To import an appliance in OVF format, select “File” -> “Import appliance” from the main window of the VirtualBox graphical user interface. Then open the ﬁle dialog and navigate to the OVF text ﬁle with the .ovf ﬁle extension.

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1 First steps If VirtualBox can handle the ﬁle, a dialog similar to the following will appear:

This presents the virtual machines described in the OVF ﬁle and allows you to change the virtual machine settings by double-clicking on the description items. Once you click on “Import”, VirtualBox will copy the disk images and create local virtual machines with the settings described in the dialog. These will then show up in the list of virtual machines. Note that since disk images tend to be big, and VMDK images that come with virtual appliances are typically shipped in a special compressed format that is unsuitable for being used by virtual machines directly, the images will need to be unpacked and copied ﬁrst, which can take a few minutes. For how to import an image at the command line, please see chapter 8.8, VBoxManage import, page 121. Conversely, to export virtual machines that you already have in VirtualBox, select the machines and “File” -> “Export appliance”. A different dialog window shows up that allows you to combine several virtual machines into an OVF appliance. Then, you select the target location where the OVF and VMDK ﬁles should be stored, and the conversion process begins. This can again take a while. For how to export an image at the command line, please see chapter 8.9, VBoxManage export, page 122.

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1 First steps Note: OVF cannot describe every feature that VirtualBox provides for virtual machines. For example, snapshot information gets lost on export; the disk images will have a “ﬂattened” state identical to the current state of the virtual machine, but any snapshots that were deﬁned for the machine will have been merged.

1.12 Alternative front-ends
As brieﬂy mentioned in chapter 1.3, Features overview, page 12, VirtualBox has a very ﬂexible internal design that allows you to use different front-ends to control the same virtual machines. To illustrate, you can, for example, start a virtual machine with VirtualBox’s easy-to-use graphical user interface and then stop it from the command line. With VirtualBox’s support for the Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP), you can even run virtual machines remotely on a headless server and have all the graphical output redirected over the network. In detail, the following front-ends are shipped in the standard VirtualBox package: 1. VirtualBox is our graphical user interface (GUI), which most of this User Manual is dedicated to describing, especially in chapter 3, Conﬁguring virtual machines, page 44. While this is the easiest-to-use of our interfaces, it does not (yet) cover all the features that VirtualBox provides. Still, this is the best way to get to know VirtualBox initially. 2. VBoxManage is our command-line interface for automated and very detailed control of every aspect of VirtualBox. It is described in chapter 8, VBoxManage, page 106. 3. VBoxSDL is an alternative, simple graphical front-end with an intentionally limited feature set, designed to only display virtual machines that are controlled in detail with VBoxManage. This is interesting for business environments where displaying all the bells and whistles of the full GUI is not feasible. VBoxSDL is described in chapter 9.5, VBoxSDL, the simpliﬁed VM displayer, page 144. 4. Finally, VBoxHeadless is yet another front-end that produces no visible output on the host at all, but merely acts as a VRDP server. Now, even though the other graphical front-ends (VirtualBox and VBoxSDL) also have VRDP support builtin and can act as a VRDP server, this particular front-end requires no graphics support. This is useful, for example, if you want to host your virtual machines on a headless Linux server that has no X Window system installed. For details, see chapter 7.1.2, VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server, page 99. If the above front-ends still do not satisfy your particular needs, it is relatively painless to create yet another front-end to the complex virtualization engine that is the core of VirtualBox, as the VirtualBox core neatly exposes all of its features in a clean API; please refer to chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 157.

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2 Installation details
As installation of VirtualBox varies depending on your host operating system, we provide installation instructions in four separate chapters for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris, respectively.

2.1 Installing on Windows hosts
2.1.1 Prerequisites
For the various versions of Windows that we support as host operating systems, please refer to chapter 1.4, Supported host operating systems, page 14. In addition, Windows Installer 1.1 or higher must be present on your system. This should be the case if you have all recent Windows updates installed.

2.1.2 Performing the installation
The VirtualBox installation can be started • either by double-clicking on its executable ﬁle (contains both 32- and 64-bit architectures) • or by entering
VirtualBox.exe -extract

on the command line. This will extract both installers into a temporary directory in which you’ll then ﬁnd the usual .MSI ﬁles. Then you can do a
msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-MultiArch_<x86|amd64>.msi

to perform the installation. In either case, this will display the installation welcome dialog and allow you to choose where to install VirtualBox to and which components to install. In addition to the VirtualBox application, the following components are available: USB support This package contains special drivers for your Windows host that VirtualBox requires to fully support USB devices inside your virtual machines.

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2 Installation details Networking This package contains extra networking drivers for your Windows host that VirtualBox needs to support Host Interface Networking (to make your VM’s virtual network cards accessible from other machines on your physical network). Depending on your Windows conﬁguration, you may see warnings about “unsigned drivers” or similar. Please select “Continue” on these warnings as otherwise VirtualBox might not function correctly after installation. The installer will create a “VirtualBox” group in the programs startup folder which allows you to launch the application and access its documentation. With standard settings, VirtualBox will be installed for all users on the local system. In case this is not wanted, you have to invoke the installer by ﬁrst extracting it by using
VirtualBox.exe -extract

and then do as follows:
VirtualBox.exe -msiparams ALLUSERS=2

or
msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-MultiArch_<x86|amd64>.msi ALLUSERS=2

on the extracted .MSI ﬁles. This will install VirtualBox only for the current user.

2.1.3 Uninstallation
As we use the Microsoft Installer, VirtualBox can be safely uninstalled at any time by choosing the program entry in the “Add/Remove Programs” applet in the Windows Control Panel.

2.1.4 Unattended installation
Unattended installations can be performed using the standard MSI support.

2.2 Installing on Mac OS X hosts
2.2.1 Performing the installation
For Mac OS X hosts, VirtualBox ships in a disk image (dmg) ﬁle. Perform the following steps: 1. Double-click on that ﬁle to have its contents mounted. 2. A window will open telling you to double click on the VirtualBox.mpkg installer ﬁle displayed in that window. 3. This will start the installer, which will allow you to select where to install VirtualBox to. After installation, you can ﬁnd a VirtualBox icon in the “Applications” folder in the Finder.

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2 Installation details

2.2.2 Uninstallation
To uninstall VirtualBox, open the disk image (dmg) ﬁle again and double-click on the uninstall icon contained therein.

2.2.3 Unattended installation
To perform a non-interactive installation of VirtualBox you can use the command line version of the installer application. Mount the disk image (dmg) ﬁle as described in the normal installation. Then open a terminal session and execute:
sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.mpkg \ -target /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

2.3 Installing on Linux hosts
2.3.1 Prerequisites
For the various versions of Linux that we support as host operating systems, please refer to chapter 1.4, Supported host operating systems, page 14. You will need to install the following packages on your Linux system before starting the installation (some systems will do this for you automatically when you install VirtualBox): • Qt 4.4.0 or higher; • SDL 1.2.7 or higher (this graphics library is typically called libsdl or similar).

Note: To be precise, these packages are only required if you want to run the VirtualBox graphical user interfaces. In particular, VirtualBox, our main graphical user interface, requires both Qt and SDL; VBoxSDL, our simpliﬁed GUI, requires only SDL. By contrast, if you only want to run the headless VRDP server that comes with VirtualBox, neither Qt nor SDL are required.

2.3.2 The VirtualBox kernel module
VirtualBox uses a special kernel module to perform physical memory allocation and to gain control of the processor for guest system execution. Without this kernel module, you will still be able to work with virtual machines in the conﬁguration interface, but you will not be able to start any virtual machines.

34

2 Installation details The VirtualBox kernel module is automatically installed on your system when you install VirtualBox. To maintain it with future kernel updates, for recent Linux distributions – for example Fedora Core 5 and later, Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) and later and Mandriva 2007.1 and later –, generally we recommend installing Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS)1 . This framework helps to build kernel modules and to deal with kernel upgrades. If DKMS is not already installed, execute one of the following: • On an Ubuntu system:
sudo apt-get install dkms

• On a Fedora system:
yum install dkms

• On a Mandriva system:
urpmi dkms

If DKMS is available and installed, the VirtualBox kernel module should always work automatically, and it will be automatically rebuilt if your host kernel is updated. Otherwise, there are only two situations in which you will need to worry about the kernel module: 1. The original installation fails. This probably means that your Linux system is not prepared for building external kernel modules. Most Linux distributions can be set up simply by installing the right packages normally, these will be the GNU compiler (GCC), GNU Make (make) and packages containing header ﬁles for your kernel - and making sure that all system updates are installed and that the system is running the most up-to-date kernel included in the distribution. The version numbers of the header ﬁle packages must be the same as that of the kernel you are using. • With Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must install the right version of the linux-headers and if it exists the linux-kbuild package. Current Ubuntu releases should have the right packages installed by default. • In even older Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must install the right version of the kernel-headers package. • On Fedora and Redhat systems, the package is kernel-devel. • On SUSE and openSUSE Linux, you must install the right versions of the kernel-source and kernel-syms packages. • Alternatively, if you have built your own kernel, /usr/src/linux should point to your kernel sources. If you have not removed the ﬁles created during the build process, then your system will already be set up correctly.
1 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support

for an introduction.

35

2 Installation details 2. The kernel of your Linux host got updated. In that case, the kernel module will need to be reinstalled by executing (as root):
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

2.3.3 USB and advanced networking support
In order to use VirtualBox’s USB support, the user account under which you intend to run VirtualBox must have read and write access to the USB ﬁlesystem (usbfs). In addition, access to /dev/net/tun will be required if you want to use Host Interface Networking, which is described in detail in chapter 6.4, Bridged networking, page 93.

2.3.4 Performing the installation
VirtualBox is available in a number of package formats native to various common Linux distributions (see chapter 1.4, Supported host operating systems, page 14 for details). In addition, there is an alternative generic installer (.run) which should work on most Linux distributions. 2.3.4.1 Installing VirtualBox from a Debian/Ubuntu package First, download the appropriate package for your distribution. The following examples assume that you are installing to an Ubuntu Edgy system. Use dpkg to install the Debian package:
sudo dpkg -i VirtualBox_3.1.0_Ubuntu_edgy.deb

You will be asked to accept the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License. Unless you answer “yes” here, the installation will be aborted. The group vboxusers will be created during installation. Note that a user who is going to run VirtualBox must be member of that group. A user can be made member of the group vboxusers through the GUI user/group management or at the command line with
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username

Also note that adding an active user to that group will require that user to log out and back in again. This should be done manually after successful installation of the package. The installer will also search for a VirtualBox kernel module suitable for your kernel. The package includes pre-compiled modules for the most common kernel conﬁgurations. If no suitable kernel module is found, the installation script tries to build a module itself. If the build process is not successful you will be shown a warning and the package will be left unconﬁgured. Please have a look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to ﬁnd out why the compilation failed. You may have to install the appropriate Linux kernel headers (see chapter 2.3.2, The VirtualBox kernel module, page 34). After correcting any problems, do

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2 Installation details
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

This will start a second attempt to build the module. If a suitable kernel module was found in the package or the module was successfully built, the installation script will attempt to load that module. If this fails, please see chapter 11.5.1, Linux kernel module refuses to load, page 165 for further information. Once VirtualBox has been successfully installed and conﬁgured, you can start it by selecting “VirtualBox” in your start menu or from the command line (see chapter 2.3.5, Starting VirtualBox on Linux, page 41). 2.3.4.2 Using the alternative installer (VirtualBox.run) The alternative installer performs the following steps: • It unpacks the application ﬁles to a target directory of choice. By default,
/opt/VirtualBox/

will be used. • It builds the VirtualBox kernel module (vboxdrv) and installs it. • It creates /etc/init.d/vboxdrv, an init script to start the VirtualBox kernel module. • It creates a new system group called vboxusers. • It creates symbolic links to VirtualBox, VBoxSDL, VBoxVRDP, VBoxHeadless and VBoxManage in /usr/bin. • It creates /etc/udev/60-vboxdrv.rules, a description ﬁle for udev, if that is present, which makes the module accessible to anyone in the group vboxusers. • It writes the installation directory to /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg. The installer must be executed as root with either install or uninstall as the ﬁrst parameter. If you do not want the installer to ask you whether you wish to accept the license agreement (for example, for performing unattended installations), you can add the parameter license_accepted_unconditionally. Finally, if you want to use a directory other than the default installation directory, add the desired path as an extra parameter.
sudo ./VirtualBox.run install /opt/VirtualBox

Or if you do not have the “sudo” command available, run the following as root instead:
./VirtualBox.run install /opt/VirtualBox

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2 Installation details After that you need to put every user which should be able to use VirtualBox in the group vboxusers, either through the GUI user management tools or by running the following command as root:
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username

Note: The usermod command of some older Linux distributions does not support the -a option (which adds the user to the given group without affecting membership of other groups). In this case, ﬁnd out the current group memberships with the groups command and add all these groups in a commaseparated list to the command line after the -G option, e.g. like this: usermod -G group1,group2,vboxusers username. If any users on your system should be able to access host USB devices from within VirtualBox guests, you should also add them to the appropriate user group that your distribution uses for USB access, e.g. usb or usbusers. 2.3.4.3 Performing a manual installation If, for any reason, you cannot use the shell script installer described previously, you can also perform a manual installation. Invoke the installer like this:
./VirtualBox.run --keep --noexec

This will unpack all the ﬁles needed for installation in the directory install under the current directory. The VirtualBox application ﬁles are contained in VirtualBox.tar.bz2 which you can unpack to any directory on your system. For example:
sudo mkdir /opt/VirtualBox sudo tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox

or as root:
mkdir /opt/VirtualBox tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox

The sources for VirtualBox’s kernel module are provided in the src directory. To build the module, change to the directory and issue
make

If everything builds correctly, issue the following command to install the module to the appropriate module directory:
sudo make install

In case you do not have sudo, switch the user account to root and perform

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2 Installation details
make install

The VirtualBox kernel module needs a device node to operate. The above make command will tell you how to create the device node, depending on your Linux system. The procedure is slightly different for a classical Linux setup with a /dev directory, a system with the now deprecated devfs and a modern Linux system with udev. On certain Linux distributions, you might experience difﬁculties building the module. You will have to analyze the error messages from the build system to diagnose the cause of the problems. In general, make sure that the correct Linux kernel sources are used for the build process. Note that the user who is going to run VirtualBox needs read and write permission on the VirtualBox kernel module device node /dev/vboxdrv. You can either deﬁne a vboxusers group by entering
groupadd vboxusers chgrp vboxusers /dev/vboxdrv chmod 660 /dev/vboxdrv

or, alternatively, simply give all users access (insecure, not recommended!)
chmod 666 /dev/vboxdrv

You should also add any users who will be allowed to use host USB devices in VirtualBox guests to the appropriate USB users group for your distribution. This group is often called usb or usbusers. Next, you will have to install the system initialization script for the kernel module:
cp /opt/VirtualBox/vboxdrv.sh /etc/init.d/vboxdrv

(assuming you installed VirtualBox to the /opt/VirtualBox directory) and activate the initialization script using the right method for your distribution. You should create VirtualBox’s conﬁguration ﬁle:
mkdir /etc/vbox echo INSTALL_DIR=/opt/VirtualBox > /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg

and, for convenience, create the following symbolic links:
ln ln ln ln ln -sf -sf -sf -sf -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VirtualBox /usr/bin/VBoxSVC /usr/bin/VBoxManage /usr/bin/VBoxHeadless /usr/bin/VBoxSDL

2.3.4.4 Updating and uninstalling VirtualBox Before updating or uninstalling VirtualBox, you must terminate any virtual machines which are currently running and exit the VirtualBox or VBoxSVC applications. To update VirtualBox, simply run the installer of the updated version. To uninstall VirtualBox, invoke the installer like this:

39

2 Installation details
sudo ./VirtualBox.run uninstall

or as root
./VirtualBox.run uninstall

. Starting with version 2.2.2, you can uninstall the .run package by invoking
/opt/VirtualBox/uninstall.sh

To manually uninstall VirtualBox, simply undo the steps in the manual installation in reverse order. 2.3.4.5 Automatic installation of Debian packages The Debian packages will request some user feedback when installed for the ﬁrst time. The debconf system is used to perform this task. To prevent any user interaction during installation, default values can be deﬁned. A ﬁle vboxconf can contain the following debconf settings:
virtualbox virtualbox/module-compilation-allowed boolean true virtualbox virtualbox/delete-old-modules boolean true

The ﬁrst line allows compilation of the vboxdrv kernel module if no module was found for the current kernel. The second line allows the package to delete any old vboxdrv kernel modules compiled by previous installations. These default settings can be applied with
debconf-set-selections vboxconf

prior to the installation of the VirtualBox Debian package. 2.3.4.6 Automatic installation of .rpm packages The .rpm format does not provide a conﬁguration system comparable to the debconf system. To conﬁgure the installation process of our .rpm packages, a ﬁle /etc/default/virtualbox is interpreted. The automatic generation of the udev rule can be prevented by the following setting:
INSTALL_NO_UDEV=1

The creation of the group vboxusers can be prevented by
INSTALL_NO_GROUP=1

If the line
INSTALL_NO_VBOXDRV=1

is speciﬁed, the package installer will not try to build the vboxdrv kernel module if no module according to the current kernel was found.

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2 Installation details

2.3.5 Starting VirtualBox on Linux
The easiest way to start a VirtualBox program is by running the program of your choice (VirtualBox, VBoxManage, VBoxSDL or VBoxHeadless) from a terminal. These are symbolic links to VBox.sh that start the required program for you. The following detailed instructions should only be of interest if you wish to execute VirtualBox without installing it ﬁrst. You should start by compiling the vboxdrv kernel module (see above) and inserting it into the Linux kernel. VirtualBox consists of a service daemon (VBoxSVC) and several application programs. The daemon is automatically started if necessary. All VirtualBox applications will communicate with the daemon through Unix local domain sockets. There can be multiple daemon instances under different user accounts and applications can only communicate with the daemon running under the user account as the application. The local domain socket resides in a subdirectory of your system’s directory for temporary ﬁles called .vbox-<username>-ipc. In case of communication problems or server startup problems, you may try to remove this directory. All VirtualBox applications (VirtualBox, VBoxSDL, VBoxManage and VBoxHeadless) require the VirtualBox directory to be in the library path:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows XP"

2.4 Installing on Solaris hosts
For the various versions of Solaris that we support as host operating systems, please refer to chapter 1.4, Supported host operating systems, page 14. If you have a previously installed instance of VirtualBox on your Solaris host, please uninstall it ﬁrst before installing a new instance. Refer to chapter 2.4.3, Uninstallation, page 42 for uninstall instructions.

2.4.1 Performing the installation
VirtualBox is available as a standard Solaris package. Download the VirtualBox SunOS package which includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of VirtualBox. The installation must be performed as root and from the global zone as the VirtualBox installer loads kernel drivers which cannot be done from non-global zones. To verify which zone you are currently in, execute the zonename command. Execute the following commands:
gunzip -cd VirtualBox-3.1.0-SunOS.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Starting with VirtualBox 3.1 the VirtualBox kernel package is no longer a separate package and has been integrated into the main package. Install the VirtualBox package using:
pkgadd -d VirtualBox-3.1.0-SunOS.pkg

41

2 Installation details Note: If you are using Solaris Zones, to install VirtualBox only into the current zone and not into any other zone, use pkgadd -G. For more information refer to the pkgadd manual; see also chapter 2.4.5, Conﬁguring a zone for running VirtualBox, page 43. The installer will then prompt you to enter the package you wish to install. Choose “1” or “all” and proceed. Next the installer will ask you if you want to allow the postinstall script to be executed. Choose “y” and proceed as it is essential to execute this script which installs the VirtualBox kernel module. Following this conﬁrmation the installer will install VirtualBox and execute the postinstall setup script. Once the postinstall script has been executed your installation is now complete. You may now safely delete the uncompressed package and autoresponse ﬁles from your system. VirtualBox would be installed in /opt/VirtualBox.

2.4.2 Starting VirtualBox on Solaris
The easiest way to start a VirtualBox program is by running the program of your choice (VirtualBox, VBoxManage, VBoxSDL or VBoxHeadless) from a terminal. These are symbolic links to VBox.sh that start the required program for you. Alternatively, you can directly invoke the required programs from /opt/VirtualBox. Using the links provided is easier as you do not have to type the full path. You can conﬁgure some elements of the VirtualBox Qt GUI such as fonts and colours by executing VBoxQtconfig from the terminal.

2.4.3 Uninstallation
Uninstallation of VirtualBox on Solaris requires root permissions. To perform the uninstallation, start a root terminal session and execute:
pkgrm SUNWvbox

After conﬁrmation, this will remove VirtualBox from your system. If you are uninstalling VirtualBox version 3.0 or lower, you need to remove the VirtualBox kernel interface package, execute:
pkgrm SUNWvboxkern

2.4.4 Unattended installation
To perform a non-interactive installation of VirtualBox we have provided a response ﬁle named autoresponse that the installer will use for responses to inputs rather than ask them from you. Extract the tar.gz package as described in the normal installation. Then open a root terminal session and execute:
pkgadd -d VirtualBox-3.1.0-SunOS-x86 -n -a autoresponse SUNWvbox

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2 Installation details To perform a non-interactive uninstallation, open a root terminal session and execute:
pkgrm -n -a /opt/VirtualBox/autoresponse SUNWvbox

2.4.5 Conﬁguring a zone for running VirtualBox
Starting with VirtualBox 1.6 it is possible to run VirtualBox from within Solaris zones. For an introduction of Solaris zones, please refer to http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/ features/articles/solaris_zones.jsp. Assuming that VirtualBox has already been installed into your zone, you need to give the zone access to VirtualBox’s device node. This is done by performing the following steps. Start a root terminal and execute:
zonecfg -z vboxzone

Inside the zonecfg prompt add the device resource and match properties to the zone. Here’s how it can be done:
zonecfg:vboxzone>add device zonecfg:vboxzone:device>set match=/dev/vboxdrv zonecfg:vboxzone:device>end zonecfg:vboxzone>verify zonecfg:vboxzone>exit

If you are running VirtualBox 2.2.0 or above on OpenSolaris or Nevada hosts, you should add a device for /dev/vboxusbmon too, similar to what was shown above. This does not apply to Solaris 10 hosts due to lack of USB support. Replace “vboxzone” with the name of the zone in which you intend to run VirtualBox. Next reboot the zone using zoneadm and you should be able to run VirtualBox from within the conﬁgured zone.

43

3 Conﬁguring virtual machines
Whereas chapter 1, First steps, page 9 gave you a quick introduction to VirtualBox and how to get your ﬁrst virtual machine running, the following chapter describe in detail how to conﬁgure virtual machines. You have considerable latitude in deciding what virtual hardware will be provided to the guest. The virtual hardware can be used for communicating with the host system or with other guests. For instance, if you provide VirtualBox with the image of a CDROM in an ISO ﬁle, VirtualBox can present this image to a guest system as if it were a physical CD-ROM. Similarly, you can give a guest system access to the real network via its virtual network card, and, if you choose, give the host system, other guests, or computers on the Internet access to the guest system.

3.1 Supported guest operating systems
Since VirtualBox is designed to provide a generic virtualization environment for x86 systems, it may run operating systems of any kind, even those that are not ofﬁcially supported by Sun Microsystems. However, our focus is to optimize the product’s performance for a select list of guest systems: Windows NT 4.0 All versions/editions and service packs are fully supported; however, there are some issues with older service packs. We recommend to install service pack 6a. Guest Additions are available with a limited feature set. Windows 2000 / XP / Server 2003 / Vista / Server 2008 / Windows 7 beta All versions/editions and service packs are fully supported (including 64-bit versions, under the preconditions listed below). Guest Additions are available. DOS / Windows 3.x / 95 / 98 / ME Limited testing has been performed. Use beyond legacy installation mechanisms not recommended. No Guest Additions available. Linux 2.4 Limited support. Linux 2.6 All versions/editions are fully supported (32 bits and 64 bits). Guest Additions are available. We strongly recommend using a Linux kernel version 2.6.13 or higher for better performance. Note: Certain Linux kernel releases have bugs that prevent them from executing in a virtual environment; please see chapter 11.3.3, Buggy Linux 2.6 kernel versions, page 162 for details.

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines Solaris 10, OpenSolaris Fully supported (32 bits and 64 bits). Guest Additions are available. FreeBSD Requires hardware virtualization to be enabled. Limited support. Guest Additions are not available yet. OpenBSD Requires hardware virtualization to be enabled. Versions 3.7 and later are supported. Guest Additions are not available yet. OS/2 Warp 4.5 Requires hardware virtualization to be enabled. We ofﬁcially support MCP2 only; other OS/2 versions may or may not work. Guest Additions are available with a limited feature set.1

3.2 64-bit guests
Starting with version 2.0, VirtualBox supports 64-bit guest operating systems. Starting with version 2.1, you can even run 64-bit guests on a 32-bit host operating system. The hardware prerequisites are identical for both cases. In particular, 64-bit guests are supported under the following conditions: 1. You need a 64-bit processor with hardware virtualization support (see chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49). 2. You must enable hardware virtualization for the particular VM for which you want 64-bit support; software virtualization is not supported for 64-bit VMs. 3. If you want to use 64-bit guest support on a 32-bit host operating system, you must also select a 64-bit operating system for the particular VM. Since supporting 64 bits on 32-bit hosts incurs additional overhead, VirtualBox only enables this support upon explicit request. On 64-bit hosts, 64-bit guest support is always enabled, so you can simply install a 64-bit operating system in the guest.

Warning: On any host, you should enable the I/O APIC for virtual machines that you intend to use in 64-bit mode. This is especially true for 64-bit Windows VMs. See chapter 3.3.2, “Advanced” tab, page 46. In addition, for 64-bit Windows guests, you should make sure that the VM uses the Intel networking device, since there is no 64-bit driver support for the AMD PCNet card; see chapter 6.1, Virtual networking hardware, page 89. If you use the “Create VM” wizard of the VirtualBox graphical user interface (see chapter 1.6, Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine, page 17), VirtualBox will automatically use the correct settings for each selected 64-bit operating system type.
1 See

chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241.

45

3 Conﬁguring virtual machines

3.3 General settings
In the Settings window, under “General”, you can conﬁgure the most fundamental aspects of the virtual machine such as memory and essential hardware. There are three tabs, “Basic”, “Advanced” and “Description”.

3.3.1 “Basic” tab
Under the “Basic” tab of the “General” settings category, you can ﬁnd these settings: Name The name under which the VM is shown in the list of VMs in the main window. Under this name, VirtualBox also saves the VM’s conﬁguration ﬁles. By changing the name, VirtualBox renames these ﬁles as well. As a result, you can only use characters which are allowed in your host operating system’s ﬁle names. Note that internally, VirtualBox uses unique identiﬁers (UUIDs) to identify virtual machines. You can display these with VBoxManage. Operating System / Version The type of the guest operating system that is (or will be) installed in the VM. This is the same setting that was speciﬁed in the “New Virtual Machine” wizard, as described with chapter 1.6, Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine, page 17 above.

3.3.2 “Advanced” tab
Snapshot folder By default, VirtualBox saves snapshot data together with your other VirtualBox conﬁguration data; see chapter 9.1, VirtualBox conﬁguration data, page 138. With this setting, you can specify any other folder for each VM. Shared Clipboard If the virtual machine has Guest Additions installed, you can select here whether the clipboard of the guest operating system should be shared with that of your host. If you select “Bidirectional”, then VirtualBox will always make sure that both clipboards contain the same data. If you select “Host to guest” or “Guest to host”, then VirtualBox will only ever copy clipboard data in one direction. Removable Media: Remember Runtime Changes If this is checked, VirtualBox will save the state of what media has been mounted between several runs of a virtual machine. Mini Toolbar In full screen or seamless mode, VirtualBox can display a small toolbar that contains some of the items that are normally available from the virtual machine’s menu bar. This toolbar reduces itself to a small gray line unless you move the mouse over it. With the toolbar, you can return from full screen or seamless mode, control machine execution or enable certain devices. If you don’t want to see the toolbar, disable this setting.

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines

3.3.3 “Description” tab
Here you can enter any description for your virtual machine, if you want. This has no effect of the functionality of the machine, but you may ﬁnd this space useful to note down things like the conﬁguration of a virtual machine and the software that has been installed into it.

3.4 System settings
The “System” category groups various settings that are related to the basic hardware that is presented to the virtual machine. Note: As the activation mechanism of Microsoft Windows is sensitive to hardware changes, if you are changing hardware settings for a Windows guest, some of these changes may trigger a request for another activation with Microsoft.

3.4.1 “Motherboard” tab
On the “Motherboard” tab, you can inﬂuence virtual hardware that would normally be on the motherboard of a real computer. Base memory This sets the amount of RAM that is allocated and given to the VM when it is running. The speciﬁed amount of memory will be requested from the host operating system, so it must be available or made available as free memory on the host when attempting to start the VM and will not be available to the host while the VM is running. This is the same setting that was speciﬁed in the “New Virtual Machine” wizard, as described with guidelines under chapter 1.6, Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine, page 17 above. Generally, it is possible to change the memory size after installing the guest operating system (provided you do not reduce the memory to an amount where the operating system would no longer boot). Boot order This setting determines the order in which the guest operating system will attempt to boot from the various virtual boot devices. Analogous to a real PC’s BIOS setting, VirtualBox can tell a guest OS to start from the virtual ﬂoppy, the virtual CD/DVD drive, the virtual hard drive (each of these as deﬁned by the other VM settings), the network, or none of these. If you select “Network”, the VM will attempt to boot from a network via the PXE mechanism. This needs to be conﬁgured in detail on the command line; please see chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116.

47

3 Conﬁguring virtual machines Enable I/O APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers (APICs) are a newer x86 hardware feature that have replaced old-style Programmable Interrupt Controllers (PICs) in recent years. With an I/O APIC, operating systems can use more than 16 interrupt requests (IRQs) and therefore avoid IRQ sharing for improved reliability. Note: Enabling the I/O APIC is required for 64-bit guest operating systems, especially Windows Vista; it is also required if you want to use more than one virtual CPU in a virtual machine. However, software support for I/O APICs has been unreliable with some operating systems other than Windows. Also, the use of an I/O APIC slightly increases the overhead of virtualization and therefore slows down the guest OS a little. Warning: All Windows operating systems starting with Windows 2000 install different kernels depending on whether an I/O APIC is available. As with ACPI, the I/O APIC therefore must not be turned off after installation of a Windows guest OS. Turning it on after installation will have no effect however.

In addition, you can turn off the Advanced Conﬁguration and Power Interface (ACPI) which VirtualBox presents to the guest operating system by default. ACPI is the current industry standard to allow operating systems to recognize hardware, conﬁgure motherboards and other devices and manage power. As all modern PCs contain this feature and Windows and Linux have been supporting it for years, it is also enabled by default in VirtualBox. It can be turned off on the command line; e see chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116. Warning: All Windows operating systems starting with Windows 2000 install different kernels depending on whether ACPI is available, so ACPI must not be turned off after installation of a Windows guest OS. Turning it on after installation will have no effect however.

3.4.2 “Processor” tab
On the “Processor” tab, you can set how many virtual CPU cores the guest operating systems should see. Starting with version 3.0, VirtualBox supports symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) and can present up to 32 virtual CPU cores to each virtual machine. You should not, however, conﬁgure virtual machines to use more CPU cores than you have available physically.

48

3 Conﬁguring virtual machines In addition, the “Enable PAE/NX” setting determines whether the PAE and NX capabilities of the host CPU will be exposed to the virtual machine. PAE stands for “Physical Address Extension”. Normally, if enabled and supported by the operating system, then even a 32-bit x86 CPU can access more than 4 GB of RAM. This is made possible by adding another 4 bits to memory addresses, so that with 36 bits, up to 64 GB can be addressed. Some operating systems (such as Ubuntu Server) require PAE support from the CPU and cannot be run in a virtual machine without it.

3.4.3 “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization
On this page, you can determine whether and how VirtualBox should use hardware virtualization extensions that your host CPU may support. In most cases, the default settings will be ﬁne; VirtualBox will have picked sensible defaults depending on the operating system that you selected when you created the virtual machine. In certain situations, however, you may want to change these preconﬁgured defaults. As a general introduction, VirtualBox allows software in the virtual machine to run directly on the processor of the host, but an array of complex techniques is employed to intercept operations that would interfere with your host. Whenever the guest attempts to do something that could be harmful to your computer and its data, VirtualBox steps in and takes action. In particular, for lots of hardware that the guest believes to be accessing, VirtualBox simulates a certain “virtual” environment according to how you have conﬁgured a virtual machine. For example, if the guest attempts to access a hard disk, VirtualBox redirects these requests to whatever you have conﬁgured to be the virtual machine’s virtual hard disk – normally, an image ﬁle on your host. There are two ways in which VirtualBox can achieve virtualization: either entirely in software or, with newer processors, using certain hardware features. • For some years, Intel and AMD processors have had support for so-called “hardware virtualization”. This means that these processors aid virtualization software such as VirtualBox in intercepting potentially dangerous operations that a guest operating system may be attempting and in presenting virtual hardware to a virtual machine. These hardware features differ between Intel and AMD processors. Intel named its technology VT-x; AMD calls theirs AMD-V. Note: On many systems, the hardware virtualization features ﬁrst need to be enabled in the BIOS before VirtualBox can use them. • As opposed to other virtualization software, for many usage scenarios, VirtualBox does not require hardware virtualization features to be present. Through sophisticated techniques, VirtualBox virtualizes many guest operating systems entirely in software. This means that you can run virtual machines even on older processors which do not support hardware virtualization.

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines You can select for each virtual machine individually whether VirtualBox should use software or hardware virtualization. Prior to VirtualBox version 2.2, software virtualization was the default; starting with version 2.2, VirtualBox will enable hardware virtualization by default for new virtual machines that you create. (Existing virtual machines are not automatically changed for compatibility reasons, and the default can of course be changed for each virtual machine.) Even though VirtualBox does not always require hardware virtualization, enabling it is required in the following scenarios: • Certain rare guest operating systems like OS/2 make use of very esoteric processor instructions that are not supported with our software virtualization. For virtual machines that are conﬁgured to contain such an operating system, hardware virtualization is enabled automatically. • VirtualBox’s 64-bit guest support (added with version 2.0) and multiprocessing (SMP, added with version 3.0) both require hardware virtualization to be enabled. (This is not much of a limitation since the vast majority of today’s 64-bit and multicore CPUs ship with hardware virtualization anyway; the exceptions to this rule are e.g. older Intel Celeron and AMD Opteron CPUs.) The reason for changing the default with version 2.2 is that the hardware has signiﬁcantly improved with the latest Intel and AMD processors, and VirtualBox has also ﬁne-tuned its hardware virtualization support to a degree that it is now faster than software virtualization in many situations. Warning: Do not run other hypervisors (open-source or commercial virtualization products) together with VirtualBox! While several hypervisors can normally be installed in parallel, do not attempt to run several virtual machines from competing hypervisors at the same time. VirtualBox cannot track what another hypervisor is currently attempting to do on the same host, and especially if several products attempt to use hardware virtualization features such as VT-x, this can crash the entire host. Also, within VirtualBox, you can mix software and hardware virtualization when running multiple VMs. In certain cases a small performance penalty will be unavoidable when mixing VT-x and software virtualization VMs. We recommend not mixing virtualization modes if maximum performance and low overhead are essential. This does not apply to AMD-V. In addition to “plain” hardware virtualization, your processor may also support additional sophisticated techniques:2 • A newer feature called “nested paging” implements some memory management in hardware, which can greatly accelerate hardware virtualization since these tasks no longer need to be performed by the virtualization software.
2 VirtualBox

2.0 added support for AMD’s nested paging; support for Intel’s EPT and VPIDs was added with version 2.1.

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines On AMD processors, nested paging has been available starting with the Barcelona (K10) architecture; Intel added support for nested paging, which they call “extended page tables” (EPT), with their Core i7 (Nehalem) processors. Nested paging is still disabled by default even for new machines, but it can be enabled for each virtual machine individually in the machine settings. If your system supports nested paging (AMD-V) or EPT (VT-x), then you can expect a signiﬁcant performance increase by enabling hardware virtualization and the nested paging feature • On Intel CPUs, another hardware feature called “Virtual Processor Identiﬁers” (VPIDs) can greatly accelerate context switching by reducing the need for expensive ﬂushing of the processor’s Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs). To enable this feature for a VM, you need to use the command line; see chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116.

3.5 Display settings
Video memory size This sets the size of the memory provided by the virtual graphics card available to the guest, in MB. As with the main memory, the speciﬁed amount will be allocated from the host’s resident memory. Based on the amount of video memory, higher resolutions and color depths may be available. Enable 3D acceleration If a virtual machine has Guest Additions installed, you can select here whether the guest should support accelerated 3D graphics. Please refer to chapter 4.9, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9), page 72 for details. Enable 2D video acceleration If a virtual machine with Microsoft Windows has Guest Additions installed, you can select here whether the guest should support accelerated 2D video graphics. Please refer to chapter 4.10, Hardware 2D video acceleration for Windows guests, page 73 for details. Remote display Under the “Remote display” tab, you can enable the VRDP server that is built into VirtualBox to allow you to connect to the virtual machine remotely. For this, you can use any standard RDP viewer, such as mstsc.exe that comes with Microsoft Windows or, on Linux systems, the standard open-source rdesktop program. These features are described in detail in chapter 7.1, Remote display (VRDP support), page 98.

3.6 Storage settings
In the VM Settings window, the “Storage” section allows you to connect virtual hard disk, CD/DVD and ﬂoppy images and drives to your virtual machine:

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In a real PC, so-called “storage controllers” connect physical disk drives to the rest of the computer. Similarly, VirtualBox presents virtual storage controllers to a virtual machine. Under each controller, the virtual devices (hard disks, CD/DVD or ﬂoppy drives) are shown that are attached to the controller. If you have used the “Create VM” wizard to create a machine, you will normally see the following devices: • You will see an IDE controller, under which there are two devices: – one virtual hard disk connected to the IDE slot called “primary master”; this is represented by the disk images that you created with the machine; – one virtual CD/DVD drive connected to the “secondary master”. • In addition, there is a ﬂoppy controller to which a virtual ﬂoppy drive is attached. You can modify these media attachments freely. For example, if you wish to copy some ﬁles from another virtual disk that you created, you can connect that disk as a second hard disk. You could also add a second virtual CD/DVD drive, or change where these items are attached. In addition to the IDE controller, VirtualBox can also present an SATA controller and a SCSI controller to the guest, which gives you 30 or 16 additional slots to attach devices to, respectively. This, however, may require that you run a modern guest operating system. See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76 for details. To add another virtual hard disk or CD/DVD drive, select the storage controller to which it should be added (IDE, SATA or SCSI) and then click on the “add disk” button

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines below the tree. You can then either select “Add CD/DVD device” or “Add Hard Disk”. Alternatively, right-click on the storage controller and select a menu item there. On the right part of the window, you can then select where the virtual disk should be connected to on the controller and which image ﬁle to use. • For virtual hard disks, a drop-down list appears on the right, listing all the hard disk images that VirtualBox currently knows about. If you click on the “Open Virtual Media Manager” icon to the right, this will bring up a window in which you can select or create a different hard disk image (see chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80 for details). • For virtual CD/DVD drives. there are two kinds of options in the drop-down list. – If you select “Empty”, then VirtualBox will present a virtual CD/DVD drive to the guest which has no media inserted. – If you select “Host drive” from the list, then the physical device of the host computer is connected to the VM, so that the guest operating system can read from and write to your physical device. This is, for instance, useful if you want to install Windows from a real installation CD. In this case, select your host drive from the drop-down list presented.

Note: If you want to write CDs or DVDs using the host drive, you need to enable a special setting ﬁrst; see chapter 5.8, Writing CDs and DVDs using the host drive, page 87. – The other items in the list, like virtual hard disk images, will be image ﬁles on your host. The ﬁle format here is the ISO format. Most commonly, you will select this option when installing an operating system from an ISO ﬁle that you have obtained from the Internet. For example, most Linux distributions are available in this way.

Note: The identiﬁcation string of the drive provided to the guest (which, in the guest, would be displayed by conﬁguration tools such as the Windows Device Manager) is always “VBOX CD-ROM”, irrespective of the current conﬁguration of the virtual drive. This is to prevent hardware detection from being triggered in the guest operating system every time the conﬁguration is changed.

Note that the ﬂoppy controller is special: you cannot add devices other than ﬂoppy drives to it. Virtual ﬂoppy drives, like virtual CD/DVD drives, can be connected to either a host ﬂoppy drive (if you have one) or a disk image, which in this case must be in RAW format.

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines To remove a virtual disk or drive, select it and click on the “remove” icon at the bottom (or right-click on it and select the menu item). Removable media (CD/DVDs and ﬂoppies) can be changed while the guest is running. Since the “Settings” dialog is not available at that time, you can also access these settings from the “Devices” menu of your virtual machine window. We have dedicated an entire chapter of this User Manual to virtual storage: please see chapter 5, Virtual storage, page 76 for every single detail about storage conﬁguration.

3.7 Audio settings
The “Audio” section in a virtual machine’s Settings window determines whether the VM will see a sound card connected, and whether the audio output should be heard on the host system. If audio is enabled for a guest, you can choose between the emulation of an Intel AC’97 controller or a SoundBlaster 16 card. In any case, you can select what audio driver VirtualBox will use on the host. On a Linux host, depending on your host conﬁguration, you can also select between the OSS, ALSA or the PulseAudio subsystem. On newer Linux distributions (Fedora 8 and above, Ubuntu 8.04 and above) the PulseAudio subsystem should be preferred.

3.8 Network settings
The “Network” section in a virtual machine’s Settings window allows you to conﬁgure how VirtualBox presents virtual network cards to your VM, and how they operate. When you ﬁrst create a virtual machine, VirtualBox by default enables one virtual network card and selects the “Network Address Translation” (NAT) mode for it. This way the guest can connect to the outside world using the host’s networking and the outside world can connect to services on the guest which you choose to make visible outside of the virtual machine. Note: If you are installing Windows Vista in a virtual machine, you will probably have no networking initially. See chapter 4.3.5, Windows Vista networking, page 64 for instructions how to solve this problem. In most cases, this default setup will work ﬁne for you. However, VirtualBox is extremely ﬂexible in how it can virtualize networking. It supports up to eight virtual network cards per virtual machine, the ﬁrst four of which can be conﬁgured in detail in the graphical user interface. All eight network cards can be conﬁgured on the command line with VBoxManage. Because of this, we have dedicated an entire chapter of this manual to discussing networking conﬁguration; please see chapter 6, Virtual networking, page 89.

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3.9 Serial ports
VirtualBox fully supports virtual serial ports in a virtual machine in an easy-to-use manner.3 Ever since the original IBM PC, personal computers have been equipped with one or two serial ports (also called COM ports by DOS and Windows). While these are no longer as important as they were until a few years ago (especially since mice are no longer connected to serial ports these days), there are still some important uses left for them. For example, serial ports can be used to set up a primitive network over a nullmodem cable, in case Ethernet is not available. Also, serial ports are indispensable for system programmers needing to do kernel debugging, since kernel debugging software usually interacts with developers over a serial port. In other words, with virtual serial ports, system programmers can do kernel debugging on a virtual machine instead of needing a real computer to connect to. If a virtual serial port is enabled, the guest operating system sees it a standard 16450-type serial port. Both receiving and transmitting data is supported. How this virtual serial port is then connected to the host is conﬁgurable, and details depend on your host operating system. You can use either the graphical user interface or the command-line VBoxManage tool to set up virtual serial ports. For the latter, please refer to chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116; in that section, look for the --uart and --uartmode options. In either case, you can conﬁgure up to two virtual serial ports simultaneously. For each such device, you will need to determine 1. what kind of serial port the virtual machine should see by selecting an I/O base address and interrupt (IRQ). For these, we recommend to use the traditional values4 , which are: a) COM1: I/O base 0x3F8, IRQ 4 b) COM2: I/O base 0x2F8, IRQ 3 c) COM3: I/O base 0x3E8, IRQ 4 d) COM4: I/O base 0x2E8, IRQ 3 2. Then, you will need to determine what this virtual port should be connected to. For each virtual serial port, you have the following options: • You can elect to have the virtual serial port “disconnected”, which means that the guest will see it as hardware, but it will behave as if no cable had been connected to it. • You can connect the virtual serial port to a physical serial port on your host. (On a Windows host, this will be a name like COM1; on Linux or OpenSolaris hosts, it will be a device node like /dev/ttyS0). VirtualBox
3 Serial 4 See,

port support was added with VirtualBox 1.5. for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_(hardware_interface).

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines will then simply redirect all data received from and sent to the virtual serial port to the physical device. • You can tell VirtualBox to connect the virtual serial port to a software pipe on the host. This depends on your host operating system: – On a Windows host, data will be sent and received through a named pipe. You can use a helper program called VMware Serial Line Gateway, available for download at http://www.l4ka.org/tools/ vmwaregateway.php. This tool provides a ﬁxed server mode named pipe at \\.\pipe\vmwaredebug and connects incoming TCP connections on port 567 with the named pipe. – On a Mac, Linux or OpenSolaris host, a local domain socket is used instead. On Linux there are various tools which can connect to a local domain socket or create one in server mode. The most ﬂexible tool is socat and is available as part of many distributions. In this case, you can conﬁgure whether VirtualBox should create the named pipe (or, on non-Windows hosts, the local domain socket) itself or whether VirtualBox should assume that the pipe (or socket) exists already. With the VBoxManage command-line options, this is referred to as “server” or “client” mode, respectively.

Up to two serial ports can be conﬁgured simultaneously per virtual machine, but you can pick any port numbers out of the above. For example, you can conﬁgure two serial ports to be able to work with COM2 and COM4 in the guest.

3.10 USB support
3.10.1 USB settings
The “USB” section in a virtual machine’s Settings window allows you to conﬁgure VirtualBox’s sophisticated USB support. VirtualBox can allow virtual machines to access the USB devices on your host directly. To achieve this, VirtualBox presents the guest operating system with a virtual USB controller. As soon as the guest system starts using a USB device, it will appear as unavailable on the host.

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines Note: 1. Be careful with USB devices that are currently in use on the host! For example, if you allow your guest to connect to your USB hard disk that is currently mounted on the host, when the guest is activated, it will be disconnected from the host without a proper shutdown. This may cause data loss. 2. Solaris hosts have a few known limitations regarding USB support; please see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241. In addition to allowing a guest access to your local USB devices, VirtualBox even allows your guests to connect to remote USB devices by use of the VRDP protocol. For details about this, see chapter 7.1.4, Remote USB, page 102. In the Settings dialog, you can ﬁrst conﬁgure whether USB is available in the guest at all, and in addition also optionally enable the USB 2.0 (EHCI) controller for the guest. If so, you can determine in detail which devices are available. For this, you must create so-called “ﬁlters” by specifying certain properties of the USB device. Clicking on the “+“ button to the right of the “USB Device Filters” window creates a new ﬁlter. You can give the ﬁlter a name (for referencing it later) and specify the ﬁlter criteria. The more criteria you specify, the more precisely devices will be selected. For instance, if you specify only a vendor ID of 046d, all devices produced by Logitech will be available to the guest. If you ﬁll in all ﬁelds, on the other hand, the ﬁlter will only apply to a particular device model from a particular vendor, and not even to other devices of the same type with a different revision and serial number. In detail, the following criteria are available: 1. Vendor and product ID. With USB, each vendor of USB products carries an identiﬁcation number that is unique world-wide, the “vendor ID”. Similarly, each line of products is assigned a “product ID” number. Both numbers are commonly written in hexadecimal (that is, they are composed of the numbers 0-9 and the letters A-F), and a colon separates the vendor from the product ID. For example, 046d:c016 stands for Logitech as a vendor, and the “M-UV69a Optical Wheel Mouse” product. Alternatively, you can also specify “Manufacturer” and “Product” by name. To list all the USB devices that are connected to your host machine with their respective vendor and product IDs, you can use the following command (see chapter 8, VBoxManage, page 106):
VBoxManage list usbhost

On Windows, you can also see all USB devices that are attached to your system in the Device Manager. On Linux, you can use the lsusb command. 2. Serial number. While vendor and product ID are already quite speciﬁc to identify USB devices, if you have two identical devices of the same brand and product line, you will also need their serial numbers to ﬁlter them out correctly.

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines 3. Remote. This setting speciﬁes whether the device will be local only, or remote only (over VRDP), or either. On a Windows host, you will need to unplug and reconnect a USB device to use it after creating a ﬁlter for it. As an example, you could create a new USB ﬁlter and specify a vendor ID of 046d (Logitech, Inc), a manufacturer index of 1, and “not remote”. Then any USB devices on the host system produced by Logitech, Inc with a manufacturer index of 1 will be visible to the guest system. Several ﬁlters can select a single device – for example, a ﬁlter which selects all Logitech devices, and one which selects a particular webcam. You can deactivate ﬁlters without deleting them by clicking in the checkbox next to the ﬁlter name.

3.10.2 Implementation notes for Windows and Linux hosts
On Windows hosts, a kernel mode device driver provides USB proxy support. It implements both a USB monitor, which allows VirtualBox to capture devices when they are plugged in, and a USB device driver to claim USB devices for a particular virtual machine. As opposed to VirtualBox versions before 1.4.0, system reboots are no longer necessary after installing the driver. Also, you no longer need to replug devices for VirtualBox to claim them. On newer Linux hosts, VirtualBox accesses USB devices through special ﬁles in the ﬁle system. When VirtualBox is installed, these are made available to all users in the vboxusers system group. In order to be able to access USB from guest systems, make sure that you are a member of this group. On older Linux hosts, USB devices are accessed using the usbfs ﬁle system. Therefore, the user executing VirtualBox needs read and write permission to the USB ﬁle system. Most distributions provide a group (e.g. usbusers) which the VirtualBox user needs to be added to. Also, VirtualBox can only proxy to virtual machines USB devices which are not claimed by a Linux host USB driver. The Driver= entry in /proc/bus/usb/devices will show you which devices are currently claimed. Please refer to chapter 11.5.7, USB not working, page 167 also for details about usbfs.

3.11 Shared folders
Shared folders allow you to easily exchange data between a virtual machine and your host. This feature requires that the VirtualBox Guest Additions be installed in a virtual machine and is described in detail in chapter 4.7, Folder sharing, page 68.

3.12 Alternative ﬁrmware (EFI)
Starting with release 3.1, VirtualBox includes experimental support for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), which is a new industry standard intended to eventually

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3 Conﬁguring virtual machines replace the legacy BIOS as the primary interface for bootstrapping computers and certain system services later. By default, VirtualBox uses the BIOS ﬁrmware for virtual machines. To use EFI for a given virtual machine, use the VBoxManage command line interface like this:
VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --firmware efi

To switch back to using the BIOS, use:
VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --firmware bios

One notable user of EFI is Apple’s Mac OS X, but recent Linuxes (such as Fedora 11) and Windows (starting with Vista) can be booted using EFI as well. Note that EFI is experimental and work in progress. Please do not enable it in a production environment.

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4 Guest Additions
The previous chapter covered getting started with VirtualBox and installing operating systems in a virtual machine. For any serious and interactive use, the VirtualBox Guest Additions will make your life much easier by providing closer integration between host and guest and improving the interactive performance of guest systems. This chapter describes the Guest Additions in detail.

4.1 Introduction
As said in chapter 1.2, Some terminology, page 11, the Guest Additions are designed to be installed inside a virtual machine after the guest operating system has been installed. They consist of device drivers and system applications that optimize the guest operating system for better performance and usability. Please see chapter 3.1, Supported guest operating systems, page 44 for details on what guest operating systems are fully supported with Guest Additions by VirtualBox. The VirtualBox Guest Additions for all supported guest operating systems are provided as a single CD-ROM image ﬁle which is called VBoxGuestAdditions.iso. This image ﬁle is located in the installation directory of VirtualBox. To install the Guest Additions for a particular VM, you mount this ISO ﬁle in your VM as a virtual CD-ROM and install from there. The Guest Additions offer the following features: Mouse pointer integration To overcome the limitations for mouse support that were described in chapter 1.7.1.1, Capturing and releasing keyboard and mouse, page 21, this provides you with seamless mouse support. You will only have one mouse pointer and pressing the Host key is no longer required to “free” the mouse from being captured by the guest OS. To make this work, a special mouse driver is installed in the guest that communicates with the “real” mouse driver on your host and moves the guest mouse pointer accordingly. Better video support While the virtual graphics card which VirtualBox emulates for any guest operating system provides all the basic features, the custom video drivers that are installed with the Guest Additions provide you with extra high and non-standard video modes as well as accelerated video performance. In addition, with Windows and recent Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris guests, if the Guest Additions are installed, you can resize the virtual machine’s window, and the video resolution in the guest will be automatically adjusted (as if you had manually entered an arbitrary resolution in the guest’s display settings).

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4 Guest Additions For Linux and Solaris guests, the Xorg server version 1.3 or later is required for automatic resizing (the feature has been disabled on Fedora 9 guests due to a bug in the X server they supply). The server version can be checked with Xorg -version. Finally, if the Guest Additions are installed, 3D graphics for guest applications can be accelerated; see chapter 4.9, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9), page 72. Time synchronization With the Guest Additions installed, VirtualBox can ensure that the guest’s system time is better synchronized. This ﬁxes the problem that an operating system normally expects to have 100% of a computer’s time for itself without interference, which is no longer the case when your VM runs together with your host operating system and possibly other applications on your host. As a result, your guest operating system’s timing will soon be off signiﬁcantly. The Guest Additions will re-synchronize the time regularly. Shared folders These provide an easy way to exchange ﬁles between the host and the guest. Much like ordinary Windows network shares, you can tell VirtualBox to treat a certain host directory as a shared folder, and VirtualBox will make it available to the guest operating system as a network share. For details, please refer to chapter 4.7, Folder sharing, page 68. Seamless windows With this feature, the individual windows that are displayed on the desktop of the virtual machine can be mapped on the host’s desktop, as if the underlying application was actually running on the host. See chapter 4.8, Seamless windows, page 71 for details. Shared clipboard With the Guest Additions installed, the clipboard of the guest operating system can optionally be shared with your host operating system; see chapter 3.3, General settings, page 46. Automated Windows logons (Credentials passing; Windows guests only) For details, please see chapter 9.2, Automated Windows guest logons, page 140.

4.2 Versions
Each version of VirtualBox, even minor releases, ship with their own version of the Guest Additions. While the interfaces through which the VirtualBox core communicates with the Guest Additions are kept stable so that Guest Additions already installed in a VM should continue to work when VirtualBox is upgraded on the host, for best results, it is recommended to keep the Guest Additions at the same version. Starting with VirtualBox 3.1, the Windows and Linux Guest Additions therefore check automatically whether they have to be updated. If the host is running a newer VirtualBox version than the Guest Additions, a notiﬁcation with with further instructions is displayed in the guest.

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4 Guest Additions To disable this update check for the Guest Additions of a given virtual machine, set the value of its /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/CheckHostVersion guest property to 0; see chapter 4.11, Guest properties, page 73 for details.

4.3 Windows Guest Additions
The VirtualBox Windows Guest Additions are designed to be installed in a virtual machine running a Windows operating system. The following versions of Windows guests are supported: • Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows 2000 (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows XP (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 • Microsoft Windows Vista (all editions) • Microsoft Windows 7 (all editions)

4.3.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions
After mounting the Guest Additions ISO ﬁle, the Windows guest should automatically start the Guest Additions installer, which installs the Guest Additions into your Windows guest. Note: For Direct 3D acceleration to work in a Windows Guest, you must install the Guest Additions in “Safe Mode”; see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241 for details.

4.3.1.1 Mounting the Additions ISO ﬁle In the “Devices” menu in the virtual machine’s menu bar, VirtualBox has a handy menu item named “Install guest additions”, which will automatically bring up the Additions in your VM window. If you prefer to mount the additions manually, you can perform the following steps: 1. Start the virtual machine in which you have installed Windows. 2. Select “Mount CD/DVD-ROM” from the “Devices” menu in the virtual machine’s menu bar and then “CD/DVD-ROM image”. This brings up the Virtual Media Manager described in chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80.

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4 Guest Additions 3. In the Virtual Media Manager, press the “Add” button and browse your host ﬁle system for the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso ﬁle: • On a Windows host, you can ﬁnd this ﬁle in the VirtualBox installation directory (usually under C:\Program files\Sun\xVM VirtualBox). • On Mac OS X hosts, you can ﬁnd this ﬁle in the application bundle of VirtualBox. (Right click on the VirtualBox icon in Finder and choose Show Package Contents. There it is located in the Contents/MacOS folder.) • On a Linux host, you can ﬁnd this ﬁle in the additions folder under where you installed VirtualBox (normally /opt/VirtualBox/). • On Solaris hosts, you can ﬁnd this ﬁle in the additions folder under where you installed VirtualBox (normally /opt/VirtualBox). 4. Back in the Virtual Media Manager, select that ISO ﬁle and press the “Select” button. This will mount the ISO ﬁle and present it to your Windows guest as a CD-ROM. 4.3.1.2 Running the installer Unless you have the Autostart feature disabled in your Windows guest, Windows will now autostart the VirtualBox Guest Additions installation program from the Additions ISO. If the Autostart feature has been turned off, choose VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe from the CD/DVD drive inside the guest to start the installer. The installer will add several device drivers to the Windows driver database and then invoke the hardware detection wizard. Depending on your conﬁguration, it might display warnings that the drivers are not digitally signed. You must conﬁrm these in order to continue the installation and properly install the Additions. After installation, reboot your guest operating system to activate the Additions.

4.3.2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions
Windows Guest Additions can be updated by running the installation program again, as previously described. This will then replace the previous Additions drivers with updated versions. Alternatively, you may also open the Windows Device Manager and select “Update driver...“ for two devices: 1. the VirtualBox Graphics Adapter and 2. the VirtualBox System Device. For each, choose to provide your own driver and use “Have Disk” to point the wizard to the CD-ROM drive with the Guest Additions.

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4.3.3 Unattended Installation
In order to allow for completely unattended guest installations, you can specify a command line parameter to the install launcher:
VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /S

This automatically installs the right ﬁles and drivers for the corresponding platform (32- or 64-bit). Note: Because of the drivers are not yet WHQL certiﬁed, you still might get some driver installation popups, depending on the Windows guest version. For more options regarding unattended guest installations, consult the command line help by using the command:
VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /?

4.3.4 Manual ﬁle extraction
If you would like to install the ﬁles and drivers manually, you can extract the ﬁles from the Windows Guest Additions setup by typing:
VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /extract

To explicitly extract the Windows Guest Additions for another platform than the current running one (e.g. 64-bit ﬁles on a 32-bit system), you have to execute the appropriate platform installer (VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe or VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe) with the /extract parameter.

4.3.5 Windows Vista networking
Earlier versions of VirtualBox provided a virtual AMD PCNet Ethernet card to guests by default. Since Microsoft no longer ships a driver for that card with Windows (starting with Windows Vista), if you select Windows Vista or newer as the guest operating system for a virtual machine, VirtualBox will instead present a virtual Intel network controller to the guest (see chapter 6.1, Virtual networking hardware, page 89). However, if for any reason you have a 32-bit Windows Vista VM that is conﬁgured to use an AMD PCNet card, you will have no networking in the guest initially. As a convenience, VirtualBox ships with a 32-bit driver for the AMD PCNet card, which comes with the Windows Guest Additions. If you install these in a 32-bit Vista guest, the driver will automatically be installed as well. If, for some reason, you would like to install the driver manually, you can extract the required ﬁles from the

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4 Guest Additions Windows Guest Additions setup. Please consult chapter 4.3.4, Manual ﬁle extraction, page 64 on how to achieve this. You will then ﬁnd the AMD PCNet driver ﬁles in the x86\Network\AMD\netamd.inf subdirectory of the default install directory. Alternatively, change the Vista guest’s VM settings to use an Intel networking card instead of the default AMD PCNet card; see chapter 3.8, Network settings, page 54 for details. Unfortunately, there is no 64-bit driver available for the AMD PCNet card. So for 64-bit Windows VMs, you should always use the Intel networking devices.

4.4 Linux Guest Additions
Like the Windows Guest Additions, the VirtualBox Guest Additions for Linux take the form of a set of device drivers and system applications which may be installed in the guest operating system. The following Linux distributions are ofﬁcially supported: • Fedora Core 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11; • Redhat Enterprise Linux 3, 4 and 5; • SUSE and openSUSE Linux 9, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.0 and 11.1; • Ubuntu 5.10, 6.06, 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04. Other distributions may work if they are based on comparable software releases. The version of the Linux kernel supplied by default in SUSE and openSUSE 10.2, Ubuntu 6.10 (all versions) and Ubuntu 6.06 (server edition) contains a bug which can cause it to crash during startup when it is run in a virtual machine. The Guest Additions work in those distributions.

4.4.1 Installing the Linux Guest Additions
The VirtualBox Guest Additions for Linux are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as the Additions for Windows described above. They also come with an installation program guiding you through the setup process, although, due to the signiﬁcant differences between Linux distributions, installation may be slightly more complex. Installation involves the following steps: 1. Before installing the Guest Additions, you will have to prepare your guest system for building external kernel modules. This works similarly as described in chapter 2.3.2, The VirtualBox kernel module, page 34, except that this step must now be performed in your Linux guest instead of on a Linux host system, as described there. Again, as with Linux hosts, we recommend using DKMS for Linux guests as well. If it is not installed, use this command:

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4 Guest Additions
sudo apt-get install dkms

Install DKMS before installing the Linux Guest Additions. 2. Mount the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso ﬁle as your Linux guest’s virtual CD-ROM drive, exactly the same way as described for a Windows guest in chapter 4.3.1.1, Mounting the Additions ISO ﬁle, page 62. 3. Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted and execute as root:
sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

In a 64-bit Linux guest, use VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run instead. The VirtualBox Guest Additions contain several different drivers. If for any reason you do not wish to install them all, you can specify the ones which you wish on the command line - for example
sh ./VBoxAdditions.run x11

to install the X Window graphic drivers. Type in the command
sh ./VBoxAdditions.run help

for more information. To recompile the guest kernel modules, use this command:
/etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

After compilation you should reboot your guest to ensure that the new modules are actually used.

4.4.2 Video acceleration and high resolution graphics modes
In Linux guests, VirtualBox video acceleration is available through the X Window System. Typically, in today’s Linux distributions, this will be the X.Org server. During the installation process, X will be set up to use the VirtualBox video driver. On recent Linux guests (that is, guests running X.Org server version 1.3 or later with the exception of Fedora 9), graphics modes can be selected by resizing the VirtualBox window using the mouse, or sending video mode hints using the VBoxManage tool. If you are only using recent Linux guests systems, you can skip the rest of this section. On older guest systems, whatever graphics modes were set up before the installation will be used. If these modes do not suit your requirements, you can change your setup by editing the conﬁguration ﬁle of the X server, usually found in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. VirtualBox can use any default X graphics mode which ﬁts into the virtual video memory allocated to the virtual machine, as described in chapter 3.3, General settings,

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4 Guest Additions page 46. You can also add your own modes to the X server conﬁguration ﬁle. You simply need to add them to the “Modes” list in the “Display” subsection of the “Screen” section. For example, the section shown here has a custom 2048x800 resolution mode added:
Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "VirtualBox graphics card" Monitor "Generic Monitor" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "2048x800" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection EndSection

4.4.3 Updating the Linux Guest Additions
The Guest Additions can simply be updated by going through the installation procedure again with an updated CD-ROM image. This will replace the drivers with updated versions. You should reboot after updating the Guest Additions.

4.5 Solaris Guest Additions
Like the Windows Guest Additions, the VirtualBox Guest Additions for Solaris take the form of a set of device drivers and system applications which may be installed in the guest operating system. The following Solaris distributions are ofﬁcially supported: • OpenSolaris Nevada (Build 82 and higher; this includes OpenSolaris 2008.05, 2008.11 and 2009.06); • OpenSolaris Indiana (Developer Preview 2 and higher); • Solaris 10 (u5 and higher). Other distributions may work if they are based on comparable software releases.

4.5.1 Installing the Solaris Guest Additions
The VirtualBox Guest Additions for Solaris are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as the Additions for Windows and Linux described above. They also come with an installation program guiding you through the setup process. Installation involves the following steps: 1. Mount the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso ﬁle as your Solaris guest’s virtual CDROM drive, exactly the same way as described for a Windows guest in chapter 4.3.1.1, Mounting the Additions ISO ﬁle, page 62.

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4 Guest Additions If in case the CD-ROM drive on the guest doesn’t get mounted (observed on some versions of Solaris 10), execute as root:
svcadm restart volfs

2. Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted and execute as root:
pkgadd -G -d ./VBoxSolarisAdditions.pkg

3. Choose “1” and conﬁrm installation of the guest additions package. After the installation is complete, re-login to X server on your guest to activate the X11 Guest Additions.

4.5.2 Uninstalling the Solaris Guest Additions
The Solaris Guest Additions can be safely removed by removing the package from the guest. Open a root terminal session and execute:
pkgrm SUNWvboxguest

4.5.3 Updating the Solaris Guest Additions
The Guest Additions should be updated by ﬁrst uninstalling the existing Guest Additions and then installing the new ones. Attempting to install new Guest Additions without removing the existing ones is not possible.

4.6 OS/2 Guest Additions
VirtualBox also ships with a set of drivers that improve running OS/2 in a virtual machine. Due to restrictions of OS/2 itself, this variant of the Guest Additions has a limited feature set; see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241 for details. The OS/2 Guest Additions are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as those for the other platforms. As a result, mount the ISO in OS/2 as described previously. The OS/2 Guest Additions are located in the directory \32bit\OS2. As we do not provide an automatic installer at this time, please refer to the readme.txt ﬁle in that directory, which describes how to install the OS/2 Guest Additions manually.

4.7 Folder sharing
Shared folders allow you to access ﬁles of your host system from within the guest system, much like ordinary shares on Windows networks would – except that shared folders do not need require networking. Shared folders must physically reside on

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4 Guest Additions the host and are then shared with the guest; sharing is accomplished using a special service on the host and a ﬁle system driver for the guest, both of which are provided by VirtualBox. In order to use this feature, the VirtualBox Guest Additions have to be installed. Note however that Shared Folders are only supported with Windows (2000 or newer), Linux and Solaris guests. To share a host folder with a virtual machine in VirtualBox, you must specify the path of that folder and choose for it a “share name” that the guest can use to access it. Hence, ﬁrst create the shared folder on the host; then, within the guest, connect to it. There are several ways in which shared folders can be set up for a particular virtual machine: • In the graphical user interface of a running virtual machine, you can select “Shared folders” from the “Devices” menu, or click on the folder icon on the status bar in the bottom right corner of the virtual machine window. • If a virtual machine is not currently running, you can conﬁgure shared folders in each virtual machine’s “Settings” dialog. • From the command line, you can create shared folders using the VBoxManage command line interface; see chapter 8, VBoxManage, page 106. The command is as follows:
VBoxManage sharedfolder add "VM name" --name "sharename" --hostpath "C:\test"

There are two types of shares: 1. VM shares which are only available to the VM for which they have been deﬁned; 2. transient VM shares, which can be added and removed at runtime and do not persist after a VM has stopped; for these, add the --transient option to the above command line. Shared folders have read/write access to the ﬁles at the host path by default. To restrict the guest to have read-only access, create a read-only shared folder. This can either be achieved using the GUI or by appending the parameter --readonly when creating the shared folder with VBoxManage. Then, you can mount the shared folder from inside a VM the same way as you would mount an ordinary network share: • In a Windows guest, starting with VirtualBox 1.5.0, shared folders are browseable and are therefore visible in Windows Explorer. So, to attach the host’s shared folder to your Windows guest, open Windows Explorer and look for it under “My Networking Places” -> “Entire Network” -> “VirtualBox Shared Folders”. By right-clicking on a shared folder and selecting “Map network drive” from the menu that pops up, you can assign a drive letter to that shared folder. Alternatively, on the Windows command line, use the following:

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4 Guest Additions
net use x: \\vboxsvr\sharename

While vboxsvr is a ﬁxed name (note that vboxsrv would also work), replace “x:“ with the drive letter that you want to use for the share, and sharename with the share name speciﬁed with VBoxManage. • In a Linux guest, use the following command:
mount -t vboxsf [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint

• In a Solaris guest, use the following command:
mount -F vboxfs [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint

Replace sharename (use lowercase) with the share name speciﬁed with VBoxManage or the GUI, and mountpoint with the path where you want the share to be mounted on the guest (e.g. /mnt/share). The usual mount rules apply, that is, create this directory ﬁrst if it does not exist yet. Here is an example of mounting the shared folder for the user “jack” on OpenSolaris:
$id uid=5000(jack) gid=1(other) $mkdir /export/home/jack/mount $pfexec mount -F vboxfs -o uid=5000,gid=1 jackshare /export/home/jack/mount $cd ~/mount $ls sharedfile1.mp3 sharedfile2.txt $

Beyond the standard options supplied by the mount command, the following are available:
iocharset CHARSET

to set the character set used for I/O operations (utf8 by default) and
convertcp CHARSET

to specify the character set used for the shared folder name (utf8 by default). The generic mount options (documented in the mount manual page) apply also. Especially useful are the options uid, gid and mode, as they allow access by normal users (in read/write mode, depending on the settings) even if root has mounted the ﬁlesystem.

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4.8 Seamless windows
With the “seamless windows” feature of VirtualBox, you can have the windows that are displayed within a virtual machine appear side by side next to the windows of your host. This feature is supported for the following guest operating systems (provided that the Guest Additions are installed): • Windows guests (support added with VirtualBox 1.5); • Linux or Solaris/OpenSolaris guests with an X.org server version 1.3 or higher1 (support added with VirtualBox 1.6). The exception is Fedora 9, due to a bug in its X server. After seamless windows are enabled (see below), VirtualBox suppresses the display of the Desktop background of your guest, allowing you to run the windows of your guest operating system seamlessly next to the windows of your host:

To enable seamless mode, after starting the virtual machine, press the Host key (normally the right control key) together with “L”. This will enlarge the size of the VM’s display to the size of your host screen and mask out the guest operating system’s background. To go back to the “normal” VM display (i.e. to disable seamless windows), press the Host key and “L” again.
1 The

X server version is not the same as the version of the entire X.org suite. You can type X -version in a terminal to ﬁnd out about the X.org server version level that is currently installed.

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4 Guest Additions

4.9 Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9)
The VirtualBox Guest Additions contain experimental hardware 3D support for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests.2 With this feature, if an application inside your virtual machine uses 3D features through the OpenGL or Direct3D 8/9 programming interfaces, instead of emulating them in software (which would be slow), VirtualBox will attempt to use your host’s 3D hardware. This works for all supported host platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris), provided that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated 3D hardware in the ﬁrst place. The 3D acceleration currently has the following preconditions: 1. It is only available for certain Windows, Linux and Solaris guests. In particular: • For Windows guests, support is restricted to 32-bit versions of XP and Vista. Both OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9 are supported (experimental). • OpenGL on Linux requires kernel 2.6.27 and higher as well as X.org server version 1.5 and higher. Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 have been tested and conﬁrmed as working. • OpenGL on Solaris guests requires X.org server version 1.5 and higher. 2. The Guest Additions must be installed. Note: For Direct 3D acceleration to work in a Windows Guest, VirtualBox needs to replace Windows system ﬁles in the virtual machine. As a result, the Guest Additions installation program offers Direct 3D acceleration as an option that must be explicitly enabled.Also, you must install the Guest Additions in “Safe Mode”; see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 241 for details.

3. Because 3D support is still experimental at this time, it is disabled by default and must be manually enabled in the VM settings (see chapter 3.3, General settings, page 46). Note: Enabling 3D acceleration may expose security holes to malicious software running the guest. The third-party code that VirtualBox uses for this purpose (Chromium) is not hardened enough to prevent every risky 3D operation on the host.
2 OpenGL

support for Windows guests was added with VirtualBox 2.1; support for Linux and Solaris followed with version 2.2. With version 3, Direct3D 8/9 support was added for Windows guests. OpenGL 2.0 is now supported as well.

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4 Guest Additions Technically, VirtualBox implements this by installing an additional hardware 3D driver inside your guest when the Guest Additions are installed. This driver acts as a hardware 3D driver and reports to the guest operating system that the (virtual) hardware is capable of 3D hardware acceleration. When an application in the guest then requests hardware acceleration through the OpenGL or Direct3D programming interfaces, these are sent to the host through a special communication tunnel implemented by VirtualBox, and then the host performs the requested 3D operation via the host’s programming interfaces.

4.10 Hardware 2D video acceleration for Windows guests
Starting with version 3.1, the VirtualBox Guest Additions contain experimental hardware 2D video acceleration support for Windows guests. With this feature, if an application (e.g. a video player) inside your VM uses 2D video overlays to play a movie clip, then VirtualBox will attempt to use your host’s video acceleration hardware instead of performing overlay stretching and color conversion in software (which would be slow). This currently works for Windows, Linux and Mac host platforms, provided that your host operating system can make use of 2D video acceleration in the ﬁrst place. The 2D video acceleration currently has the following preconditions: 1. It is only available for Windows guests (XP or later). 2. The Guest Additions must be installed. 3. Because 2D support is still experimental at this time, it is disabled by default and must be manually enabled in the VM settings (see chapter 3.3, General settings, page 46). Technically, VirtualBox implements this by exposing video overlay DirectDraw capabilities in the guest video driver. The driver sends all overlay commands to the host through a special communication tunnel implemented by VirtualBox, in order for the host to perform the requested 2D operations via the host’s programming interfaces.

4.11 Guest properties
Starting with version 2.1, VirtualBox allows for requesting certain properties from a running guest, provided that the VirtualBox Guest Additions are installed and the VM is running. This is good for two things: 1. A number of predeﬁned VM characteristics are automatically maintained by VirtualBox and can be retrieved on the host, e.g. to monitor VM performance and statistics.

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4 Guest Additions 2. In addition, arbitrary string data can be exchanged between guest and host, and in both directions. To accomplish this, VirtualBox establishes a private communication channel between the VirtualBox Guest Additions and the host, and software on both sides can use this channel to exchange string data for arbitrary purposes. Guest properties are simply string keys to which a value is attached. They can be set (written to) by either the host and the guest, and they can also be read from both sides. In addition to establishing the general mechanism of reading and writing values, a set of predeﬁned guest properties is automatically maintained by the VirtualBox Guest Additions to allow for retrieving interesting guest data such as the guest’s exact operating system and service pack level, the installed version of the Guest Additions, users that are currently logged into the guest OS, network statistics and more. These predeﬁned properties are all preﬁxed with /VirtualBox/ and organized into a hierarchical tree of keys. Some of this runtime information is shown when you select “Session Information Dialog” from a virtual machine’s “Machine” menu. A more ﬂexible way to use this channel is via the VBoxManage guestproperty command set; see chapter 8.27, VBoxManage guestproperty, page 135 for details. For example, to have all the available guest properties for a given running VM listed with their respective values, use this:
$ VBoxManage guestproperty enumerate "Windows Vista III" VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.0 (C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product, value: Windows Vista Business Edition, timestamp: 1229098278843087000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Release, value: 6.0.6001, timestamp: 1229098278950553000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/ServicePack, value: 1, timestamp: 1229098279122627000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/InstallDir, value: C:/Program Files/Sun/xVM VirtualBox Guest Additions, timestamp: 1229098279269739000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Revision, value: 40720, timestamp: 1229098279345664000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Version, value: 3.1.0, timestamp: 1229098279479515000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxControl.exe, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279651731000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxHook.dll, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279804835000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxDisp.dll, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279880611000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMRXNP.dll, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279882618000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxService.exe, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279883195000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxTray.exe, value: 3.1.0r40720,

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timestamp: 1229098279885027000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxGuest.sys, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279886838000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMouse.sys, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279890600000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxSF.sys, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279893056000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxVideo.sys, value: 3.1.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279895767000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsers, value: 1, timestamp: 1229099826317660000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/NoLoggedInUsers, value: false, timestamp: 1229098455580553000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/Count, value: 1, timestamp: 1229099826299785000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/HostInfo/GUI/LanguageID, value: C, timestamp: 1229098151272771000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP, value: 192.168.2.102, timestamp: 1229099826300088000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Broadcast, value: 255.255.255.255, timestamp: 1229099826300220000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Netmask, value: 255.255.255.0, timestamp: 1229099826300350000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/Status, value: Up, timestamp: 1229099826300524000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsersList, value: username, timestamp: 1229099826317386000, flags:

To query the value of a single property, use the “get” subcommand like this:
$ VBoxManage guestproperty get "Windows Vista III" "/VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product" VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.0 (C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Value: Windows Vista Business Edition

For more complex needs, you can use the VirtualBox programming interfaces; see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 157.

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5 Virtual storage
As the virtual machine will most probably expect to see a hard disk built into its virtual computer, VirtualBox must be able to present “real” storage to the guest as a virtual hard disk. There are presently three methods in which to achieve this: 1. Most commonly, VirtualBox will use large image ﬁles on a real hard disk and present them to a guest as a virtual hard disk. This is described in chapter 5.2, Disk image ﬁles (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD), page 79. 2. Alternatively, if you have iSCSI storage servers, you can attach such a server to VirtualBox as well; this is described in chapter 5.9, iSCSI servers, page 87. 3. Finally, as an experimental feature, you can allow a virtual machine to access one of your host disks directly; this advanced feature is described in chapter 9.12, Using a raw host hard disk from a guest, page 149. Each such virtual storage device (image ﬁle, iSCSI target or physical hard disk) will need to be connected to the virtual hard disk controller that VirtualBox presents to a virtual machine. This is explained in the next section.

5.1 Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI
In a real PC, hard disks and CD/DVD drives are connected to a device called hard disk controller which drives hard disk operation and data transfers. VirtualBox can emulate the three most common types of hard disk controllers typically found in today’s PCs: IDE, SATA (AHCI) and SCSI.1 • IDE (ATA) controllers have been in use since the 1980s. Initially, this type of interface worked only with hard disks, but was later extended to also support CD-ROM drives and other types of removable media. In physical PCs, this standard uses ﬂat ribbon parallel cables with 40 or 80 wires. Each such cable can connect two devices to a controller, which have traditionally been called “master” and “slave”. Typical hard disk controllers have two connectors for such cables; as a result, most PCs support up to four devices. In VirtualBox, each virtual machine has one IDE controller enabled by default, which gives you up to four virtual storage devices that you can attach to the
1 SATA

support was added with VirtualBox 1.6; experimental SCSI support was added with 2.1 and fully implemented with 2.2. Generally, storage attachments were made much more ﬂexible with VirtualBox 3.1; see below.

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5 Virtual storage machine. (By default, one of these four – the secondary master – is preconﬁgured to be the machine’s virtual CD/DVD drive, but this can be changed.2 ) So even if your guest operating system has no support for SCSI or SATA devices, it should always be able to see the default IDE controller that is enabled by default. You can also select which exact type of IDE controller hardware VirtualBox should present to the virtual machine (PIIX3, PIIX4 or ICH6). This makes no difference in terms of performance, but if you import a virtual machine from another virtualization product, the operating system in that machine may expect a particular controller and crash if it isn’t found. After you have created a new virtual machine with the “New Virtual Machine” wizard of the graphical user interface, you will typically see one IDE controller in the machine’s “Storage” settings. Of the four slots of this controller, one will be used by the hard disk that you probably created when you set up the VM, and another one will be the machine’s virtual CD/DVD drive. • Serial ATA (SATA) is a newer standard introduced in 2003. Compared to IDE, it supports both much higher speeds and more devices per hard disk controller. Also, with physical hardware, devices can be added and removed while the system is running. The standard interface for SATA controllers is called Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI). For compatibility reasons, AHCI controllers by default operate the disks attached to it in a so-called “IDE compatibility mode”, unless SATA support is explicitly requested. “IDE compatibility mode” only means that the drives can be seen and operated by the computer’s BIOS. Still, disks assigned to those slots will operate in full-speed AHCI mode once the guest operating system has loaded its AHCI device driver. Like a real SATA controller, VirtualBox’s virtual SATA controller operates faster and also consumes less CPU resources than the virtual IDE controller. Also, this allows you to connect up to 30 virtual hard disks to one machine instead of just three, as with IDE. Of these, the ﬁrst four (numbered 0-3 in the graphical user interface) are operated in IDE compatibility mode by default. To enable the SATA controller, on the “Storage” page of a virtual machine’s settings dialog, click on the “Add Controller” button under the “Storage Tree” box and then select “Add SATA Controller”. After this, the additional controller will appear as a separate PCI device in the virtual machine.
2 The

assignment of the machine’s CD/DVD drive to the secondary master was ﬁxed before VirtualBox 3.1; it is now changeable, and the drive can be at other slots of the IDE controller, and there can be more than one such drive.

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5 Virtual storage Warning: The entire SATA controller and the virtual disks attached to it (including those in IDE compatibility mode) will not be seen by operating systems that do not have device support for AHCI. In particular, there is no support for AHCI in Windows before Windows Vista, so Windows XP (even SP2) will not see such disks unless you install additional drivers. We therefore do not recommend installing operating systems on SATA disks at this time. To change the IDE compatibility mode settings for the SATA controller, please see chapter 8.15, VBoxManage storagectl / storageattach, page 126. • SCSI is another established industry standard, standing for “Small Computer System Interface”. This was established as early as 1986 as a generic interface for data transfer between all kinds of devices, including storage devices. Today SCSI is still used for connecting hard disks and tape devices, but it has mostly been displaced in commodity hardware. It is still in common use in high-performance workstations and servers. Primarily for compatibility with other virtualization software, VirtualBox optionally supports LsiLogic and BusLogic SCSI controllers, to each of which up to 16 virtual hard disks can be attached. To enable a SCSI controller, on the “Storage” page of a virtual machine’s settings dialog, click on the “Add Controller” button under the “Storage Tree” box and then select “Add SCSI Controller”. After this, the additional controller will appear as a separate PCI device in the virtual machine. Warning: There are limitations with the default SCSI drivers shipped with some operating systems: the standard Windows XP driver for the LsiLogic controller does not detect a hard disk attached to the controller’s ﬁrst port, and the BusLogic controller does not work with Windows NT4 guests.

In summary, VirtualBox gives you the following categories of virtual storage slots: 1. four slots attached to the traditional IDE controller, which are always present (one of which typically is a virtual CD/DVD drive); 2. 30 slots attached to the SATA controller, if enabled and provided that your guest operating system can see it; these slots can either be a) in IDE compatibility mode (by default, slots 0-3) or b) in SATA mode; 3. 16 slots attached to the SCSI controller, if enabled and supported by the guest operating system.

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5.2 Disk image ﬁles (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD)
Disk image ﬁles reside on the host system and are seen by the guest systems as hard disks of a certain geometry. When a guest operating system reads from or writes to a hard disk, VirtualBox redirects the request to the image ﬁle. Note that when you create an image ﬁle, its size needs to be speciﬁed, which represents a ﬁxed geometry of the virtual disk. It is therefore not possible to change the size of the virtual hard disk later. VirtualBox supports four variants of disk image ﬁles: • Normally, VirtualBox uses its own container format for guest hard disks – Virtual Disk Image (VDI) ﬁles. In particular, this format will be used when you create a new virtual machine with a new disk. • VirtualBox also fully supports the popular and open VMDK container format that is used by many other virtualization products, in particular, by VMware.3 • VirtualBox also fully supports the VHD format used by Microsoft. • Image ﬁles of Parallels version 2 (HDD format) are also supported.4 For lack of documentation of the format, newer formats (3 and 4) are not supported. You can however convert such image ﬁles to version 2 format using tools provided by Parallels. Irrespective of the disk format, as brieﬂy mentioned in chapter 1.6, Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine, page 17, there are two options of how to create a disk image: ﬁxed-size or dynamically expanding. • If you create a ﬁxed-size image of e.g. 10 GB, an image ﬁle of roughly the same size will be created on your host system. Note that the creation of a ﬁxed-size image can take a long time depending on the size of the image and the write performance of your hard disk. • For more ﬂexible storage management, use a dynamically expanding image. This will initially be very small and not occupy any space for unused virtual disk sectors, but the image ﬁle will grow every time a disk sector is written to for the ﬁrst time. While this format takes less space initially, the fact that VirtualBox needs to constantly expand the image ﬁle consumes additional computing resources, so until the disk has fully expanded, write operations are slower than with ﬁxed size disks. However, after a dynamic disk has fully expanded, the performance penalty for read and write operations is negligible.
3 Initial

support for VMDK was added with VirtualBox 1.4; since version 2.1, VirtualBox supports VMDK fully, meaning that you can create snapshots and use all the other advanced features described above for VDI images with VMDK also. 4 Support was added with VirtualBox 3.1.

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5.3 The Virtual Media Manager
VirtualBox keeps an internal registry of all available hard disk, CD/DVD-ROM and ﬂoppy disk images. This registry can be viewed and changed in the Virtual Media Manager, which you can access from the “File” menu in the VirtualBox main window:

The window shows you all images that are currently registered with VirtualBox, conveniently grouped in three tabs for the three possible formats. These formats are: • Hard disk images, either in VirtualBox’s own Virtual Disk Image (VDI) format or in the third-party formats listed above; • CD/DVD images in standard ISO format; • ﬂoppy images in standard RAW format. As you can see in the screenshot above, for each image, the Virtual Media Manager shows you the full path of the image ﬁle and other information, such as the virtual machine the image is currently attached to, if any. The Virtual Media Manager allows you to • create new hard disk images using the “New” button; this will bring up the “Create Disk Image” wizard already described in chapter 1.6, Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine, page 17; • import existing image ﬁles from your hard drive into VirtualBox using the “Add” button;

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5 Virtual storage • remove an image from the registry (and optionally delete the image ﬁle when doing so); • “release” an image, that is, detach it from a virtual machine if it is currently attached to one as a virtual hard disk. We recommend that you maintain two special folders on your system for keeping images: one for hard disk image ﬁles (which can, in the case of dynamically expanding images, grow to considerable sizes), and one for ISO ﬁles (which were probably downloaded from the Internet). Hard disk image ﬁles can be copied onto other host systems and imported into virtual machines there, although certain guest systems (notably Windows 2000 and XP) will require that the new virtual machine be set up in a similar way to the old one. Note: Do not simply make copies of virtual disk images. If you import such a second copy into a virtual machine, VirtualBox will complain with an error, since VirtualBox assigns a unique identiﬁer (UUID) to each disk image to make sure it is only used once. See chapter 5.6, Cloning disk images, page 85 for instructions on this matter. Also, if you want to copy a virtual machine to another system, VirtualBox has an import/export facility that might be better suited for your needs; see chapter 1.11, Importing and exporting virtual machines, page 29.

5.4 Special image write modes
For each virtual disk image supported by VirtualBox, you can use special commands how write operations from the virtual machine should affect the image and how snapshots should affect it. This applies to all of the aforementioned image formats (VDI, VMDK, VHD or HDD) and irrespective of whether an image is ﬁxed-size or dynamically expanding. 1. With normal images (the default setting), there are no restrictions on how guests can read from and write to the disk. When you take a snapshot of your virtual machine as described in chapter 1.8, Snapshots, page 25, the state of such a “normal hard disk” will be recorded together with the snapshot, and when reverting to the snapshot, its state will be fully reset. (Technically, strictly speaking, the image ﬁle itself is not “reset”. Instead, when a snapshot is taken, VirtualBox “freezes” the image ﬁle and no longer writes to it. For the write operations from the VM, a second, “differencing” image ﬁle is created which receives only the changes to the original image; see the next section for details.)

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5 Virtual storage While you can attach the same “normal” image to more than one virtual machine, only one of these virtual machines attached to the same image ﬁle can be executed simultaneously, as otherwise there would be conﬂicts if several machines write to the same image ﬁle.5 2. By contrast, write-through hard disks are completely unaffected by snapshots: their state is not saved when a snapshot is taken, and not restored when a snapshot is restored. To create a disk image in VDI format as “write-through”, use the VBoxManage createhd command; see chapter 8.17, VBoxManage createhd, page 128. To mark an existing image as write-through, use VBoxManage modifyhd; see chapter 8.18, VBoxManage modifyhd, page 129. 3. Finally, immutable images only remember write accesses temporarily while the virtual machine is running; all changes are lost when the virtual machine is powered on the next time. As a result, as opposed to “normal” images, the same immutable image can be used with several virtual machines without restrictions. Creating an immutable image makes little sense since it would be initially empty and lose its contents with every machine restart (unless you really want to have a disk that is always unformatted when the machine starts up). As a result, normally, you would ﬁrst create a “normal” image and then, when you deem its contents useful, later mark it immutable using VBoxManage modifyhd; again, please see chapter 8.18, VBoxManage modifyhd, page 129. Alternatively, open an existing image in “immutable” mode using VBoxManage openmedium; see chapter 8.14, VBoxManage openmedium / closemedium, page 125. If you take a snapshot of a machine with immutable images, then on every machine power-up, those images are reset to the state of the last (current) snapshot (instead of the state of the original immutable image). Note: As a special exception, immutable images are not reset if they are attached to a machine whose last snapshot was taken while the machine was running (a so-called “online” snapshot). As a result, if the machine’s current snapshot is such an “online” snapshot, its immutable images behave exactly like the “normal” images described previously. To re-enable the automatic resetting of such images, delete the current snapshot of the machine. Again, technically, VirtualBox never writes to an immutable image directly at all. All write operations from the machine will be directed to a differencing image; the next time the VM is powered on, the differencing image is reset so that every time the VM starts, its immutable images have exactly the same
5 This

restriction is more lenient now than it was before VirtualBox 2.2. Previously, each “normal” disk image could only be attached to one single machine. Now it can be attached to more than one machine so long as only one of these machines is running.

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5 Virtual storage content.6 The differencing image is only reset when the machine is powered on from within VirtualBox, not when you reboot by requesting a reboot from within the machine. This is also why immutable images behave as described above when snapshots are also present, which use differencing images as well. If the automatic discarding of the differencing image on VM startup does not ﬁt your needs, you can turn it off using the autoreset parameter of VBoxManage modifyhd; see chapter 8.18, VBoxManage modifyhd, page 129 for details. To illustrate the differences between the various types with respect to snapshots: Assume you have installed your guest operating system in your VM, and you have taken a snapshot. Imagine you have accidentally infected your VM with a virus and would like to go back to the snapshot. With a normal hard disk image, you simply restore the snapshot, and the earlier state of your hard disk image will be restored as well (and your virus infection will be undone). With an immutable hard disk, all it takes is to shut down and power on your VM, and the virus infection will be discarded. With a write-through image however, you cannot easily undo the virus infection by means of virtualization, but will have to disinfect your virtual machine like a real computer. Still, you might ﬁnd write-though images useful if you want to preserve critical data irrespective of snapshots, and since you can attach more than one image to a VM, you may want to have one immutable for the operating system and one write-through for your data ﬁles.

5.5 Differencing images
The previous section hinted at differencing images and how they are used with snapshots, immutable images and multiple disk attachments. For the inquisitive VirtualBox user, this section describes in more detail how they work. A differencing image is a special disk image that only holds the differences to another image. A differencing image by itself is useless, it must always refer to another image. The differencing image is then typically referred to as a “child”, which holds the differences to its “parent”. When a differencing image is active, it receives all write operations from the virtual machine instead of its parent. The differencing image only contains the sectors of the virtual hard disk that have changed since the differencing image was created. When the machine reads a sector from such a virtual hard disk, it looks into the differencing image ﬁrst. If the sector is present, it is returned from there; if not, VirtualBox looks into the parent. In other words, the parent becomes “read-only”; it is never written to again, but it is read from if a sector has not changed. Differencing images can be chained. If another differencing image is created for a virtual disk that already has a differencing image, then it becomes a “grandchild” of
6 This

behavior also changed with VirtualBox 2.2. Previously, the differencing images were discarded when the machine session ended; now they are discarded every time the machine is powered on.

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5 Virtual storage the original parent. The ﬁrst differencing image then becomes read-only as well, and write operations only go to the second-level differencing image. When reading from the virtual disk, VirtualBox needs to look into the second differencing image ﬁrst, then into the ﬁrst if the sector was not found, and then into the original image. There can be an unlimited number of differencing images, and each image can have more than one child. As a result, the differencing images can form a complex tree with parents, “siblings” and children, depending on how complex your machine conﬁguration is. Write operations always go to the one active differencing image, and for read operations, VirtualBox may need to look up all the parents in the chain until the sector in question is found. You can look at such a tree in the Virtual Media Manager:

In all of these situations, to the virtual machine, the virtual hard disk behaves like any other disk. While the virtual machine is running, there is a slight run-time I/O overhead because VirtualBox might need to look up sectors several times. This is not noticeable however since the tables with sector information are always kept in memory and can be looked up quickly. Differencing images are used in the following situations: 1. Snapshots. When you create a snapshot, as explained in the previous section, VirtualBox “freezes” the images of the virtual machine and creates differencing images for each of them (to be precise: for those images which are not in “writethrough” mode). From the point of view of the virtual machine, the virtual disks continue to operate before, but all write operations go into the differencing images. Each time you create another snapshot, more differencing images are created and attached forming a chain or tree.

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5 Virtual storage In the above screenshot, you see that the original disk image is now attached to a snapshot, representing the state of the disk when the snapshot was taken. If you now restore a snapshot – that is, if you want to go back to the exact machine state that was stored in the snapshot –, the following happens: a) VirtualBox copies the virtual machine settings that were copied into the snapshot back to the virtual machine. As a result, if you have made changes to the machine conﬁguration since taking the snapshot, they are undone. b) If the snapshot was taken while the machine was running, it contains a saved machine state, and that state is restored as well; after restoring the snapshot, the machine will then be in “Saved” state and resume execution from there when it is next started. Otherwise it will be in “Powered Off” state and do a full boot. c) The differencing images holding all the write operations since the snapshot was taken are thrown away, and the original parent images are made active again. (If you restored the “root” snapshot, then this will be the root disk images; otherwise, some other differencing image descended from it.) This effectively restores the old machine state. If you later delete a snapshot in order to free disk space, one of the differencing images becomes obsolete. In this case, the differencing images cannot simply be deleted. Instead, VirtualBox needs to look at each sector of the differencing image and needs to copy it back into the parent; this is called “merging” images and can be a potentially lengthy process, depending on how large the differencing image is. 2. Immutable images. When an image is switched to “immutable” mode, a differencing image is created as well. As with snapshots, the parent image then becomes read-only, and the differencing image receives all the write operations. Every time the virtual machine is started, all the immutable images which are attached to it have their differencing images thrown away, effectively resetting the virtual machine’s virtual disk with every restart.

5.6 Cloning disk images
You can duplicate hard disk image ﬁles on the same host to quickly produce a second virtual machine with the same operating system setup. However, you should only make copies of virtual disk images using the utility supplied with VirtualBox; see chapter 8.19, VBoxManage clonehd, page 129. This is because VirtualBox assigns a unique identity number (UUID) to each disk image, which is also stored inside the image, and VirtualBox will refuse to work with two images that use the same number. If you do accidentally try to reimport a disk image which you copied normally, you can make a second copy using VirtualBox’s utility and import that instead.

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5 Virtual storage Note that newer Linux distributions identify the boot hard disk from the ID of the drive. The ID VirtualBox reports for a drive is determined from the UUID of the virtual disk image. So if you clone a disk image and try to boot the copied image the guest might not be able to determine its own boot disk as the UUID changed. In this case you have to adapt the disk ID in your boot loader script (for example /boot/grub/menu.lst). The disk ID looks like this:
scsi-SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB5cfdb1e2-c251e503

The ID for the copied image can be determined with
hdparm -i /dev/sda

5.7 CD/DVD drive operation
The virtual CD/DVD drive(s) by default support only reading. The medium conﬁguration is changeable at runtime. You can select between three options to provide the medium data: • Host Drive deﬁnes that the guest can read from the medium in the host drive. Medium changes of the host drives are signalled to the guest. • Image ﬁle gives the guest read-only access to the image data (often referred to as ISO image). A medium change is signalled when switching to a different image or selecting another option. • Empty stands for a drive without an inserted medium. The drive responds as usual to this situation, however no data can be read. As mentioned, the medium change signalling depends on the selected option for the medium. Medium changes can be prevented by the guest, and VirtualBox reﬂects that by locking the host drive if appropriate. You can force a medium removal in such situation via the VirtualBox GUI or the VBoxManage command line tool. Effectively this is the equivalent of the emergency eject which many CD/DVD drives provide, with all associated side effects. The guest OS can issue error messages in this case, just like on real hardware. Use with caution. In any case, only data media is supported for CD/DVD drives. This means that all data CD formats and all DVD formats can be used in principle. Since host DVD drives refuse to read encrypted DVD video media, you cannot play such videos with the regular CD/DVD drive emulation. You may be able to get it working with the experimental passthrough support described in chapter 5.8, Writing CDs and DVDs using the host drive, page 87. Audio CD and video CD formats are not supported, which means you cannot play such media from a virtual machine.

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5.8 Writing CDs and DVDs using the host drive
When you attach your host’s CD/DVD drive to a virtual machine (see chapter 3.6, Storage settings, page 51), this normally gives the machine read-only access to the host drive. This prevents the guest from writing to the host drive. In particular, you cannot burn CDs and DVDs from the guest this way. As an experimental feature (which currently works for data media only, audio and video CD formats are not supported), it is possible to give the guest access to the CD/DVD writing features of the host drive (if available). There is a “Passthrough” checkbox in the GUI dialog for conﬁguring the media attached to a storage controller, or you can use the command line:
VBoxManage storageattach <uuid|vmname> --storagectl <name> --port <number> --device <number> [--type <dvddrive|hdd|fdd> --medium <none|emptydrive|uuid|filename|host:<drive>>] [--passthrough <on|off>] [--forceunmount]

See also chapter 8.15, VBoxManage storagectl / storageattach, page 126. Even if pass-through is enabled, unsafe commands, such as updating the drive ﬁrmware, will be blocked. On some host drives the pass-through feature allows playing encrypted DVD video media.

5.9 iSCSI servers
iSCSI stands for “Internet SCSI” and is a standard that allows for using the SCSI protocol over Internet (TCP/IP) connections. Especially with the advent of Gigabit Ethernet, it has become affordable to attach iSCSI storage servers simply as remote hard disks to a computer network. In iSCSI terminology, the server providing storage resources is called an “iSCSI target”, while the client connecting to the server and accessing its resources is called “iSCSI initiator”. VirtualBox can transparently present iSCSI remote storage to a virtual machine as a virtual hard disk. The guest operating system will not see any difference between a virtual disk image (VDI ﬁle) and an iSCSI target. To achieve this, VirtualBox has an integrated iSCSI initiator. VirtualBox’s iSCSI support has been developed according to the iSCSI standard and should work with all standard-conforming iSCSI targets. To use an iSCSI target with VirtualBox, you must ﬁrst register it as a virtual hard disk with VBoxManage; see chapter 8.21, VBoxManage addiscsidisk, page 131. The target will show up in the list of disk images, as described in chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80, and can thus be attached to one of the VM’s three hard disk slots the usual way.

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5.9.1 Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking
As an experimental feature, VirtualBox allows for accessing an iSCSI target running in a virtual machine which is conﬁgured for using Internal Networking mode (as described in chapter 6.5, Internal networking, page 95). The setup of the virtual machine which uses such an iSCSI target is done as described above. The only difference is that the IP address of the target must be speciﬁed as a numeric IP address. The IP stack accessing Internal Networking must be conﬁgured in the virtual machine which accesses the iSCSI target. A free static IP and a MAC address not used by other virtual machines must be chosen. In the example below, adapt the name of the virtual machine, the MAC address, the IP conﬁguration and the Internal Networking name (“MyIntNet”) according to your needs. The following seven commands must be issued:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Trusted 1 VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/MAC 08:00:27:01:02:0f VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/IP 10.0.9.1 VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/Netmask 255.255.255.0 VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Driver IntNet VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/Network MyIntNet VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/IsService 1

Finally the iSCSI disk must be registered with the -intnet option to tell the iSCSI initiator to use internal networking:
VBoxManage addiscsidisk --server 10.0.9.30 --target iqn.2008-12.com.sun:sampletarget --intnet

The target address must be speciﬁed as a numeric IP address, as there is no DNS resolver for internal networking. The virtual machine with the iSCSI target should be started before the VM using it is powered on. If a virtual machine using an iSCSI disk is started without having the iSCSI target powered up, it can take up to 200 seconds to detect this situation. The VM will fail to power up.

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6 Virtual networking
As brieﬂy mentioned in chapter 3.8, Network settings, page 54, VirtualBox provides up to eight virtual PCI Ethernet cards for each virtual machine. For each such card, you can individually select 1. the hardware that will be virtualized as well as 2. the virtualization mode that the virtual card will be operating in with respect to your physical networking hardware on the host. Four of the network cards can be conﬁgured in the “Network” section of the settings dialog in the graphical user interface of VirtualBox. You can conﬁgure all eight network cards on the command line via VBoxManage modifyvm; see chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116. This chapter explains the various networking settings in more detail.

6.1 Virtual networking hardware
For each card, you can individually select what kind of hardware will be presented to the virtual machine. VirtualBox can virtualize the following six types of networking hardware: • AMD PCNet PCI II; • AMD PCNet FAST III (the default); • Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop; • Intel PRO/1000 T Server; • Intel PRO/1000 MT Server; • Paravirtualized network adapter (virtio-net). The PCNet FAST III is the default because it is supported by nearly all operating systems out of the box, as well as the GNU GRUB boot manager. As an exception, the Intel PRO/1000 family adapters are chosen for some guest operating system types that no longer ship with drivers for the PCNet card, such as Windows Vista; see chapter 4.3.5, Windows Vista networking, page 64 for details.1
1 Support

for the Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop type was added with VirtualBox 1.6. The T Server variant of the Intel PRO/1000 card was added with VirtualBox 1.6.2 because this one is recognized by Windows XP guests without additional driver installation. The MT Server variant was added with VirtualBox 2.2 to facilitate OVF imports from other platforms.

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6 Virtual networking The “Paravirtualized network adapter (virtio-net)“ is special. If you select this, then VirtualBox does not virtualize common networking hardware (that is supported by common guest operating systems out of the box). Instead, VirtualBox then expects a special software interface for virtualized environments to be provided by the guest, thus avoiding the complexity of emulating networking hardware and improving network performance. Starting with version 3.1, VirtualBox provides support for the industry-standard “virtio” networking drivers, which are part of the open-source KVM project. The “virtio” networking drivers are available for the following guest operating systems: • Linux kernels version 2.6.25 or later can be conﬁgured to provide virtio support; some distributions also back-ported virtio to older kernels. • For Windows 2000, XP and Vista, virtio drivers can be downloaded and installed from the KVM project web page.2 VirtualBox also has limited support for so-called jumbo frames, i.e. networking packets with more than 1500 bytes of data, provided that you use the Intel card virtualization and bridged networking. In other words, jumbo frames are not supported in NAT mode or with the AMD networking devices; in those cases, jumbo packets will silently be dropped for both the transmit and the receive direction. Guest operating systems trying to use this feature will observe this as a packet loss, which may lead to unexpected application behavior in the guest. This does not cause problems with guest operating systems in their default conﬁguration, as jumbo frames need to be explicitly enabled.

6.2 Introduction to networking modes
Each of the eight networking adapters can be separately conﬁgured to operate in one of the following ﬁve modes: Not attached In this mode, VirtualBox reports to the guest that a network card is present, but that there is no connection – as if no Ethernet cable was plugged into the card. This way it is possible to “pull” the virtual Ethernet cable and disrupt the connection, which can be useful to inform a guest operating system that no network connection is available and enforce a reconﬁguration. Network Address Translation (NAT) If all you want is to browse the Web, download ﬁles and view e-mail inside the guest, then this default mode should be sufﬁcient for you, and you can safely skip the rest of this section. Please note that the ping utility does not work over NAT, and that there are certain limitations when using Windows ﬁle sharing (see chapter 6.3.3, NAT limitations, page 93 for details).
2 http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers.

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6 Virtual networking Bridged networking This is for more advanced networking needs such as network simulations and running servers in a guest. When enabled, VirtualBox sets up an additional, software-based network interface on the host to which the virtual machine is connected. Internal networking This can be used to create a different kind of software-based network which is visible to selected virtual machines, but not to applications running on the host or to the outside world. Host-only networking This can be used to create a network containing the host and a set of virtual machines, without the need for the host’s physical network interface. Instead, a virtual network interface (similar to a loopback interface) is created on the host, providing connectivity among virtual machines and the host. The following sections describe the available network modes in more detail.

6.3 Network Address Translation (NAT)
Network Address Translation (NAT) is the simplest way of accessing an external network from a virtual machine. Usually, it does not require any conﬁguration on the host network and guest system. For this reason, it is the default networking mode in VirtualBox. A virtual machine with NAT enabled acts much like a real computer that connects to the Internet through a router. The “router”, in this case, is the VirtualBox networking engine, which maps trafﬁc from and to the virtual machine transparently. The disadvantage of NAT mode is that, much like a private network behind a router, the virtual machine is invisible and unreachable from the outside internet; you cannot run a server this way unless you set up port forwarding (described below). The virtual machine receives its network address and conﬁguration on the private network from a DHCP server integrated into VirtualBox. The IP address thus assigned to the virtual machine is usually on a completely different network than the host. As more than one card of a virtual machine can be set up to use NAT, the ﬁrst card is connected to the private network 10.0.2.0, the second card to the network 10.0.3.0 and so on. If you need to change the guest-assigned IP range for some reason, please refer to chapter 9.14, Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine, page 152. The network frames sent out by the guest operating system are received by VirtualBox’s NAT engine, which extracts the TCP/IP data and resends it using the host operating system. To an application on the host, or to another computer on the same network as the host, it looks like the data was sent by the VirtualBox application on the host, using an IP address belonging to the host. VirtualBox listens for replies to the packages sent, and repacks and resends them to the guest machine on its private network.

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6.3.1 Conﬁguring port forwarding with NAT
As the virtual machine is connected to a private network internal to VirtualBox and invisible to the host, network services on the guest are not accessible to the host machine or to other computers on the same network. However, VirtualBox can make selected services available outside of the guest by using port forwarding. This means that VirtualBox listens to certain ports on the host and resends all packets which arrive on them to the guest on the ports used by the services being forwarded. To an application on the host or other physical (or virtual) machines on the network, it looks as though the service being proxied is actually running on the host (note that this also means that you cannot run the same service on the same ports on the host). However, you still gain the advantages of running the service in a virtual machine – for example, services on the host machine or on other virtual machines cannot be compromised or crashed by a vulnerability or a bug in the service, and the service can run in a different operating system than the host system. You can set up a guest service which you wish to proxy using the command line tool VBoxManage. You will need to know which ports on the guest the service uses and to decide which ports to use on the host (often but not always you will want to use the same ports on the guest and on the host). You can use any ports on the host which are not already in use by a service. An example of how to set up incoming NAT connections to an ssh server on the guest requires the following three commands:
VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/Protocol" TCP VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/GuestPort" 22 VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/HostPort" 2222

The above example assumes a PCNet virtual network card; if you have conﬁgured the guest to use the Intel PRO/1000, replace “pcnet” with “e1000” in the above commands. Similarly, if you want to conﬁgure a different interface instance replace the /0/ with the appropriate index. pcnet and e1000 are counted separately in this respect, and counting starts at 0 for both types. The name guestssh is an arbitrary one chosen for this particular forwarding conﬁguration. With that conﬁguration in place, all TCP connections to port 2222 on the host will be forwarded to port 22 on the guest. Protocol can be either of TCP or UDP (these are case insensitive). To remove a mapping again, use the same commands, but leaving out the values (in this case TCP, 22 and 2222). It is not possible to conﬁgure incoming NAT connections while the VM is running. However you can change the settings for a VM which is currently saved (or powered off at a snapshot).

6.3.2 PXE booting with NAT
PXE booting is now supported in NAT mode. The NAT DHCP server provides a boot ﬁle name of the form vmname.pxe if the directory TFTP exists in the directory where

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6 Virtual networking the user’s VirtualBox.xml ﬁle is kept. It is the responsibility of the user to provide vmname.pxe.

6.3.3 NAT limitations
There are four limitations of NAT mode which users should be aware of: ICMP protocol limitations: Some frequently used network debugging tools (e.g. ping or tracerouting) rely on the ICMP protocol for sending/receiving messages. While ICMP support has been improved with VirtualBox 2.1 (ping should now work), some other tools may not work reliably. Receiving of UDP broadcasts is not reliable: The guest does not reliably receive broadcasts, since, in order to save resources, it only listens for a certain amount of time after the guest has sent UDP data on a particular port. As a consequence, NetBios name resolution based on broadcasts does not always work (but WINS always works). As a workaround, you can use the numeric IP of the desired server in the \\server\share notation. Protocols such as GRE are unsupported: Protocols other than TCP and UDP are not supported. This means some VPN products (e.g. PPTP from Microsoft) cannot be used. There are other VPN products which use simply TCP and UDP. Forwarding host ports < 1024 impossible: On Unix-based hosts (e.g. Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X) it is not possible to bind to ports below 1024 from applications that are not run by root. As a result, if you try to conﬁgure such a port forwarding, the VM will refuse to start. These limitations normally don’t affect standard network use. But the presence of NAT has also subtle effects that may interfere with protocols that are normally working. One example is NFS, where the server is often conﬁgured to refuse connections from non-privileged ports (i.e. ports not below 1024).

6.4 Bridged networking
With bridged networking, VirtualBox uses a device driver on your host system that ﬁlters data from your physical network adapter. This driver is therefore called a “net ﬁlter” driver. This allows VirtualBox to intercept data from the physical network and inject data into it, effectively creating a new network interface in software. When a guest is using such a new software interface, it looks to the host system as though the guest were physically connected to the interface using a network cable: the host can send data to the guest through that interface and receive data from it. This means that you can set up routing or bridging between the guest and the rest of your network. For this to work, VirtualBox needs a device driver on your host system. The way bridged networking works has been completely rewritten with VirtualBox 2.0 and 2.1,

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6 Virtual networking depending on the host operating system. From the user perspective, the main difference is that complex conﬁguration is no longer necessary on any of the supported host operating systems.3 Note: Even though TAP is no longer necessary on Linux with bridged networking, you can still use TAP interfaces for certain advanced setups, since you can connect a VM to any host interface – which could also be a TAP interface. To enable bridged networking, all you need to do is to open the Settings dialog of a virtual machine, go to the “Network” page and select “Bridged network” in the drop down list for the “Attached to” ﬁeld. Finally, select desired host interface from the list at the bottom of the page, which contains the physical network interfaces of your systems. On a typical MacBook, for example, this will allow you to select between “en1: AirPort” (which is the wireless interface) and “en0: Ethernet”, which represents the interface with a network cable. Depending on your host operating system, the following limitations should be kept in mind: • On Macintosh hosts, functionality is limited when using AirPort (the Mac’s wireless networking) for bridged networking. Currently, VirtualBox supports only IPv4 over AirPort. For other protocols such as IPv6 and IPX, you must choose a wired interface. • On Linux hosts, functionality is limited when using wireless interfaces for bridged networking. Currently, VirtualBox supports only IPv4 over wireless. For other protocols such as IPv6 and IPX, you must choose a wired interface. Also, setting the MTU to less than 1500 bytes on wired interfaces provided by the sky2 driver on the Marvell Yukon II EC Ultra Ethernet NIC is known to cause packet losses under certain conditions. • On Solaris hosts, there is no support for using wireless interfaces. Filtering guest trafﬁc using IPFilter is also not completely supported due to technical restrictions of the Solaris networking subsystem. These issues would be addressed in a future release of OpenSolaris. With VirtualBox 2.0.4 and above, it is possible to use Crossbow Virtual Network Interfaces (VNICs) with bridged networking, but with the following caveats: – A VNIC cannot be shared between multiple guest network interfaces, i.e. each guest network interface must have its own, exclusive VNIC.
3 For

Mac OS X and Solaris hosts, net ﬁlter drivers were already added in VirtualBox 2.0 (as initial support for Host Interface Networking on these platforms). With VirtualBox 2.1, net ﬁlter drivers were also added for the Windows and Linux hosts, replacing the mechanisms previously present in VirtualBox for those platforms; especially on Linux, the earlier method required creating TAP interfaces and bridges, which was complex and varied from one distribution to the next. None of this is necessary anymore. Bridged network was formerly called “Host Interface Networking” and has been renamed with version 2.2 without any change in functionality.

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6 Virtual networking – The VNIC and the guest network interface that uses the VNIC must be assigned identical MAC addresses.

6.5 Internal networking
Internal Networking is similar to bridged networking in that the VM can directly communicate with the outside world. However, the “outside world” is limited to other VMs which connect to the same internal network. Even though technically, everything that can be done using internal networking can also be done using bridged networking, there are two good reasons why this additional mode was implemented: 1. Security. In bridged networking mode, all trafﬁc goes through a physical interface of the host system. It is therefore possible to attach a packet sniffer (such as Wireshark) to the host interface and log all trafﬁc that goes over it. If, for any reason, you prefer two or more VMs on the same machine to communicate privately, hiding their data from both the host system and the user, bridged networking therefore is not an option. 2. Speed. Internal networking is more efﬁcient than bridged networking, as VirtualBox can directly transmit the data without having to send it through the host operating system’s networking stack. Internal networks are created automatically as needed, i.e. there is no central conﬁguration. Every internal network is identiﬁed simply by its name. Once there is more than one active virtual network card with the same internal network ID, the VirtualBox support driver will automatically “wire” the cards and act as a network switch. The VirtualBox support driver implements a complete Ethernet switch and supports both broadcast/multicast frames and promiscuous mode. In order to attach a VM’s network card to an internal network, set its networking mode to “internal networking”. There are two ways to accomplish this: • You can use a VM’s “Settings” dialog in the VirtualBox graphical user interface. In the “Networking” category of the settings dialog, select “Internal Networking” from the drop-down list of networking modes. Now select the name of an existing internal network from the drop-down below or enter a new name into the entry ﬁeld. • You can use VBoxManage modifyvm <VM name> --nic<x> intnet. Optionally, you can specify a network name with the command VBoxManage modifyvm <VM name> --intnet<x> <network name>. If you do not specify a network name, the network card will be attached to the network intnet by default. Unless you conﬁgure the (virtual) network cards in the guest operating systems that are participating in the internal network to use static IP addresses, you may want to use

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6 Virtual networking the DHCP server that is built into VirtualBox to manage IP addresses for the internal network. Please see chapter 8.28, VBoxManage dhcpserver, page 136 for details. As a security measure, the Linux implementation of internal networking only allows VMs running under the same user ID to establish an internal network.

6.6 Host-only networking
Host-only networking is another networking mode that was added with version 2.2 of VirtualBox. It can be thought of as a hybrid between the bridged and internal networking modes: as with bridged networking, the virtual machines can talk to each other and the host as if they were connected through a physical ethernet switch. Similarly, as with internal networking however, a physical networking interface need not be present, and the virtual machines cannot talk to the world outside the host since they are not connected to a physical networking interface. Instead, when host-only networking is used, VirtualBox creates a new software interface on the host which then appears next to your existing network interfaces. In other words, whereas with bridged networking an existing physical interface is used to attach virtual machines to, with host-only networking a new “loopback” interface is created on the host. And whereas with internal networking, the trafﬁc between the virtual machines cannot be seen, the trafﬁc on the “loopback” interface on the host can be intercepted. Host-only networking is particularly useful for preconﬁgured virtual appliances, where multiple virtual machines are shipped together and designed to cooperate. For example, one virtual machine may contain a web server and a second one a database, and since they are intended to talk to each other, the appliance can instruct VirtualBox to set up a host-only network for the two. A second (bridged) network would then connect the web server to the outside world to serve data to, but the outside world cannot connect to the database. To change a virtual machine’s virtual network interface to “host only” mode: • either go to the “Network” page in the virtual machine’s settings notebook in the graphical user interface and select “Host-only networking”, or • on the command line, type VBoxManage modifyvm <VM name> --nic<x> hostonly; see chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116 for details. For host-only networking, like with internal networking, you may ﬁnd the DHCP server useful that is built into VirtualBox. This can be enabled to then manage the IP addresses in the host-only network since otherwise you would need to conﬁgure all IP addresses statically. • In the VirtualBox graphical user interface, you can conﬁgure all these items in the global settings via “File” -> “Settings” -> “Network”, which lists all host-only networks which are presently in use. Click on the network name and then on the “Edit” button to the right, and you can modify the adapter and DHCP settings.

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6 Virtual networking • Alternatively, you can use VBoxManage dhcpserver on the command line; please see chapter 8.28, VBoxManage dhcpserver, page 136 for details.

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7 Remote virtual machines
7.1 Remote display (VRDP support)
VirtualBox, the graphical user interface, has a built-in server for the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP). This allows you to see the output of a virtual machine’s window remotely on any other computer and control the virtual machine from there, as if the virtual machine was running locally. VRDP is a backwards-compatible extension to Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Typically graphics updates and audio are sent from the remote machine to the client, while keyboard and mouse events are sent back. As a result, you can use any standard RDP client to control the remote VM. With VirtualBox, the graphical user interface, the VRDP server is disabled by default, but can easily be enabled on a per-VM basis either in the “Display” settings (see chapter 3.5, Display settings, page 51) or with VBoxManage:
VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --vrdp on

If you use VBoxHeadless (described further below), VRDP support will be automatically enabled since VBoxHeadless has no other means of output.

7.1.1 Common third-party RDP viewers
You can use any standard RDP viewer to connect to such a remote virtual machine (examples follow below). For this to work, you must specify the IP address of your host system (not of the virtual machine!) as the server address to connect to, as well as the port number that the RDP server is using. By default, the VRDP server uses the standard RDP TCP port 3389. You will need to change the default port if you run more than one VRDP server, since the port can only be used by one server at a time; you might also need to change it on Windows hosts since the default port might already be used by the RDP server that is built into Windows itself. Ports 5000 through 5050 are typically not used and might be a good choice. The port can be changed either in the “Display” settings of the graphical user interface or with --vrdpport option of the VBoxManage modifyvm command. You can specify a comma-separated list of ports or ranges of ports. Use a dash between two port numbers to specify a range. The VRDP server will bind to one of available ports from the speciﬁed list. For example, VBoxManage modifyvm <vm> --vrdpport 5000,5010-5012 will conﬁgure the server to bind to one of the ports 5000, 5010, 5011 or 5012. See chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116 for details.

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7 Remote virtual machines The actual port used by a running VM can be either queried with VBoxManage showvminfo command or seen in the GUI on the Runtime tab of the Session Information Dialog, which is accessible via the Machine menu of the VM window. Here follow examples for the most common RDP viewers: • On Windows, you can use the Microsoft Terminal Services Connector (mstsc.exe) that ships with Windows. You can start it by bringing up the “Run” dialog (press the Windows key and “R”) and typing “mstsc”. You can also ﬁnd it under “Start” -> “All Programs” -> “Accessories” -> “Remote Desktop Connection”. If you use the “Run” dialog, you can type in options directly:
mstsc 1.2.3.4[:3389]

Replace “1.2.3.4” with the host IP adress, and 3389 with a different port if necessary. • On other systems, you can use the standard open-source rdesktop program. This ships with most Linux distributions, but VirtualBox also comes with a modiﬁed variant of rdesktop for remote USB support (see chapter 7.1.4, Remote USB, page 102 below). With rdesktop, use a command line such as the following:
rdesktop -a 16 -N 1.2.3.4:3389

As said for the Microsoft viewer above, replace “1.2.3.4” with the host IP address, and 3389 with a different port if necessary. The -a 16 option requests a color depth of 16 bits per pixel, which we recommend. (For best performance, after installation of the guest operating system, you should set its display color depth to the same value). The -N option enables use of the NumPad keys. • If you run the KDE desktop, you might prefer krdc, the KDE RDP viewer. The command line would look like this:
krdc --window --high-quality rdp:/1.2.3.4[:3389]

Again, replace “1.2.3.4” with the host IP address, and 3389 with a different port if necessary. The “rdp:/“ bit is required with krdc to switch it into RDP mode.

7.1.2 VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server
While the VRDP server that is built into the VirtualBox GUI is perfectly capable of running virtual machines remotely, it is not convenient to have to run VirtualBox if you never want to have VMs displayed locally in the ﬁrst place. In particular, if you are running servers whose only purpose is to host VMs, and all your VMs are supposed to run remotely over VRDP, then it is pointless to have a graphical user interface on the server at all – especially since, on a Linux or Solaris host, VirtualBox comes with

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7 Remote virtual machines dependencies on the Qt and SDL libraries, which is inconvenient if you would rather not have the X Window system on your server at all. VirtualBox therefore comes with yet another front-end called VBoxHeadless, which produces no visible output on the host at all, but instead only delivers VRDP data.1 To start a virtual machine with VBoxHeadless, you have two options: • You can use VBoxManage startvm <vmname> --type vrdp. The extra --type option causes the VirtualBox core to use VBoxHeadless as the front-end to the internal virtualization engine. • The recommended way, however, is to use VBoxHeadless directly, as follows:
VBoxHeadless --startvm <uuid|name>

This is the recommended way, because when starting the headless interface through VBoxManage, you will not be able to view or log messages that VBoxHeadless may have output on the console. Especially in case of startup errors, such output might be desirable for problem diagnosis. Note that when you use VBoxHeadless to start a VM, since the headless server has no other means of output, the built-in VRDP server will always be enabled, regardless of whether you have enabled the VRDP server in the VM’s settings. If this is undesirable (for example because you want to access the VM via ssh only), start the VM like this:
VBoxHeadless --startvm <uuid|name> --vrdp=off

To have the VRDP server use the setting from the VM conﬁguration, as the other frontends would, use this:
VBoxHeadless --startvm <uuid|name> --vrdp=config

7.1.3 Step by step: creating a virtual machine on a headless server
The following instructions may give you an idea how to create a virtual machine on a headless server over a network connection. We will create a virtual machine, establish a VRDP connection and install a guest operating system – all without having to touch the headless server. All you need is the following: 1. VirtualBox on a server machine with a supported host operating system; for the following example, we will assume a Linux server; 2. an ISO ﬁle on the server, containing the installation data for the guest operating system to install (we will assume Windows XP in the following example);
1 Before

VirtualBox 1.6, the headless server was called VBoxVRDP. For the sake of backwards compatibility, the VirtualBox installation still installs an executable with that name as well.

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7 Remote virtual machines 3. a terminal connection to that host over which you can access a command line (e.g. via telnet or ssh); 4. an RDP viewer on the remote client; see chapter 7.1.1, Common third-party RDP viewers, page 98 above for examples. Note again that on the server machine, since we will only use the headless server, neither Qt nor SDL nor the X Window system will be needed. 1. On the headless server, create a new virtual machine:
VBoxManage createvm --name "Windows XP" --register

Note that if you do not specify --register, you will have to manually use the registervm command later. 2. Make sure the settings for this VM are appropriate for the guest operating system that we will install. For example:
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --memory "256MB" --acpi on --boot1 dvd --nic1 nat

3. Create a virtual hard disk for the VM (in this case, 10GB in size) and register it with VirtualBox:
VBoxManage createhd --filename "WinXP.vdi" --size 10000 --remember

4. Set this newly created VDI ﬁle as the ﬁrst virtual hard disk of the new VM:
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --hda "WinXP.vdi"

5. Register the ISO ﬁle that contains the operating system installation that you want to install later:
VBoxManage openmedium dvd /full/path/to/iso.iso

6. Attach this ISO to the virtual machine, so it can boot from it:
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --dvd /full/path/to/iso.iso

(Alternatively, you can use VBoxManage controlvm dvdattach directly, without having to register the image ﬁrst; see chapter 8.11, VBoxManage controlvm, page 123 for details.) 7. Start the virtual machine using VBoxHeadless:
VBoxHeadless --startvm "Windows XP"

If everything worked, you should see a copyright notice. If, instead, you are returned to the command line, then something went wrong.

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7 Remote virtual machines 8. On the client machine, ﬁre up the RDP viewer and try to connect to the server (see chapter 7.1.1, Common third-party RDP viewers, page 98 above for how to use various common RDP viewers). You should now be seeing the installation routine of your guest operating system in the RDP viewer.

7.1.4 Remote USB
As a special feature on top of the VRDP support, VirtualBox supports remote USB devices over the wire as well. That is, the VirtualBox guest that runs on one computer can access the USB devices of the remote computer on which the RDP data is being displayed the same way as USB devices that are connected to the actual host. This allows for running virtual machines on a VirtualBox host that acts as a server, where a client can connect from elsewhere that needs only a network adapter and a display capable of running an RDP viewer. When USB devices are plugged into the client, the remote VirtualBox server can access them. For these remote USB devices, the same ﬁlter rules apply as for other USB devices, as described with chapter 3.10.1, USB settings, page 56. All you have to do is specify “Remote” (or “Any”) when setting up these rules. Accessing remote USB devices is only possible if the RDP client supports this extension. On Linux and Solaris hosts, the VirtualBox installation provides a suitable RDP client called rdesktop-vrdp. RDP clients for other platforms will be provided in future VirtualBox versions. To make a remote USB device available to a VM, rdesktop-vrdp should be started as follows:
rdesktop-vrdp -r usb -a 16 -N my.host.address

Note that rdesktop-vrdp can access USB devices only through /proc/bus/usb. Please refer to chapter 11.5.7, USB not working, page 167 for further details on how to properly set up the permissions. Furthermore it is advisable to disable automatic loading of any host driver on the remote host which might work on USB devices to ensure that the devices are accessible by the RDP client. If the setup was properly done on the remote host, plug/unplug events are visible on the VBox.log ﬁle of the VM.

7.1.5 RDP authentication
For each virtual machine that is remotely accessible via RDP, you can individually determine if and how RDP connections are authenticated. For this, use VBoxManage modifyvm command with the --vrdpauthtype option; see chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116 for a general introduction. Three methods of authentication are available:

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7 Remote virtual machines • The “null” method means that there is no authentication at all; any client can connect to the VRDP server and thus the virtual machine. This is, of course, very insecure and only to be recommended for private networks. • The “external” method provides external authentication through a special authentication library. VirtualBox comes with two default libraries for external authentication: – On Linux hosts, VRDPAuth.so authenticates users against the host’s PAM system. – On Windows hosts, VRDPAuth.dll authenticates users against the host’s WinLogon system. In other words, the “external” method per default performs authentication with the user accounts that exist on the host system. Any user with valid authentication credentials is accepted, i.e. the username does not have to correspond to the user running the VM. However, you can replace the default “external” authentication module with any other module. For this, VirtualBox provides a well-deﬁned interface that allows you to write your own authentication module; see chapter 9.4, Custom external VRDP authentication, page 142 for details. • Finally, the “guest” authentication method performs authentication with a special component that comes with the Guest Additions; as a result, authentication is not performed with the host users, but with the guest user accounts. This method is currently still in testing and not yet supported.

7.1.6 RDP encryption
RDP features data stream encryption, which is based on the RC4 symmetric cipher (with keys up to 128bit). The RC4 keys are being replaced in regular intervals (every 4096 packets). RDP provides three different authentication methods: 1. Historically, RDP4 authentication was used, with which the RDP client does not perform any checks in order to verify the identity of the server it connects to. Since user credentials can be obtained using a man in the middle (MITM) attack, RDP4 authentication is insecure and should generally not be used. 2. RDP5.1 authentication employs a server certiﬁcate for which the client possesses the public key. This way it is guaranteed that the server possess the corresponding private key. However, as this hard-coded private key became public some years ago, RDP5.1 authentication is also insecure and cannot be recommended.

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7 Remote virtual machines 3. RDP5.2 authentication is based on TLS 1.0 with customer-supplied certiﬁcates. The server supplies a certiﬁcate to the client which must be signed by a certiﬁcate authority (CA) that the client trusts (for the Microsoft RDP Client 5.2, the CA has to be added to the Windows Trusted Root Certiﬁcate Authorities database). VirtualBox allows you to supply your own CA and server certiﬁcate and uses OpenSSL for encryption. While VirtualBox supports all of the above, only RDP5.2 authentication should be used in environments where security is a concern. As the client that connects to the server determines what type of encryption will be used, with rdesktop, the Linux RDP viewer, use the -4 or -5 options.

7.1.7 VRDP multiple connections
The VirtualBox built-in RDP server supports simultaneous connections to the same running VM from different clients. All connected clients see the same screen output and share a mouse pointer and keyboard focus. This is similar to several people using the same computer at the same time, taking turns at the keyboard. The following command enables multiple connection mode:
VBoxManage modifyvm VMNAME --vrdpmulticon on

If the guest uses multiple monitors then multiple connection mode must be active in order to use them at the same time (see chapter 9.8, Multiple monitors for the guest, page 146).

7.2 Teleporting
Starting with version 3.1, VirtualBox supports “teleporting” – that is, moving a virtual machine over a network from one VirtualBox host to another, while the virtual machine is running. This works regardless of the host operating system that is running on the hosts: you can teleport virtual machines between Solaris and Mac hosts, for example. Teleporting requires that a machine be currently running on one host, which is then called the “source”. The host to which the virtual machine will be teleported will then be called the “target”; the machine on the target is then conﬁgured to wait for the source to contact the target. The machine’s running state will then be transferred from the source to the target with minimal downtime. Teleporting happens over any TCP/IP network; the source and the target only need to agree on a TCP/IP port which is speciﬁed in the teleporting settings. There are a few prerequisites for this to work, however: 1. On the target host, you must conﬁgure a virtual machine in VirtualBox with exactly the same hardware settings as the machine on the source that you want to teleport. This does not apply to settings which are merely descriptive, such as the VM name, but obviously for teleporting to work, the target machine must have

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7 Remote virtual machines the same amount of memory and other hardware settings. Otherwise teleporting will fail with an error message. 2. The two virtual machines on the source and the target must share the same storage (hard disks as well as ﬂoppy and CD/DVD images). This means that they either use the same iSCSI targets or that the storage resides somewhere on the network and both hosts have access to it via NFS or SMB/CIFS. This also means that the source and target machines cannot have any snapshots. 3. The hosts must have fairly similar CPUs. While VirtualBox can simulate some CPU features to a degree, this does not always work. Teleporting between Intel and AMD CPUs will probably fail with an error message. Then, on the target, conﬁgure the virtual machine to wait for a teleport request to arrive when it is started, instead of actually attempting to start the machine. This is done with the following VBoxManage command:
VBoxManage modifyvm <targetvmname> --teleporter on --teleporterport <port>

where <targetvmname> is the name of the virtual machine on the target and <port> is a TCP/IP port number to be used on both the source and the target. For example, use 6000. For details, see chapter 8.7.5, Teleporting settings, page 120. Next, start the VM on the target. You will see that instead of actually running, it will show a progress dialog. indicating that it is waiting for a teleport request to arrive. Then, start the machine on the source as usual. When it is running and you want it to be teleported, issue the following command on the source:
VBoxManage controlvm <sourcevmname> teleport --host <targethost> --port <port>

where <sourcevmname> is the name of the virtual machine on the source (the machine that is currently running), <targethost> is the host or IP name of the target that has the machine that is waiting for the teleport request, and <port> must be the same number as speciﬁed in the command on the target. For details, see chapter 8.11, VBoxManage controlvm, page 123. For testing, you can also teleport machines on the same host; in that case, use “localhost” as the hostname.

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8 VBoxManage
8.1 Introduction
As brieﬂy mentioned in chapter 1.12, Alternative front-ends, page 31, VBoxManage is the command-line interface to VirtualBox. With it, you can completely control VirtualBox from the command line of your host operating system. VBoxManage supports all the features that the graphical user interface gives you access to, but it supports a lot more than that. It exposes really all the features of the virtualization engine, even those that cannot (yet) be accessed from the GUI. You will need to use the command line if you want to • use a different user interface than the main GUI (for example, VBoxSDL or the VBoxHeadless server); • control some of the more advanced and experimental conﬁguration settings for a VM. There are two main things to keep in mind when using VBoxManage: First, VBoxManage must always be used with a speciﬁc “subcommand”, such as “list” or “createvm” or “startvm”. All the subcommands that VBoxManage supports are described in detail in chapter 8, VBoxManage, page 106. Second, most of these subcommands require that you specify a particular virtual machine after the subcommand. There are two ways you can do this: • You can specify the VM name, as it is shown in the VirtualBox GUI. Note that if that name contains spaces, then you must enclose the entire name in double quotes (as it is always required with command line arguments that contain spaces). For example:
VBoxManage startvm "Windows XP"

• You can specify the UUID, which is the internal unique identiﬁer that VirtualBox uses to refer to the virtual machine. Assuming that the aforementioned VM called “Windows XP” has the UUID shown below, the following command has the same effect as the previous:
VBoxManage startvm 670e746d-abea-4ba6-ad02-2a3b043810a5

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8 VBoxManage You can type VBoxManage list vms to have all currently registered VMs listed with all their settings, including their respective names and UUIDs. Some typical examples of how to control VirtualBox from the command line are listed below: • To create a new virtual machine from the command line and immediately register it with VirtualBox, use VBoxManage createvm with the --register option,1 like this:
$ VBoxManage createvm --name "SUSE 10.2" --register VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.0 (C) 2005-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Virtual machine ’SUSE 10.2’ is created. UUID: c89fc351-8ec6-4f02-a048-57f4d25288e5 Settings file: ’/home/username/.VirtualBox/Machines/SUSE 10.2/SUSE 10.2.xml’

As can be seen from the above output, a new virtual machine has been created with a new UUID and a new XML settings ﬁle. • To show the conﬁguration of a particular VM, use VBoxManage showvminfo; see chapter 8.4, VBoxManage showvminfo, page 114 for details and an example. • To change VM settings, use VBoxManage modifyvm, e.g. as follows:
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --memory "512MB"

For details, see chapter 8.7, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 116. • To control VM operation, use one of the following: – To start a VM that is currently powered off, use VBoxManage startvm; see chapter 8.10, VBoxManage startvm, page 122 for details. – To pause or save a VM that is currently running, use VBoxManage controlvm; see chapter 8.11, VBoxManage controlvm, page 123 for details.

8.2 Commands overview
When running VBoxManage without parameters or when supplying an invalid command line, the below syntax diagram will be shown. Note that the output will be slightly different depending on the host platform; when in doubt, check the output of VBoxManage for the commands available on your particular host.
1 For

details, see chapter 8.6, VBoxManage createvm, page 115.

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Usage: VBoxManage [-v|--version] print version number and exit VBoxManage [-q|--nologo] ... suppress the logo VBoxManage list [--long|-l] vms|runningvms|ostypes|hostdvds|hostfloppies| bridgedifs|dhcpservers|hostinfo| hostcpuids|hddbackends|hdds|dvds|floppies| usbhost|usbfilters|systemproperties VBoxManage showvminfo <uuid>|<name> [--details] [--statistics] [--machinereadable] <filename> <uuid>|<name> [--delete] --name <name> [--ostype <ostype>] [--register] [--basefolder <path> | --settingsfile <path>] [--uuid <uuid>] <uuid|name> [--name <name>] [--ostype <ostype>] [--memory <memorysize in MB>] [--vram <vramsize in MB>] [--acpi on|off] [--ioapic on|off] [--pae on|off] [--hwvirtex on|off] [--nestedpaging on|off] [--vtxvpid on|off] [--cpuidset <leaf> <eax> <ebx> <ecx> <edx>] [--cpuidremove <leaf>] [--cpuidremoveall] [--cpus <number>] [--monitorcount <number>] [--accelerate3d <on|off>] [--firmware bios|efi|efi32|efi64] [--bioslogofadein on|off] [--bioslogofadeout on|off] [--bioslogodisplaytime <msec>] [--bioslogoimagepath <imagepath>] [--biosbootmenu disabled|menuonly|messageandmenu] [--biossystemtimeoffset <msec>] [--biospxedebug on|off] [--boot<1-4> none|floppy|dvd|disk|net>] [--nic<1-N> none|null|nat|bridged|intnet] [--nictype<1-N> Am79C970A|Am79C973] [--cableconnected<1-N> on|off] [--nictrace<1-N> on|off] [--nictracefile<1-N> <filename>] [--nicspeed<1-N> <kbps>]

VBoxManage registervm VBoxManage unregistervm VBoxManage createvm

VBoxManage modifyvm

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[--bridgeadapter<1-N> none|<devicename>] [--intnet<1-N> <network name>] [--natnet<1-N> <network>|default] [--macaddress<1-N> auto|<mac>] [--uart<1-N> off|<I/O base> <IRQ>] [--uartmode<1-N> disconnected| server <pipe>| client <pipe>| file <file>| <devicename>] [--gueststatisticsinterval <seconds>] [--audio none|null|dsound|solaudio|oss|coreaudio] [--audiocontroller ac97|sb16] [--clipboard disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost| bidirectional] [--vrdp on|off] [--vrdpport default|<ports>] [--vrdpaddress <host>] [--vrdpauthtype null|external|guest] [--vrdpmulticon on|off] [--vrdpreusecon on|off] [--usb on|off] [--usbehci on|off] [--snapshotfolder default|<path>] [--teleporter on|off] [--teleporterport <port>] [--teleporteraddress <address|empty> [--teleporterpassword <password>] [--hardwareuuid <uuid>] VBoxManage import <ovf> [--dry-run|-n] [more options] (run with -n to have options displayed for a particular OVF) <machines> --output|-o <ovf> [--legacy09] [--vsys <number of virtual system>] [--product <product name>] [--producturl <product url>] [--vendor <vendor name>] [--vendorurl <vendor url>] [--version <version info>] [--eula <license text>] [--eulafile <filename>] <uuid>|<name> [--type gui|sdl|vrdp|headless] <uuid>|<name> pause|resume|reset|poweroff|savestate| acpipowerbutton|acpisleepbutton| keyboardputscancode <hex> [<hex> ...]| injectnmi| setlinkstate<1-N> on|off | usbattach <uuid>|<address> | usbdetach <uuid>|<address> |

VBoxManage export

VBoxManage startvm

VBoxManage controlvm

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vrdp on|off | vrdpport default|<ports> | setvideomodehint <xres> <yres> <bpp> [display] | setcredentials <username> <password> <domain> [--allowlocallogon <yes|no>] | teleport --host <name> --port <port> [--maxdowntime <msec>] [--password password] VBoxManage discardstate VBoxManage adoptstate VBoxManage snapshot <uuid>|<name> <uuid>|<name> <state_file> <uuid>|<name> take <name> [--description <desc>] [--pause] | delete <uuid>|<name> | restore <uuid>|<name> | edit <uuid>|<name>|--current [--name <name>] [--description <desc>] | showvminfo <uuid>|<name> disk|dvd|floppy <filename> [--type normal|immutable|writethrough] (disk only) [--uuid <uuid>] [--parentuuid <uuid>] (disk only) disk|dvd|floppy <uuid>|<filename> [--delete] <uuid|vmname> --storagectl <name> --port <number> --device <number> [--type <dvddrive|hdd|fdd> --medium <none|emptydrive|uuid|filename|host:<drive>>] [--passthrough <on|off>] [--forceunmount] <uuid|vmname> --name <name> [--add <ide/sata/scsi/floppy>] [--controller <LsiLogic/BusLogic/IntelAhci/PIIX3/PIIX4/ICH6/I82078>] [--sataideemulation<1-4> <1-30>] [--sataportcount <1-30>] [--remove] <uuid>|<filename> --filename <filename> --size <megabytes> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] (default: VDI) [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] [--type normal|writethrough] (default: normal) [--comment <comment>] [--remember]

VBoxManage openmedium

VBoxManage closemedium

VBoxManage storageattach

VBoxManage storagectl

VBoxManage showhdinfo VBoxManage createhd

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VBoxManage modifyhd <uuid>|<filename> [--type normal|writethrough|immutable] [--autoreset on|off] [--compact] <uuid>|<filename> <outputfile> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD|RAW|<other>] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] [--type normal|writethrough|immutable] [--remember] [--existing] <filename> <outputfile> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] stdin <outputfile> <bytes> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] --server <name>|<ip> --target <target> [--port <port>] [--lun <lun>] [--encodedlun <lun>] [--username <username>] [--password <password>] [--type normal|writethrough|immutable] [--comment <comment>] [--intnet] global|<uuid>|<name> <key>|enumerate global|<uuid>|<name> <key> [<value>] (no value deletes key) hdfolder default|<folder> | machinefolder default|<folder> | vrdpauthlibrary default|<library> | websrvauthlibrary default|null|<library> | loghistorycount <value> add <index,0-N> --target <uuid>|<name>|global --name <string> --action ignore|hold (global filters only) [--active yes|no] (yes) [--vendorid <XXXX>] (null) [--productid <XXXX>] (null) [--revision <IIFF>] (null) [--manufacturer <string>] (null) [--product <string>] (null) [--remote yes|no] (null, VM filters only) [--serialnumber <string>] (null) [--maskedinterfaces <XXXXXXXX>]

VBoxManage clonehd

VBoxManage convertfromraw

VBoxManage convertfromraw

VBoxManage addiscsidisk

VBoxManage getextradata

VBoxManage setextradata

VBoxManage setproperty

VBoxManage usbfilter

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VBoxManage usbfilter modify <index,0-N> --target <uuid>|<name>|global [--name <string>] [--action ignore|hold] (global filters only) [--active yes|no] [--vendorid <XXXX>|""] [--productid <XXXX>|""] [--revision <IIFF>|""] [--manufacturer <string>|""] [--product <string>|""] [--remote yes|no] (null, VM filters only) [--serialnumber <string>|""] [--maskedinterfaces <XXXXXXXX>] remove <index,0-N> --target <uuid>|<name>|global add <vmname>|<uuid> --name <name> --hostpath <hostpath> [--transient] [--readonly] remove <vmname>|<uuid> --name <name> [--transient] <vmname>|<uuid> [--reset] [--pattern <pattern>] [--descriptions] list [*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]] (comma-separated) setup [--period <seconds>] [--samples <count>] [--list] [*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]] query [*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]] collect [--period <seconds>] [--samples <count>] [--list] [--detach] [*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]] add|modify --netname <network_name> | [--ip <ip_address> --netmask <network_mask> --lowerip <lower_ip> --upperip <upper_ip>] [--enable | --disable] remove --netname <network_name> |

VBoxManage usbfilter

VBoxManage sharedfolder

VBoxManage sharedfolder

VBoxManage vmstatistics

VBoxManage metrics

VBoxManage metrics

VBoxManage metrics VBoxManage metrics

VBoxManage dhcpserver

VBoxManage dhcpserver

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8 VBoxManage Each time VBoxManage is invoked, only one command can be executed. However, a command might support several subcommands which then can be invoked in one single call. The following sections provide detailed reference information on the different commands.

8.3 VBoxManage list
The list command gives relevant information about your system and information about VirtualBox’s current settings. The following subcommands are available with VBoxManage list: • vms lists all virtual machines currently registered with VirtualBox. By default this displays a compact list with each VM’s name and UUID; if you also specify --long or -l, this will be a detailed list as with the showvminfo command (see below). • runningvms lists all currently running virtual machines by their unique identiﬁers (UUIDs) in the same format as with vms. • hdds, dvds and floppies all give you information about virtual disk images currently registered in VirtualBox, including all their settings, the unique identiﬁers (UUIDs) associated with them by VirtualBox and all ﬁles associated with them. • ostypes lists all guest operating systems presently known to VirtualBox, along with the identiﬁers used to refer to them with the modifyvm command. • hostdvds, hostfloppies and hostifs, respectively, list DVD, ﬂoppy and host networking interfaces on the host, along with the name used to access them from within VirtualBox. • hostusb supplies information about USB devices attached to the host, notably information useful for constructing USB ﬁlters and whether they are currently in use by the host. • usbfilters lists all global USB ﬁlters registered with VirtualBox – that is, ﬁlters for devices which are accessible to all virtual machines – and displays the ﬁlter parameters. • systemproperties displays some global VirtualBox settings, such as minimum and maximum guest RAM and virtual hard disk size, folder settings and the current authentication library in use. • hddbackends lists all known hdd backends of VirtualBox. Beside the name of the backend itself, descriptions about the capabilities, conﬁguration and other useful informations are displayed.

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8.4 VBoxManage showvminfo
The showvminfo command shows information about a particular virtual machine. This is the same information as VBoxManage list vms --long would show for all virtual machines. You will get information similar to the following:
$ VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows XP" VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.0 (C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Name: Windows XP Guest OS: Other/Unknown UUID: 1bf3464d-57c6-4d49-92a9-a5cc3816b7e7 Config file: /home/username/.VirtualBox/Machines/Windows XP/Windows XP.xml Memory size: 512MB VRAM size: 12MB Number of CPUs: 2 Synthetic Cpu: off Boot menu mode: message and menu Boot Device (1): DVD Boot Device (2): HardDisk Boot Device (3): Not Assigned Boot Device (4): Not Assigned ACPI: on IOAPIC: on PAE: on Time offset: 0 ms Hardw. virt.ext: on Hardw. virt.ext exclusive: on Nested Paging: on VT-x VPID: off State: powered off (since 2009-10-20T14:52:19.000000000) Monitor count: 1 3D Acceleration: off 2D Video Acceleration: off Teleporter Enabled: off Teleporter Port: 0 Teleporter Address: Teleporter Password: Storage Controller (0): IDE Controller Storage Controller Type (0): PIIX4 Storage Controller (1): Floppy Controller 1 Storage Controller Type (1): I82078 IDE Controller (0, 0): /home/user/windows.vdi (UUID: 46f6e53a-4557-460a-9b95-68b0f17d744b) IDE Controller (0, 1): /home/user/openbsd-cd46.iso (UUID: 4335e162-59d3-4512-91d5-b63e94eebe0b) Floppy Controller 1 (0, 0): /home/user/floppy.img (UUID: 62ac6ccb-df36-42f2-972e-22f836368137) NIC 1: disabled NIC 2: disabled NIC 3: disabled NIC 4: disabled NIC 5: disabled NIC 6: disabled NIC 7: disabled

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NIC 8: UART 1: UART 2: Audio: Clipboard Mode: VRDP: USB: disabled disabled disabled disabled (Driver: Unknown) Bidirectional disabled disabled

USB Device Filters: <none> Shared folders: <none> Statistics update: disabled

8.5 VBoxManage registervm / unregistervm
The registervm command allows you to import a virtual machine deﬁnition in an XML ﬁle into VirtualBox. There are some restrictions here: the machine must not conﬂict with one already registered in VirtualBox and it may not have any hard or removable disks attached. It is advisable to place the deﬁnition ﬁle in the machines folder before registering it. Note: When creating a new virtual machine with VBoxManage createvm (see below), you can directly specify the --register option to avoid having to register it separately. The unregistervm command unregisters a virtual machine. If --delete is also speciﬁed then the XML deﬁnition ﬁle will be deleted.

8.6 VBoxManage createvm
This command creates a new XML virtual machine deﬁnition ﬁle. The --name <name> parameter is required and must specify the name of the machine. Since this name is used by default as the ﬁle name of the settings ﬁle (with the extension .xml) and the machine folder (a subfolder of the .VirtualBox/Machines folder), it must conform to your host operating system’s requirements for ﬁle name speciﬁcations. If the VM is later renamed, the ﬁle and folder names will change automatically. However, if the --basefolder <path> and the --settingsfile <filename> options are used, the XML deﬁnition ﬁle will be given the name <filename> and the machine folder will be named <path>. In this case, the names of the ﬁle and the folder will not change if the virtual machine is renamed.

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8 VBoxManage By default, this command only creates the XML ﬁle without automatically registering the VM with your VirtualBox installation. To register the VM instantly, use the optional --register option, or run VBoxManage registervm separately afterwards.

8.7 VBoxManage modifyvm
This command changes the properties of a registered virtual machine. Most of the properties that this command makes available correspond to the VM settings that VirtualBox graphical user interface displays in each VM’s “Settings” dialog; these were described in chapter 3, Conﬁguring virtual machines, page 44. Some of the more advanced settings, however, are only available through the VBoxManage interface.

8.7.1 General settings
The following general settings are available through VBoxManage modifyvm: • --name <name>: This changes the VM’s name and possibly renames the internal virtual machine ﬁles, as described with VBoxManage createvm above. • --ostype <ostype>: This speciﬁes what guest operating system is supposed to run in the VM. To learn about the various identiﬁers that can be used here, use VBoxManage list ostypes. • --memory <memorysize>: This sets the amount of RAM, in MB, that the virtual machine should allocate for itself from the host. See the remarks in chapter 1.6, Creating your ﬁrst virtual machine, page 17 for more information. • --vram <vramsize>: This sets the amount of RAM that the virtual graphics card should have. See chapter 3.5, Display settings, page 51 for details. • --acpi on|off; --ioapic on|off: These two determine whether the VM should have ACPI and I/O APIC support, respectively; see chapter 3.4.1, “Motherboard” tab, page 47 for details. • --cpus <cpucount>: This sets the number of virtual CPUs for the virtual machine (see chapter 3.4.2, “Processor” tab, page 48). • --synthcpu on|off: This setting determines whether VirtualBox will expose a synthetic CPU to the guest to allow live migration between host systems that differ signiﬁcantly. • --pae on|off: This enables/disables PAE (see chapter 3.4.2, “Processor” tab, page 48). • --hwvirtex on|off|default: This enables or disables the use of hardware virtualization extensions (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) in the processor of your host system; see chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49.

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8 VBoxManage • --hwvirtexexcl on|off: This speciﬁes whether VirtualBox will make exclusive use of the hardware virtualization extensions (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) in the processor of your host system; see chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49. If you wish to simultaneously share these extensions with other hypervisors, then you must disable this setting. Doing so has negative performance implications. • --nestedpaging on|off: If hardware virtualization is enabled, this additional setting enables or disables the use of the nested paging feature in the processor of your host system; see chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49. • --vtxvpid on|off: If hardware virtualization is enabled, for Intel VT-x only, this additional setting enables or disables the use of the tagged TLB (VPID) feature in the processor of your host system; see chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49. • --accelerate3d on|off: This enables, if the Guest Additions are installed, whether hardware 3D acceleration should be available; see chapter 4.9, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9), page 72. • You can inﬂuence the BIOS logo that is displayed when a virtual machine starts up with a number of settings. Per default, a VirtualBox logo is displayed. With --bioslogofadein on|off and --bioslogofadeout on|off, you can determine whether the logo should fade in and out, respectively. With --bioslogodisplaytime <msec> you can set how long the logo should be visible, in milliseconds. With --bioslogoimagepath <imagepath> you can, if you are so inclined, replace the image that is shown, with your own logo. The image must be an uncompressed 256 color BMP ﬁle. • --biosbootmenu disabled|menuonly|messageandmenu: This speciﬁes whether the BIOS allows the user to select a temporary boot device. menuonly suppresses the message, but the user can still press F12 to select a temporary boot device. • --boot<1-4> none|floppy|dvd|disk|net: This speciﬁes the boot order for the virtual machine. There are four “slots”, which the VM will try to access from 1 to 4, and for each of which you can set a device that the VM should attempt to boot from. • --snapshotfolder default|<path>: This allows you to specify the folder in which snapshots will be kept for a virtual machine. • --firmware efi|bios: Speciﬁes which ﬁrmware is used to boot particular virtual machine: EFI or BIOS. Use EFI only if your fully understand what you’re doing.

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8.7.2 Networking settings
The following networking settings are available through VBoxManage modifyvm: • --nic<1-N> none|null|nat|bridged|intnet|hostonly: With this, you can set, for each of the VM’s virtual network cards, what type of networking should be available. They can be not present (none), not connected to the host (null), use network address translation (nat), bridged networking (bridged) or communicate with other virtual machines using internal networking (intnet) or host-only networking (hostonly). These options correspond to the modes which are described in detail in chapter 6.2, Introduction to networking modes, page 90. • --nictype<1-N> Am79C970A|Am79C973|82540EM|82543GC|82545EM|virtio: This allows you, for each of the VM’s virtual network cards, to specify which networking hardware VirtualBox presents to the guest; see chapter 6.1, Virtual networking hardware, page 89. • --cableconnected<1-N> on|off: This allows you to temporarily disconnect a virtual network interface, as if a network cable had been pulled from a real network card. This might be useful for resetting certain software components in the VM. • With the “nictrace” options, you can optionally trace network trafﬁc by dumping it to a ﬁle, for debugging purposes. With --nictrace<1-N> on|off, you can enable network tracing for a particular virtual network card. If enabled, you must specify with --nictracefile<1-N> <filename> what ﬁle the trace should be logged to. • --bridgeadapter<1-N> none|<devicename>: If bridged networking has been enabled for a virtual network card (see the --nic option above; otherwise this setting has no effect), use this option to specify which host interface the given virtual network interface will use. For details, please see chapter 6.4, Bridged networking, page 93. • --hostonlyadapter<1-N> none|<devicename>: If host-only networking has been enabled for a virtual network card (see the –nic option above; otherwise this setting has no effect), use this option to specify which host-only networking interface the given virtual network interface will use. For details, please see chapter 6.6, Host-only networking, page 96. • --intnet<1-N> network: If internal networking has been enabled for a virtual network card (see the --nic option above; otherwise this setting has no effect), use this option to specify the name of the internal network (see chapter 6.5, Internal networking, page 95).

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8 VBoxManage • --macaddress<1-N> auto|<mac>: With this option you can set the MAC address of the virtual network card. Normally, each virtual network card is assigned a random address by VirtualBox at VM creation.

8.7.3 Serial port, audio, clipboard, VRDP and USB settings
The following other hardware settings are available through VBoxManage modifyvm: • --uart<1-N> off|<I/O base> <IRQ>: With this option you can conﬁgure virtual serial ports for the VM; see chapter 3.9, Serial ports, page 55 for an introduction. • --uartmode<1-N> <arg>: This setting controls how VirtualBox connects a given virtual serial port (previously conﬁgured with the --uartX setting, see above) to the host on which the virtual machine is running. As described in detail in chapter 3.9, Serial ports, page 55, for each such port, you can specify <arg> as one of the following options: – disconnected: Even though the serial port is shown to the guest, it has no “other end” – like a real COM port without a cable. – server <pipename>: On a Windows host, this tells VirtualBox to create a named pipe on the host named <pipename> and connect the virtual serial device to it. Note that Windows requires that the name of a named pipe begin with \\.\pipe\. On a Linux host, instead of a named pipe, a local domain socket is used. – client <pipename>: This operates just like server ..., except that the pipe (or local domain socket) is not created by VirtualBox, but assumed to exist already. – <devicename>: If, instead of the above, the device name of a physical hardware serial port of the host is speciﬁed, the virtual serial port is connected to that hardware port. On a Windows host, the device name will be a COM port such as COM1; on a Linux host, the device name will look like /dev/ttyS0. This allows you to “wire” a real serial port to a virtual machine. • --audio none|null|oss: With this option, you can set whether the VM should have audio support. • --clipboard disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|bidirectional: With this setting, you can select whether the guest operating system’s clipboard should be shared with the host; see chapter 3.3, General settings, page 46. This requires that the Guest Additions be installed in the virtual machine. • --monitorcount <count>: This enables multi-monitor support for VRDP; see chapter 9.8, Multiple monitors for the guest, page 146.

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8 VBoxManage • --usb on|off: This option enables or disables the VM’s virtual USB controller; see chapter 3.10.1, USB settings, page 56 for details. • --usbehci on|off: This option enables or disables the VM’s virtual USB 2.0 controller; see chapter 3.10.1, USB settings, page 56 for details.

8.7.4 Remote machine settings
The following settings that affect remote machine behavior are available through VBoxManage modifyvm: • --vrdp on|off: With the VirtualBox graphical user interface, this enables or disables the built-in VRDP server. Note that if you are using VBoxHeadless (see chapter 7.1.2, VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server, page 99), VRDP output is always enabled. • --vrdpport default|<ports>: A port or a range of ports the VRDP server can bind to; “default” or “0” means port 3389, the standard port for RDP. You can specify a comma-separated list of ports or ranges of ports. Use a dash between two port numbers to specify a range. The VRDP server will bind to one of available ports from the speciﬁed list. Only one machine can use a given port at a time. For example, the option --vrdpport 5000,5010-5012 will tell the server to bind to one of following ports: 5000, 5010, 5011 or 5012. • --vrdpauthtype null|external|guest: This allows you to choose whether and how authorization will be performed; see chapter 7.1.5, RDP authentication, page 102 for details. • --vrdpmulticon on|off: This enables multiple VRDP connections to the same VRDP server; see chapter 7.1.7, VRDP multiple connections, page 104.

8.7.5 Teleporting settings
With the following commands for VBoxManage modifyvm you can conﬁgure a machine to be a target for teleporting. See chapter 7.2, Teleporting, page 104 for an introduction. • --teleporter on|off: With this setting you turn on or off whether a machine waits for a teleporting request to come in on the network when it is started. If “on”, when the machine is started, it does not boot the virtual machine as it would normally; instead, it then waits for a teleporting request to come in on the port and address listed with the next two parameters. • --teleporterport <port>, --teleporteraddress <address>: these must be used with –teleporter and tell the virtual machine on which port and address it should listen for a teleporting request from another virtual machine. <port> can be any free TCP/IP port number (e.g. 6000); <address> can be any IP

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8 VBoxManage address or hostname and speciﬁes the TCP/IP socket to bind to. The default is “0.0.0.0”, which means any address. • –teleporterpassword <password>: if this optional argument is given, then the teleporting request will only succeed if the source machine speciﬁes the same password as the one given with this command.

8.8 VBoxManage import
This command imports a virtual appliance in OVF format by copying the virtual disk images and creating virtual machines in VirtualBox. See chapter 1.11, Importing and exporting virtual machines, page 29 for an introduction to appliances. The import subcommand takes at least the path name of an OVF ﬁle as input and expects the disk images, if needed, in the same directory as the OVF ﬁle. A lot of additional command-line options are supported to control in detail what is being imported and modify the import paramters, but the details depend on the content of the OVF ﬁle. It is therefore recommended to ﬁrst run the import subcommand with the --dry-run or -n option. This will then print a description of the appliance’s contents to the screen how it would be imported into VirtualBox, together with the optional command-line options to inﬂuence the import behavior. As an example, here is the screen output with a sample appliance containing a Windows XP guest:
VBoxManage import WindowsXp.ovf --dry-run Interpreting WindowsXp.ovf... OK. Virtual system 0: 0: Suggested OS type: "WindowsXP" (change with "--vsys 0 --ostype <type>"; use "list ostypes" to list all) 1: Suggested VM name "Windows XP Professional_1" (change with "--vsys 0 --vmname <name>") 3: Number of CPUs (ignored): 1 4: Guest memory: 956 MB (change with "--vsys 0 --memory <MB>") 5: Sound card (appliance expects "ensoniq1371", can change on import) (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 5 --ignore") 6: USB controller (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 6 --ignore") 7: Network adapter: orig bridged, config 2, extra type=bridged 8: Floppy (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 8 --ignore") 9: SCSI controller, type BusLogic (change with "--vsys 0 --unit 9 --scsitype {BusLogic|LsiLogic}"; disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 9 --ignore") 10: IDE controller, type PIIX4 (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 10 --ignore") 11: Hard disk image: source image=WindowsXp.vmdk, target path=/home/user/disks/WindowsXp.vmdk, controller=9;channel=0 (change controller with "--vsys 0 --unit 11 --controller <id>"; disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 11 --ignore")

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8 VBoxManage As you can see, the individual conﬁguration items are numbered, and depending on their type support different command-line options. The import subcommand can be directed to ignore many such items with a --vsys X --unit Y --ignore option, where X is the number of the virtual system (zero unless there are several virtual system descriptions in the appliance) and Y the item number, as printed on the screen. In the above example, Item #1 speciﬁes the name of the target machine in VirtualBox. Items #9 and #10 specify hard disk controllers, respectively. Item #11 describes a hard disk image; in this case, the additional --controller option indicates which item the disk image should be connected to, with the default coming from the OVF ﬁle. You can combine several items for the same virtual system behind the same --vsys option. For example, to import a machine as described in the OVF, but without the sound card and without the USB controller, and with the disk image connected to the IDE controller instead of the SCSI controller, use this:
VBoxManage import WindowsXp.ovf --vsys 0 --unit 5 --ignore --unit 6 --ignore --unit 11 --controller 10

8.9 VBoxManage export
This command exports one or more virtual machines from VirtualBox into a virtual appliance in OVF format, including copying their virtual disk images to compressed VMDK. See chapter 1.11, Importing and exporting virtual machines, page 29 for an introduction to appliances. The export command is simple to use: list the machine (or the machines) that you would like to export to the same OVF ﬁle and specify the target OVF ﬁle after an additional --output or -o option. Note that the directory of the target OVF ﬁle will also receive the exported disk images in the compressed VMDK format (regardless of the original format) and should have enough disk space left for them. Beside a simple export of a given virtual machine, you can append several product information to the appliance ﬁle. Use --product, --producturl, --vendor, --vendorurl and --version to specify this additional information. For legal reasons you may add a license text or the content of a license ﬁle by using the --eula and --eulafile option respectively. As with OVF import, you must use the --vsys X option to direct the previously mentioned options to the correct virtual machine. For virtualization products which aren’t fully compatible with the OVF standard 1.0 you can enable a OVF 0.9 legacy mode with the --legacy09 option.

8.10 VBoxManage startvm
This command starts a virtual machine that is currently in the “Powered off” or “Saved” states.

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8 VBoxManage Note: This is provided for backwards compatibility only. We recommend to start virtual machines directly by running the respective front-end, as you might otherwise miss important error and state information that VirtualBox may display on the console. This is especially important for front-ends other than VirtualBox, our graphical user interface, because those cannot display error messages in a popup window. See chapter 7.1.2, VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server, page 99 for more information. The optional --type speciﬁer determines whether the machine will be started in a window (GUI mode, which is the default) or whether the output should go through VBoxHeadless, with VRDP enabled or not; see chapter 7.1.2, VBoxHeadless, the VRDPonly server, page 99 for more information. The list of types is subject to change, and it’s not guaranteed that all types are accepted by any product variant. The following values are allowed: gui Starts a VM showing a GUI window. This is the default. vrdp Starts a VM showing a GUI window, with its graphics card output accessible by an RDP client. headless Starts a VM without a window for remote RDP display only.

8.11 VBoxManage controlvm
The controlvm subcommand allows you to change the state of a virtual machine that is currently running. The following can be speciﬁed: • VBoxManage controlvm <vm> pause temporarily puts a virtual machine on hold, without changing its state for good. The VM window will be painted in gray to indicate that the VM is currently paused. (This is equivalent to selecting the “Pause” item in the “Machine” menu of the GUI.) • Use VBoxManage controlvm <vm> resume to undo a previous pause command. (This is equivalent to selecting the “Resume” item in the “Machine” menu of the GUI.) • VBoxManage controlvm <vm> reset has the same effect on a virtual machine as pressing the “Reset” button on a real computer: a cold reboot of the virtual machine, which will restart and boot the guest operating system again immediately. The state of the VM is not saved beforehand, and data may be lost. (This is equivalent to selecting the “Reset” item in the “Machine” menu of the GUI.) • VBoxManage controlvm <vm> poweroff has the same effect on a virtual machine as pulling the power cable on a real computer. Again, the state of the VM is not saved beforehand, and data may be lost. (This is equivalent to selecting the

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8 VBoxManage “Close” item in the “Machine” menu of the GUI or pressing the window’s close button, and then selecting “Power off the machine” in the dialog.) After this, the VM’s state will be “Powered off”. From there, it can be started again; see chapter 8.10, VBoxManage startvm, page 122. • VBoxManage controlvm <vm> savestate will save the current state of the VM to disk and then stop the VM. (This is equivalent to selecting the “Close” item in the “Machine” menu of the GUI or pressing the window’s close button, and then selecting “Save the machine state” in the dialog.) After this, the VM’s state will be “Saved”. From there, it can be started again; see chapter 8.10, VBoxManage startvm, page 122. • VBoxManage controlvm <vm> teleport --hostname <name> --port <port> [--password <password>] makes the machine the source of a teleporting operation and initiates a teleport to the given target. See chapter 7.2, Teleporting, page 104 for an introduction. If the optional password is speciﬁed, it must match the password that was given to the modifyvm command for the target machine; see chapter 8.7.5, Teleporting settings, page 120 for details. A few extra options are available with controlvm that do not directly affect the VM’s running state: • The setlinkstate<1-N> operation connects or disconnects virtual network cables from their network interfaces. • nic<1-N> null|nat|bridged|intnet|hostonly: With this, you can set, for each of the VM’s virtual network cards, what type of networking should be available. They can be not connected to the host (null), use network address translation (nat), bridged networking (bridged) or communicate with other virtual machines using internal networking (intnet) or host-only networking (hostonly). These options correspond to the modes which are described in detail in chapter 6.2, Introduction to networking modes, page 90. • usbattach and usbdettach make host USB devices visible to the virtual machine on the ﬂy, without the need for creating ﬁlters ﬁrst. The USB devices can be speciﬁed by UUID (unique identiﬁer) or by address on the host system. You can use VBoxManage list usbhost to locate this information. • vrdp on|off lets you enable or disable the built-in VRDP server. • vrdpport default|<ports> changes the port or a range of ports that the VRDP server can bind to; “default” or “0” means port 3389, the standard port for RDP. For details, see the description for the --vrdpport option in chapter 8.7.3, Serial port, audio, clipboard, VRDP and USB settings, page 119. • setvideomodehint requests that the guest system change to a particular video mode. This requires that the guest additions be installed, and will not work for all guest systems.

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8 VBoxManage • The setcredentials operation is used for remote logons in Windows guests. For details, please refer to chapter 9.2, Automated Windows guest logons, page 140.

8.12 VBoxManage discardstate
This command discards the saved state of a virtual machine which is not currently running, which will cause its operating system to restart next time you start it. This is the equivalent of pulling out the power cable on a physical machine, and should be avoided if possible.

8.13 VBoxManage snapshot
This command is used to control snapshots from the command line. A snapshot consists of a complete copy of the virtual machine settings, copied at the time when the snapshot was taken, and optionally a virtual machine saved state ﬁle if the snapshot was taken while the machine was running. After a snapshot has been taken, VirtualBox creates differencing hard disk for each normal hard disk associated with the machine so that when a snapshot is restored, the contents of the virtual machine’s virtual hard disks can be quickly reset by simply dropping the pre-existing differencing ﬁles. The take operation takes a snapshot of the current state of the virtual machine. You must supply a name for the snapshot and can optionally supply a description. The new snapshot is inserted into the snapshots tree as a child of the current snapshot and then becomes the new current snapshot. The delete operation deletes a snapshot (speciﬁed by name or by UUID). This can take a while to ﬁnish since the differencing images associated with the snapshot might need to be merged with their child differencing images. The restore operation will restore the given snapshot (speciﬁed by name or by UUID) by resetting the virtual machine’s settings and current state to that of the snapshot. The previous current state of the machine will be lost. After this, the given snapshot becomes the new “current” snapshot so that subsequent snapshots are inserted under the snapshot from which was restored. With the edit operation, you can change the name or description of an existing snapshot. With the showvminfo operation, you can view the virtual machine settings that were stored with an existing snapshot.

8.14 VBoxManage openmedium / closemedium
These commands register or unregister hard disk, DVD or ﬂoppy images in VirtualBox. This is the command-line equivalent of the Virtual Media Manager; see chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80 for more information.

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8 VBoxManage Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “registerimage” and “unregisterimage” commands are also supported and mapped internally to the “openmedium” and “closemedium” commands, respectively. When you register an images you can optionally specify a new UUID for the image. For hard disk images the parent UUID can be changed as well. When you unregister an image, you can optionally specify that the image should be deleted. You will get appropriate diagnostics that the deletion failed, however the image will become unregistered in any case.

8.15 VBoxManage storagectl / storageattach
These commands allow to attach new storage controllers to the VM, modify or remove the existing ones and also allows the user to change the hard disk, DVD or ﬂoppy images attached to them. The list of the storage controllers attached to the VM can be found by the command:
VBoxManage showvminfo <vmname>

See also chapter 8.4, VBoxManage showvminfo, page 114.

8.15.1 VBoxManage storagectl
This command attaches/modiﬁes/removes a storage controller. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage storagectl <uuid|vmname> --name <name> [--add <ide/sata/scsi/floppy>] [--controller <LsiLogic/BusLogic/IntelAhci/PIIX3/ PIIX4/ICH6/I8207>] [--sataideemulation<1-4> <1-30>] [--sataportcount <1-30>] [--remove]

where the parameters mean: uuid|vmname The VM UUID or VM Name. Mandatory. name Name of the storage controller. Mandatory. add Deﬁne the type of the system bus to which the storage controller must be connected. controller Allows to choose the type of chipset being emulated for the given storage controller.

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8 VBoxManage sataideemulation This speciﬁes which SATA ports should operate in IDE emulation mode. As explained in chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76, by default, this is the case for SATA ports 1-4; with this command, you can map four IDE channels to any of the 30 supported SATA ports. sataportcount This determines how many ports the SATA controller should support. remove Removes the storage controller from the VM conﬁg.

8.15.2 VBoxManage storageattach
This command attaches/modiﬁes/removes a storage medium connected to the storage controller named by –storagectl. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage storageattach <uuid|vmname> --storagectl <name> --port <number> --device <number> [--type <dvddrive|hdd|fdd> --medium <none|emptydrive|uuid|filename|host:<drive>>] [--passthrough <on|off>] [--forceunmount]

where the parameters mean: uuid|vmname The VM UUID or VM Name. Mandatory. storagectl Name of the storage controller. Mandatory. port Port number to which the medium has to be attached/detached/modiﬁed. Mandatory. device Device Number to which the medium has to be attached/detached/modiﬁed. Mandatory. type Deﬁne the type of the drive to which the medium is being attached/detached/modiﬁed. medium Allows to specify if the DVD/Floppy drive or Harddisk is to be completly detached (none) or just an empty DVD/Floppy drive needs to be attached (emptydrive). If uuid, ﬁlename or host:<drive> is speciﬁed then it is attached to the storage controller at the speciﬁed port and device number. passthrough With this, you can enable DVD writing support (currently experimental; see chapter 5.8, Writing CDs and DVDs using the host drive, page 87). forceunmount If this option is speciﬁed then you can unmount the DVD/CD/Floppy or mount a new DVD/CD/Floppy even if the previous one is locked down by the guest for reading.

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8 VBoxManage Note: The option “–medium none” doesn’t work when the VM is running because you can’t remove DVD/Floppy Drives or Harddisks when the VM is running.

8.16 VBoxManage showhdinfo
This command shows information about a virtual hard disk image, notably its size, its size on disk, its type and the VM it is in use by. Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “showvdiinfo” command is also supported and mapped internally to the “showhdinfo” command.

8.17 VBoxManage createhd
This command creates a new virtual hard disk image. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage createhd --filename <filename> --size <megabytes> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] (default: VDI) [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] [--type normal|writethrough] (default: normal) [--comment <comment>] [--remember]

where the parameters mean: ﬁlename Allows to choose a ﬁle name. Mandatory. size Allows to deﬁne the image capacity, in 1 MiB units. Mandatory. format Allows to choose a ﬁle format for the output ﬁle different from the ﬁle format of the input ﬁle. variant Allows to choose a ﬁle format variant for the output ﬁle. It is a commaseparated list of variant ﬂags. Not all combinations are supported, and specifying inconsistent ﬂags will result in an error message. type Only honored if –remember is also speciﬁed. Deﬁnes what kind of hard disk type this image should be. comment Allows to attach a comment to the image. remember Keep the destination image registered after it was successfully written.

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8 VBoxManage Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “createvdi” command is also supported and mapped internally to the “createhd” command.

8.18 VBoxManage modifyhd
With the modifyhd command, you can change the type of an existing image between the normal, immutable and write-through modes; see chapter 5.4, Special image write modes, page 81 for details. Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “modifyvdi” command is also supported and mapped internally to the “modifyhd” command. For immutable (differencing) hard disks only, the modifyhd autoreset on|off command determines whether the disk is automatically reset on every VM startup (again, see chapter 5.4, Special image write modes, page 81). The default is “on”. In addition, the modifyhd --compact command can be used to compact disk images, i.e. remove blocks that only contains zeroes. For this operation to be effective, it is required to zero out free space in the guest system using a suitable software tool. Microsoft provides the sdelete tool for Windows guests. Execute sdelete -c in the guest to zero the free disk space before compressing the virtual disk image. Compaction works both for base images and for diff images created as part of a snapshot.

8.19 VBoxManage clonehd
This command duplicates a registered virtual hard disk image to a new image ﬁle with a new unique identiﬁer (UUID). The new image can be transferred to another host system or imported into VirtualBox again using the Virtual Media Manager; see chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80 and chapter 5.6, Cloning disk images, page 85. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage clonehd <uuid>|<filename> <outputfile> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD|RAW|<other>] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] [--type normal|writethrough|immutable] [--remember]

where the parameters mean: format Allow to choose a ﬁle format for the output ﬁle different from the ﬁle format of the input ﬁle.

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8 VBoxManage variant Allow to choose a ﬁle format variant for the output ﬁle. It is a commaseparated list of variant ﬂags. Not all combinations are supported, and specifying inconsistent ﬂags will result in an error message. type Only honored if –remember is also speciﬁed. Deﬁnes what kind of hard disk type this image should be. remember Keep the destination image registered after it was successfully written.

Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “clonevdi” command is also supported and mapped internally to the “clonehd” command.

8.20 VBoxManage convertfromraw
This command converts a raw disk image to a VirtualBox Disk Image (VDI) ﬁle. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage convertfromraw <filename> <outputfile> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] stdin <outputfile> <bytes> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]

VBoxManage convertfromraw

where the parameters mean: format Select the disk image format to create. Default is VDI. variant Allow to choose a ﬁle format variant for the output ﬁle. It is a commaseparated list of variant ﬂags. Not all combinations are supported, and specifying inconsistent ﬂags will result in an error message. The second form forces VBoxManage to read the content for the disk image from standard input (useful for using that command in a pipe). Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “convertdd” command is also supported and mapped internally to the “convertfromraw” command.

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8.21 VBoxManage addiscsidisk
The addiscsidisk command attaches an iSCSI network storage unit to VirtualBox. The iSCSI target can then be made available to and used by a virtual machine as though it were a standard write-through virtual disk image. This command has the following syntax:
VBoxManage addiscsidisk --server <name>|<ip> --target <target> [--port <port>] [--lun <lun>] [--username <username>] [--password <password>] [--type normal|writethrough|immutable] [--comment <comment>] [--intnet]

where the parameters mean: server The host name or IP address of the iSCSI target. target Target name string. This is determined by the iSCSI target and used to identify the storage resource. port TCP/IP port number of the iSCSI service on the target (optional). lun Logical Unit Number of the target resource (optional). Often, this value is zero. username, password Username and password for target authentication, if required (optional).

Note: Currently, username and password are stored without encryption (i.e. in cleartext) in the machine conﬁguration ﬁle.

type Deﬁnes what kind of hard disk type this image should be. comment Any description that you want to have stored with this item (optional; e.g. “Big storage server downstairs”). This is stored internally only and not needed for operation. intnet Connect to the iSCSI target via Internal Networking. This needs further conﬁguration which is described in chapter 5.9.1, Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking, page 88.

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8.22 VBoxManage getextradata/setextradata
These commands let you attach and retrieve string data to a virtual machine or to a VirtualBox conﬁguration (by specifying global instead of a virtual machine name). You must specify a key (as a text string) to associate the data with, which you can later use to retrieve it. For example:
VBoxManage setextradata Fedora5 installdate 2006.01.01 VBoxManage setextradata SUSE10 installdate 2006.02.02

would associate the string “2006.01.01” with the key installdate for the virtual machine Fedora5, and “2006.02.02” on the machine SUSE10. You could retrieve the information as follows:
VBoxManage getextradata Fedora5 installdate

which would return
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.0 (C) 2005-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Value: 2006.01.01

8.23 VBoxManage setproperty
This command is used to change global settings which affect the entire VirtualBox installation. Some of these correspond to the settings in the “Global settings” dialog in the graphical user interface. The following properties are available: hdfolder This speciﬁes the default folder that is used to keep disk image ﬁles (.vdi, .vmdk, .vhd). machinefolder This speciﬁes the default folder in which virtual machine deﬁnitions are kept; see chapter 9.1, VirtualBox conﬁguration data, page 138 for details. vrdpauthlibrary This speciﬁes which library to use when “external” VRDP authentication has been selected for a particular virtual machine; see chapter 7.1.5, RDP authentication, page 102 for details. websrvauthlibrary This speciﬁes which library the web service uses to authenticate users. For details about the VirtualBox web service, please refer to the separate VirtualBox SDK reference (see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 157). hwvirtexenabled This selects whether or not hardware virtualization support is enabled by default.

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8.24 VBoxManage usbﬁlter add/modify/remove
The usbfilter commands are used for working with USB ﬁlters in virtual machines, or global ﬁlters which affect the whole VirtualBox setup. Global ﬁlters are applied before machine-speciﬁc ﬁlters, and may be used to prevent devices from being captured by any virtual machine. Global ﬁlters are always applied in a particular order, and only the ﬁrst ﬁlter which ﬁts a device is applied. So for example, if the ﬁrst global ﬁlter says to hold (make available) a particular Kingston memory stick device and the second to ignore all Kingston devices, that memory stick will be available to any machine with an appropriate ﬁlter, but no other Kingston device will. When creating a USB ﬁlter using usbfilter add, you must supply three or four mandatory parameters. The index speciﬁes the position in the list at which the ﬁlter should be placed. If there is already a ﬁlter at that position, then it and the following ones will be shifted back one place. Otherwise the new ﬁlter will be added onto the end of the list. The target parameter selects the virtual machine that the ﬁlter should be attached to or use “global” to apply it to all virtual machines. name is a name for the new ﬁlter and for global ﬁlters, action says whether to allow machines access to devices that ﬁt the ﬁlter description (“hold”) or not to give them access (“ignore”). In addition, you should specify parameters to ﬁlter by. You can ﬁnd the parameters for devices attached to your system using VBoxManage list usbhost. Finally, you can specify whether the ﬁlter should be active, and for local ﬁlters, whether they are for local devices, remote (over an RDP connection) or either. When you modify a USB ﬁlter using usbfilter modify, you must specify the ﬁlter by index (see the output of VBoxManage list usbfilters to ﬁnd global ﬁlter indexes and that of VBoxManage showvminfo to ﬁnd indexes for individual machines) and by target, which is either a virtual machine or “global”. The properties which can be changed are the same as for usbfilter add. To remove a ﬁlter, use usbfilter remove and specify the index and the target.

8.25 VBoxManage sharedfolder add/remove
This command allows you to share folders on the host computer with guest operating systems. For this, the guest systems must have a version of the VirtualBox guest additions installed which supports this functionality. Shared folders are described in detail in chapter 4.7, Folder sharing, page 68.

8.26 VBoxManage metrics
This command supports monitoring the usage of system resources. Resources are represented by various metrics associated with the host system or a particular VM. For example, the host system has a CPU/Load/User metric that shows the percentage of time CPUs spend executing in user mode over a speciﬁc sampling period.

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8 VBoxManage Metric data is collected and retained internally; it may be retrieved at any time with the VBoxManage metrics query subcommand. The data is available as long as the background VBoxSVC process is alive. That process terminates shortly after all VMs and frontends have been closed. By default no metrics are collected at all. Metrics collection does not start until VBoxManage metrics setup is invoked with a proper sampling interval and the number of metrics to be retained. The interval is measured in seconds. For example, to enable collecting the host processor and memory usage metrics every second and keeping the 5 most current samples, the following command can be used:
VBoxManage metrics setup --period 1 --samples 5 host CPU/Load,RAM/Usage

Specifying 0 as either the interval or as the number of retained samples disables metric collection again. Note that the VBoxManage metrics setup subcommand discards all samples that may have been previously collected for the speciﬁed set of objects and metrics. The host and VMs have different sets of associated metrics. Available metrics can be listed with VBoxManage metrics list subcommand. A complete metric name may include an aggregate function. The name has the following form: Category/Metric[/SubMetric][:aggregate]. For example, RAM/Usage/Free:min stands for the minimum amount of available memory over all retained data if applied to the host object. Subcommands may apply to all objects and metrics or can be limited to one object or/and a list of metrics. If no objects or metrics are given in the parameters, the subcommands will apply to all available metrics of all objects. You may use an asterisk (“*“) to explicitly specify that the command should be applied to all objects or metrics. Use “host” as the object name to limit the scope of the command to host-related metrics. To limit the scope to a subset of metrics, use a metric list with names separated by commas. For example, to query metric data on the CPU time spent in user and kernel modes by the virtual machine named “test”, you can use the following command:
VBoxManage query test CPU/Load/User,CPU/Load/Kernel

The following list summarizes the available subcommands: list This subcommand shows the parameters of the currently existing metrics. Note that VM-speciﬁc metrics are only available when a particular VM is running. setup This subcommand sets the interval between taking two samples of metric data and the number of samples retained internally. The retained data is available for displaying with the query subcommand. The -list option shows which metrics have been modiﬁed as the result of the command execution. query This subcommand retrieves and displays the currently retained metric data.

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8 VBoxManage Note: The query subcommand does not remove or “ﬂush” retained data. If you query often enough you will see how old samples are gradually being “phased out” by new samples.

collect This subcommand sets the interval between taking two samples of metric data and the number of samples retained internally. The collected data is displayed periodically until Ctrl-C is pressed unless the -detach option is speciﬁed. With the -detach option, this subcommand operates the same way as setup does. The -list option shows which metrics match the speciﬁed ﬁlter.

8.27 VBoxManage guestproperty
The “guestproperty” commands allow you to get or set properties of a running virtual machine. Please see chapter 4.11, Guest properties, page 73 for an introduction. As explained there, guest properties are arbitrary key/value string pairs which can be written to and read from by either the guest or the host, so they can be used as a low-volume communication channel for strings, provided that a guest is running and has the Guest Additions installed. In addition, a number of values whose keys begin with “/VirtualBox/“ are automatically set and maintained by the Guest Additions. The following subcommands are available (where <vm>, in each case, can either be a VM name or a VM UUID, as with the other VBoxManage commands): • enumerate <vm> [-patterns <pattern>]: This lists all the guest properties that are available for the given VM, including the value. This list will be very limited if the guest’s service process cannot be contacted, e.g. because the VM is not running or the Guest Additions are not installed. If --patterns <pattern> is speciﬁed, it acts as a ﬁlter to only list properties that match the given pattern. The pattern can contain the following wildcard characters: – * (asterisk): represents any number of characters; for example, “/VirtualBox*“ would match all properties beginning with “/VirtualBox”. – ? (question mark): represents a single arbitrary character; for example, “fo?“ would match both “foo” and “for”. – | (pipe symbol): can be used to specify multiple alternative patterns; for example, “s*|t*“ would match anything starting with either “s” or “t”. • get <vm>: This retrieves the value of a single property only. If the property cannot be found (e.g. because the guest is not running), this will print “No value set¡‘. • set <vm> <property> [<value> [-flags <flags>]]: This allows you to set a guest property by specifying the key and value. If <value> is omitted, the

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8 VBoxManage property is deleted. With --flags you can optionally specify additional behavior (you can combine several by separating them with commas): – TRANSIENT: the value will not be stored with the VM data when the VM exits; – RDONLYGUEST: the value can only be changed by the host, but the guest can only read it; – RDONLYHOST: reversely, the value can only be changed by the guest, but the host can only read it; – READONLY: a combination of the two, the value cannot be changed at all. • wait <vm> <pattern> --timeout <timeout>: This waits for a particular value described by “pattern” to change or to be deleted or created. The pattern rules are the same as for the “enumerate” subcommand above.

8.28 VBoxManage dhcpserver
The “dhcpserver” commands allow you to control the DHCP server that is built into VirtualBox. You may ﬁnd this useful when using internal or host-only networking. (Theoretically, you can enable it for a bridged network as well, but that will likely cause conﬂicts with other DHCP servers in your physical network.) Use the following command line options: • If you use internal networking for a virtual network adapter of a virtual machine, use VBoxManage dhcpserver add --netname <network_name>, where <network_name> is the same network name you used with VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --intnet<X> <network_name>. • If you use host-only networking for a virtual network adapter of a virtual machine, use VBoxManage dhcpserver add --ifname <hostonly_if_name> instead, where <hostonly_if_name> is the same host-only interface name you used with VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --hostonlyadapter<X> <hostonly_if_name>. Alternatively, you can also use the –netname option as with internal networks if you know the host-only network’s name; you can see the names with VBoxManage list hostonlyifs (see chapter 8.3, VBoxManage list, page 113 above). The following additional parameters are required when ﬁrst adding a DHCP server: • With --ip, specify the IP address of the DHCP server itself. • With --netmask, specify the netmask of the network.

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8 VBoxManage • With --lowerip and --upperip, you can specify the lowest and highest IP address, respectively, that the DHCP server will hand out to clients. Finally, you must specify --enable or the the DHCP server will be created in the disabled state, doing nothing. After this, VirtualBox will automatically start the DHCP server for given internal or host-only network as soon as the ﬁrst virtual machine which uses that network is started. Reversely, use VBoxManage dhcpserver remove with the given --netname <network_name> or --ifname <hostonly_if_name> to remove the DHCP server again for the given internal or host-only network. To modify the settings of a DHCP server created earlier with VBoxManage dhcpserver add, you can use VBoxManage dhcpserver modify for a given network or host-only interface name.

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9.1 VirtualBox conﬁguration data
For each system user, VirtualBox stores conﬁguration data in the user’s home directory, as per the conventions of the host operating system: • On Windows, this is %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\.VirtualBox; typically something like C:\Documents and Settings\Username\.VirtualBox. • On Mac OS X, this is $HOME/Library/VirtualBox. • On Unix-like systems (Linux, Solaris), this is $HOME/.VirtualBox. VirtualBox creates this conﬁguration directory automatically, if necessary. Optionally, you can supply an alternate conﬁguration directory by setting the VBOX_USER_HOME environment variable. You can globally change some of the locations where VirtualBox keeps extra conﬁguration and data by selecting “Global settings” from the “File” menu in the VirtualBox main window. Then, in the window that pops up, click on the “General” tab. VirtualBox stores all its global and machine-speciﬁc conﬁguration data in XML documents. We intentionally do not document the speciﬁcations of these ﬁles, as we must reserve the right to modify them in the future. We therefore strongly suggest that you do not edit these ﬁles manually. VirtualBox provides complete access to its conﬁguration data through its the VBoxManage command line tool (see chapter 8, VBoxManage, page 106) and its API (see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 157). The XML ﬁles are versioned. When a new settings ﬁle is created (e.g. because a new virtual machine is created), VirtualBox automatically uses the settings format of the current VirtualBox version. These ﬁles may not be readable if you downgrade to an earlier version of VirtualBox. However, when VirtualBox encounters a settings ﬁle from an earlier version (e.g. after upgrading VirtualBox), it attempts to preserve the settings format as much as possible. It will only silently upgrade the settings format if the current settings cannot be expressed in the old format, for example because you enabled a feature that was not present in an earlier version of VirtualBox.1 In such
1 As

an example, before VirtualBox 3.1, it was only possible to enable or disable a single DVD drive in a virtual machine. If it was enabled, then it would always be visible as the secondary master of the IDE controller. With VirtualBox 3.1, DVD drives can be attached to arbitrary slots of arbitrary controllers, so they could be the secondary slave of an IDE controller or in an SATA slot. If you have a machine settings ﬁle from an earlier version and upgrade VirtualBox to 3.1 and then move the DVD drive from its default position, this cannot be expressed in the old settings format; the XML machine ﬁle would get written in the new format, and a backup ﬁle of the old format would be kept.

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9 Advanced topics cases, VirtualBox backs up the old settings ﬁle in the virtual machine’s conﬁguration directory. If you need to go back to the earlier version of VirtualBox, then you will need to manually copy these backup ﬁles back. In detail, the following settings ﬁles are in use: • In the conﬁguration directory, VirtualBox.xml is the main conﬁguration ﬁle. This includes global conﬁguration options and the media and virtual machine registry. The media registry links to all CD/DVD, ﬂoppy and disk images that have been added to the Virtual Media Manager. For each registered VM, there is one entry which points to the VM conﬁguration ﬁle, also in XML format. • Virtual machine settings and ﬁles are, by default, saved as XML ﬁles in a subdirectory of the Machines directory, which VirtualBox creates under the main conﬁguration directory (see above). You can change the location of this main “Machines” folder in the “Global settings” dialog. By default, for each virtual machine, VirtualBox uses another subdirectory of the “Machines” directory that carries the same name as the virtual machine. As a result, your virtual machine names must conform to the conventions of your operating system for valid ﬁle names. For example, a machine called “Fedora 6” would, by default, have its settings saved in .VirtualBox/Machines/Fedora 6/Fedora 6.xml (on a Linux or Solaris host). If you would like more control over the ﬁle names used, you can create the machine using VBoxManage createvm with the --settingsfile option; see chapter 8.6, VBoxManage createvm, page 115. The virtual machine directory will be renamed if you change the machine name. If you do not wish this to happen, you can create the machine using VBoxManage createvm with the --basefolder option. In this case, the folder name will never change. • VirtualBox keeps snapshots and saved states in another special folder for each virtual machine. By default, this is a subfolder of the virtual machine folder called Snapshots – in our example, .VirtualBox/Machines/Fedora 6/Snapshots. You can change this setting for each machine using VBoxManage as well. • VDI container ﬁles are, by default, created in the HardDisks directory under the main conﬁguration directory (see above). In particular, this directory is used when the “Create new virtual disk” wizard is started to create a new VDI ﬁle. Changing this default is probably most useful if the disk containing your home directory does not have enough room to hold your VDI ﬁles, which can grow very large.

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9.2 Automated Windows guest logons
When Windows is running in a virtual machine, it might be desirable to perform coordinated and automated logons of guest operating systems using credentials from a master logon system. (With “credentials”, we are referring to logon information consisting of user name, password and domain name, where each value might be empty.) Since Windows NT, Windows has provided a modular system logon subsystem (“Winlogon”) which can be customized and extended by means of so-called GINA modules (Graphical Identiﬁcation and Authentication). With Windows Vista, the GINA modules were replaced with a new mechanism called “credential providers”. The VirtualBox Guest Additions for Windows come with both, a GINA and a credential provider module, and therefore enable any Windows guest to perform automated logons. To activate the VirtualBox GINA or credential provider module, install the Guest Additions using the command line switch /with_autologon. To manually install the GINA module, extract the Guest Additions (see chapter 4.3.4, Manual ﬁle extraction, page 64) and copy the ﬁle VBoxGINA.dll to the Windows SYSTEM32 directory. Then, in the registry, create the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ Winlogon\GinaDLL

with a value of VBoxGINA.dll. Note: The VirtualBox GINA is implemented as a wrapper around the standard Windows GINA (MSGINA.DLL) so it will most likely not work correctly with 3rd party GINA modules. To set credentials, use the following command on a running VM:
VBoxManage controlvm "Windows XP" setcredentials "John Doe" "secretpassword" "DOMTEST"

While the VM is running, the credentials can be queried by the VirtualBox logon modules (GINA or credential provider) using the VirtualBox Guest Additions device driver. When Windows is in “logged out” mode, the logon modules will constantly poll for credentials and if they are present, a logon will be attempted. After retrieving the credentials, the logon modules will erase them so that the above command will have to be repeated for subsequent logons. For security reasons, credentials are not stored in any persistent manner and will be lost when the VM is reset. Also, the credentials are “write-only”, i.e. there is no way to retrieve the credentials from the host side. Credentials can be reset from the host side by setting empty values. Depending on the particular variant of the Windows guest, the following restrictions apply:

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9 Advanced topics 1. For Windows XP guests, the logon subsystem needs to be conﬁgured to use the classic logon dialog as the VirtualBox GINA module does not support the XP-style welcome dialog. 2. For Windows Vista and Windows 7 guests, the logon subsystem does not support the so-called Secure Attention Sequence (CTRL+ALT+DEL). As a result, the guest’s group policy settings need to be changed to not use the Secure Attention Sequence. The following command forces VirtualBox to keep the credentials after they were read by the guest and on VM reset:
VBoxManage setextradata "Windows XP" VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/KeepCredentials 1

Note that this is a potential security risk as a malicious application running on the guest could request this information using the proper interface.

9.3 Automated Windows system preparation
Beginning with Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft has offered a “system preparation” tool (in short: Sysprep) to prepare a Windows system for deployment or redistribution. Whereas Windows 2000 and XP shipped with Sysprep on the installation media, the tool also is available for download on the Microsoft web site. In the default installation of Windows Vista and 7, Sysprep already is included. Sysprep mainly consists of the executable called sysprep.exe. Starting with VirtualBox 3.0.10, the Guest Additions offer a way to launch a system preparation on the guest operating system triggered from the host side. To achieve that, several guest properties are available which can be used in order to start or wait for the system preparation. VBoxService.exe, which runs in the guest if the Guest Additions are installed, takes care of the host guest communication as well as launching sysprep.exe with system privileges. Note: Specifying the location of “sysprep.exe” is not possible – instead the following paths are used (based on the operating system): • C:\sysprep\sysprep.exe for Windows NT 4.0, 2000 and XP • %WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe for Windows Vista, 2008 Server and 7 The following guest properties are used for automated system preparation: • /VirtualBox/HostGuest/SysprepArgs speciﬁes the arguments you want to hand over to sysprep.exe. This property also is used to determine whether the whole system preparation should be executed by VBoxService.exe. Only can be written from the host side due to security reasons.

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9 Advanced topics • /VirtualBox/HostGuest/SysprepRet holds the exit code of sysprep.exe after its run. • /VirtualBox/HostGuest/SysprepRC holds the return code of the whole system preparation process done by VBoxService.exe. The sysprep execution is a sub-service in VBoxService.exe which will be run every 10 seconds by default. You can disable this sub-service or increase/decrease the waiting time. See the command line help by doing a VBoxService.exe --help for more information. The following sequence shows the general behavior of the sysprep execution subservice: • Check for a value in guest property /VirtualBox/HostGuest/SysprepArgs • If successful detect the sysprep.exe based on the operating system • If sysprep.exe exists execute it with system privileges using command line arguments given with /VirtualBox/HostGuest/SysprepArgs • Wait for sysprep.exe to ﬁnish • Store its exit code in /VirtualBox/HostGuest/SysprepRet In any case the overall status of the sysprep sub service will be written back to /VirtualBox/HostGuest/SysprepRC (0 on success). To get a more verbose output of VBoxService.exe for debugging, do the following: • Stop the running VBoxService.exe through the Windows Service Control Manager (SCM). • Open up a console, go to %WINDIR%\System32 and start VBoxService.exe with
VBoxService.exe -f -vvv

This will start VBoxService.exe in foreground mode with verbose console logging.

9.4 Custom external VRDP authentication
As described in chapter 7.1.5, RDP authentication, page 102, VirtualBox supports arbitrary external modules to perform authentication with its VRDP servers. When the authentication method is set to “external” for a particular VM, VirtualBox calls the library that was speciﬁed with VBoxManage setproperty vrdpauthlibrary. This library will be loaded by the VM process on demand, i.e. when the ﬁrst RDP connection is made by an external client. External authentication is the most ﬂexible as the external handler can both choose to grant access to everyone (like the “null” authentication method would) and delegate

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9 Advanced topics the request to the guest authentication component. When delegating the request to the guest component, it will still be called afterwards with the option to override the result. A VRDP authentication library is required to implement exactly one entry point:
#include "VRDPAuth.h" /** * Authentication library entry point. Decides whether to allow * a client connection. * * Parameters: * pUuid Pointer to the UUID of the virtual machine * which the client connected to. * guestJudgement Result of the guest authentication. * szUser User name passed in by the client (UTF8). * szPassword Password passed in by the client (UTF8). * szDomain Domain passed in by the client (UTF8). * * * Return code: * VRDPAuthAccessDenied Client access has been denied. * VRDPAuthAccessGranted Client has the right to use the * virtual machine. * VRDPAuthDelegateToGuest Guest operating system must * authenticate the client and the * library must be called again with * the result of the guest * authentication. * */ VRDPAuthResult VRDPAUTHCALL VRDPAuth( PVRDPAUTHUUID pUuid, VRDPAuthGuestJudgement guestJudgement, const char *szUser, const char *szPassword const char *szDomain) { /* process request against your authentication source of choice */ return VRDPAuthAccessGranted; }

A note regarding the UUID implementation of the ﬁrst argument: VirtualBox uses a consistent binary representation of UUIDs on all platforms. For this reason the integer ﬁelds comprising the UUID are stored as little endian values. If you want to pass such UUIDs to code which assumes that the integer ﬁelds are big endian (often also called network byte order), you need to adjust the contents of the UUID to e.g. achieve the same string representation. The required changes are: • reverse the order of byte 0, 1, 2 and 3 • reverse the order of byte 4 and 5 • reverse the order of byte 6 and 7.

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9 Advanced topics Using this conversion you will get identical results when converting the binary UUID to the string representation. The second arguments contains information about the guest authentication status. For the ﬁrst call, it is always set to VRDPAuthGuestNotAsked. In case the function returns VRDPAuthDelegateToGuest, a guest authentication will be attempted and another call to the method is made with its result. This can be either granted / denied or no judgement (the guest component chose for whatever reason to not make a decision). In case there is a problem with the guest authentication module (e.g. the Additions are not installed or not running or the guest did not respond within a timeout), the “not reacted” status will be returned.

9.5 VBoxSDL, the simpliﬁed VM displayer
VBoxSDL2 is a simple graphical user interface (GUI) that lacks the nice point-and-click support which VirtualBox, our main GUI, provides. VBoxSDL is currently primarily used internally for debugging VirtualBox and therefore not ofﬁcially supported. Still, you may ﬁnd it useful for environments where the virtual machines are not necessarily controlled by the same person that uses the virtual machine. As you can see in the following screenshot, VBoxSDL does indeed only provide a simple window that contains only the “pure” virtual machine, without menus or other controls to click upon and no additional indicators of virtual machine activity:

To start a virtual machine with VBoxSDL instead of the VirtualBox GUI, enter the following on a command line:
2 Note

that VBoxSDL is not available on all platforms, e.g. Mac OS X.

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VBoxSDL --startvm <vm>

where <vm> is, as usual with VirtualBox command line parameters, the name or UUID of an existing virtual machine.

9.6 Secure labeling with VBoxSDL
When running guest operating systems in fullscreen mode, the guest operating system usually has control over the whole screen. This could present a security risk as the guest operating system might fool the user into thinking that it is either a different system (which might have a higher security level) or it might present messages on the screen that appear to stem from the host operating system. In order to protect the user against the above mentioned security risks, the secure labeling feature has been developed. Secure labeling is currently available only for VBoxSDL. When enabled, a portion of the display area is reserved for a label in which a user deﬁned message is displayed. The label height in set to 20 pixels in VBoxSDL. The label font color and background color can be optionally set as hexadecimal RGB color values. The following syntax is used to enable secure labeling:
VBoxSDL --startvm VMNAME --securelabel --seclabelfnt ~/fonts/arial.ttf --seclabelsiz 14 --seclabelfgcol 00FF00 --seclabelbgcol 00FFFF

In addition to enabling secure labeling, a TrueType font has to be supplied. To use another font size than 12 point use the parameter --seclabelsiz. The label text can be set with
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxSDL/SecureLabel" "The Label"

Changing this label will take effect immediately. Typically, full screen resolutions are limited to certain “standard” geometries such as 1024 x 768. Increasing this by twenty lines is not usually feasible, so in most cases, VBoxSDL will chose the next higher resolution, e.g. 1280 x 1024 and the guest’s screen will not cover the whole display surface. If VBoxSDL is unable to choose a higher resolution, the secure label will be painted on top of the guest’s screen surface. In order to address the problem of the bottom part of the guest screen being hidden, VBoxSDL can provide custom video modes to the guest that are reduced by the height of the label. For Windows guests and recent Solaris and Linux guests, the VirtualBox Guest Additions automatically provide the reduced video modes. Additionally, the VESA BIOS has been adjusted to duplicate its standard mode table with adjusted resolutions. The adjusted mode IDs can be calculated using the following formula:
reduced_modeid = modeid + 0x30

For example, in order to start Linux with 1024 x 748 x 16, the standard mode 0x117 (1024 x 768 x 16) is used as a base. The Linux video mode kernel parameter can then be calculated using:

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vga = 0x200 | 0x117 + 0x30 vga = 839

The reason for duplicating the standard modes instead of only supplying the adjusted modes is that most guest operating systems require the standard VESA modes to be ﬁxed and refuse to start with different modes. When using the X.org VESA driver, custom modelines have to be calculated and added to the conﬁguration (usually in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. A handy tool to determine modeline entries can be found at http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/ faq/vga2rgb/calc.html.)

9.7 Custom VESA resolutions
Apart from the standard VESA resolutions, the VirtualBox VESA BIOS allows you to add up to 16 custom video modes which will be reported to the guest operating system. When using Windows guests with the VirtualBox Guest Additions, a custom graphics driver will be used instead of the fallback VESA solution so this information does not apply. Additional video modes can be conﬁgured for each VM using the extra data facility. The extra data key is called CustomVideoMode<x> with x being a number from 1 to 16. Please note that modes will be read from 1 until either the following number is not deﬁned or 16 is reached. The following example adds a video mode that corresponds to the native display resolution of many notebook computers:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "CustomVideoMode1" "1400x1050x16"

The VESA mode IDs for custom video modes start at 0x160. In order to use the above deﬁned custom video mode, the following command line has be supplied to Linux:
vga = 0x200 | 0x160 vga = 864

For guest operating systems with VirtualBox Guest Additions, a custom video mode can be set using the video mode hint feature.

9.8 Multiple monitors for the guest
VirtualBox allows the guest to use multiple virtual monitors. Up to sixty-four virtual monitors are supported.

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9 Advanced topics Note: 1. Multiple monitors currently work only with Windows XP guests, and Guest Additions must be installed, as the implementation resides in the Guest Additions video driver. 2. Multiple monitors work only with the VBoxHeadless frontend. You must also enable VRDP multiconnection mode (see chapter 7.1.7, VRDP multiple connections, page 104) to access two or more VM displays when the guest is using multiple monitors. 3. The guest video RAM size should be increased when multiple monitors are used. The VRAM is shared among the virtual monitors so that only part of it is available for each one. Therefore the available resolutions and color depths will be reduced if the VRAM size remains the same and multiple monitors are enabled. The following command enables three virtual monitors for the VM:
VBoxManage modifyvm VMNAME --monitorcount 3

The following command enables VRDP multiconnection mode for the VM:
VBoxManage modifyvm VMNAME --vrdpmulticon on

The RDP client can select the virtual monitor number to connect to using the domain logon parameter. If the parameter ends with @ followed by a number, VBoxHeadless interprets this number as the screen index. The primary guest screen is selected with @1, the ﬁrst secondary screen is @2, etc. The MS RDP6 client does not let you specify a separate domain name. Instead, use domain\username in the Username: ﬁeld – for example, @2\name. name must be supplied, and must be the name used to log in if the VRDP server is set up to require credentials. If it is not, you may use any text as the username.

9.9 Releasing modiﬁers with VBoxSDL on Linux
When switching from a X virtual terminal (VT) to another VT using Ctrl-Alt-Fx while the VBoxSDL window has the input focus, the guest will receive Ctrl and Alt keypress events without receiving the corresponding key release events. This is an architectural limitation of Linux. In order to reset the modiﬁer keys, it is possible to send SIGUSR1 to the VBoxSDL main thread (ﬁrst entry in the ps list). For example, when switching away to another VT and saving the virtual machine from this terminal, the following sequence can be used to make sure the VM is not saved with stuck modiﬁers:
kill -usr1 <pid> VBoxManage controlvm "Windows 2000" savestate

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9.10 Launching more than 120 VMs on Solaris hosts
Solaris hosts have a ﬁxed number of IPC semaphores IDs per process preventing users from starting more than 120 VMs. While trying to launch more VMs you would be shown a “Cannot create IPC semaphore” error. In order to run more VMs, you will need to bump the semaphore ID limit of the VBoxSVC process. Execute as root the prctl command as shown below. The process ID of VBoxSVC can be obtained using the ps list command.
prctl -r -n project.max-sem-ids -v 2048 <pid-of-VBoxSVC>

9.11 Using serial ports
Starting with version 1.4, VirtualBox provided support for virtual serial ports, which, at the time, was rather complicated to set up with a sequence of VBoxManage setextradata statements. Since version 1.5, that way of setting up serial ports is no longer necessary and deprecated. To set up virtual serial ports, use the methods now described in chapter 3.9, Serial ports, page 55. Note: For backwards compatibility, the old setextradata statements, whose description is retained below from the old version of the manual, take precedence over the new way of conﬁguring serial ports. As a result, if conﬁguring serial ports the new way doesn’t work, make sure the VM in question does not have old conﬁguration data such as below still active. The old sequence of conﬁguring a serial port used the following 6 commands:
VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/Config/IRQ" 4 VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/Config/IOBase" 0x3f8 VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/Driver" Char VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Driver" NamedPipe VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/Location" "\\.\pipe\vboxCOM1" VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/IsServer" 1

This sets up a serial port in the guest with the default settings for COM1 (IRQ 4, I/O address 0x3f8) and the Location setting assumes that this conﬁguration is used on a Windows host, because the Windows named pipe syntax is used. Keep in mind that on Windows hosts a named pipe must always start with \\.\pipe\. On Linux the same conﬁg settings apply, except that the path name for the Location can be chosen

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9 Advanced topics more freely. Local domain sockets can be placed anywhere, provided the user running VirtualBox has the permission to create a new ﬁle in the directory. The ﬁnal command above deﬁnes that VirtualBox acts as a server, i.e. it creates the named pipe itself instead of connecting to an already existing one.

9.12 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest
Starting with version 1.4, as an alternative to using virtual disk images (as described in detail in chapter 5, Virtual storage, page 76), VirtualBox can also present either entire physical hard disks or selected partitions thereof as virtual disks to virtual machines. With VirtualBox, this type of access is called “raw hard disk access”; it allows a guest operating system to access its virtual hard disk without going through the host OS ﬁle system. The actual performance difference for image ﬁles vs. raw disk varies greatly depending on the overhead of the host ﬁle system, whether dynamically growing images are used and on host OS caching strategies. The caching indirectly also affects other aspects such as failure behavior, i.e. whether the virtual disk contains all data written before a host OS crash. Consult your host OS documentation for details on this. Warning: Raw hard disk access is for expert users only. Incorrect use or use of an outdated conﬁguration can lead to total loss of data on the physical disk. Most importantly, do not attempt to boot the partition with the currently running host operating system in a guest. This will lead to severe data corruption. Raw hard disk access – both for entire disks and individual partitions – is implemented as part of the VMDK image format support. As a result, you will need to create a special VMDK image ﬁle which deﬁnes where the data will be stored. After creating such a special VMDK image, you can use it like a regular virtual disk image. For example, you can use the Virtual Media Manager (chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80) or VBoxManage to assign the image to a virtual machine.

9.12.1 Access to entire physical hard disk
While this variant is the simplest to set up, you must be aware that this will give a guest operating system direct and full access to an entire physical disk. If your host operating system is also booted from this disk, please take special care to not access the partition from the guest at all. On the positive side, the physical disk can be repartitioned in arbitrary ways without having to recreate the image ﬁle that gives access to the raw disk. To create an image that represents an entire physical hard disk (which will not contain any actual data, as this will all be stored on the physical disk), on a Linux host, use the command

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VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda

This creates the image /path/to/file.vmdk (must be absolute), and all data will be read and written from /dev/sda. On a Windows host, instead of the above device speciﬁcation, use e.g. \\.\PhysicalDrive0. On a Mac OS X host, instead of the above device speciﬁcation use e.g. /dev/disk1. Note that on OS X you can only get access to an entire disk if no volume is mounted from it. Creating the image requires read/write access for the given device. Read/write access is also later needed when using the image from a virtual machine. Just like with regular disk images, this does not automatically register the newly created image in the internal registry of hard disks. If you want this done automatically, add -register:
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -register

After registering, you can assign the newly created image to a virtual machine with
VBoxManage modifyvm WindowsXP -hda /path/to/file.vmdk

When this is done the selected virtual machine will boot from the speciﬁed physical disk.

9.12.2 Access to individual physical hard disk partitions
This “raw partition support” is quite similar to the “full hard disk” access described above. However, in this case, any partitioning information will be stored inside the VMDK image, so you can e.g. install a different boot loader in the virtual hard disk without affecting the host’s partitioning information. While the guest will be able to see all partitions that exist on the physical disk, access will be ﬁltered in that reading from partitions for which no access is allowed the partitions will only yield zeroes, and all writes to them are ignored. To create a special image for raw partition support (which will contain a small amount of data, as already mentioned), on a Linux host, use the command
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5

As you can see, the command is identical to the one for “full hard disk” access, except for the additional -partitions parameter. This example would create the image /path/to/file.vmdk (which, again, must be absolute), and partitions 1 and 5 of /dev/sda would be made accessible to the guest. VirtualBox uses the same partition numbering as your Linux host. As a result, the numbers given in the above example would refer to the ﬁrst primary partition and the ﬁrst logical drive in the extended partition, respectively.

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9 Advanced topics On a Windows host, instead of the above device speciﬁcation, use e.g.
\\.\PhysicalDrive0. On a Mac OS X host, instead of the above device speciﬁcation use e.g. /dev/disk1. Note that on OS X you can only use partitions which are

not mounted (eject the respective volume ﬁrst). Partition numbers are the same on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X hosts. The numbers for the list of partitions can be taken from the output of
VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk /dev/sda

The output lists the partition types and sizes to give the user enough information to identify the partitions necessary for the guest. Images which give access to individual partitions are speciﬁc to a particular host disk setup. You cannot transfer these images to another host; also, whenever the host partitioning changes, the image must be recreated. Creating the image requires read/write access for the given device. Read/write access is also later needed when using the image from a virtual machine. If this is not feasible, there is a special variant for raw partition access (currently only available on Linux hosts) that avoids having to give the current user access to the entire disk. To set up such an image, use
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 -relative

When used from a virtual machine, the image will then refer not to the entire disk, but only to the individual partitions (in the example /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5). As a consequence, read/write access is only required for the affected partitions, not for the entire disk. During creation however, read-only access to the entire disk is required to obtain the partitioning information. In some conﬁgurations it may be necessary to change the MBR code of the created image, e.g. to replace the Linux boot loader that is used on the host by another boot loader. This allows e.g. the guest to boot directly to Windows, while the host boots Linux from the “same” disk. For this purpose the -mbr parameter is provided. It speciﬁes a ﬁle name from which to take the MBR code. The partition table is not modiﬁed at all, so a MBR ﬁle from a system with totally different partitioning can be used. An example of this is
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 -mbr winxp.mbr

The modiﬁed MBR will be stored inside the image, not on the host disk. For each of the above variants, you can register the resulting image for immediate use in VirtualBox by adding -register to the respective command line. The image will then immediately appear in the list of registered disk images. An example is
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 -relative -register

which creates an image referring to individual partitions, and registers it when the image is successfully created.

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9.13 Allowing a virtual machine to start even with unavailable CD/DVD/ﬂoppy devices
When, on VM startup, a CD, DVD or ﬂoppy device is unavailable, VirtualBox by default prints an error message and refuses to start the virtual machine. In some situations this behavior is not desirable. The behavior can be changed for the CD/DVD drive with the following conﬁguration change command:
VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/LUN#2/Config/AttachFailError" 0

The equivalent command for the ﬂoppy drive is:
VBoxManage setextradata "YourVM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/i82078/0/LUN#0/Config/AttachFailError" 0

You will still get a warning message that a device is not available. Some guest operating systems may show strange behavior when using saved state or snapshots, especially if a previously mounted medium is no longer available when the virtual machine is resumed.

9.14 Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine
9.14.1 Conﬁguring the address of a NAT network interface
In NAT mode, the guest network interface is assigned to the IPv4 range 10.0.x.0/24 by default where x corresponds to the instance of the NAT interface +2 of that VM. So x is 2 if there is only one NAT instance active. In that case the guest is assigned to the address 10.0.2.15, the gateway is set to 10.0.2.2 and the name server can be found at 10.0.2.3. If, for any reason, the NAT network needs to be changed, this can be achieved with the following command:
VBoxManage modifyvm "My VM" --natnet1 "192.168/16"

This command would reserve the network addresses 192.168.0.0 ... 192.168.254.254 for the ﬁrst NAT network instance of “My VM”. The guest IP would be assigned to 192.168.0.15 and the default gateway could be found at 192.168.0.2.

9.14.2 Conﬁguring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network interface
For network booting in NAT mode, by default VirtualBox uses a built-in TFTP server at the IP address 10.0.2.3. This default behavior should work ﬁne for typical remotebooting scenarios. However, it is possible to change the boot server IP and the location of the boot image with the following commands:

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VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/NextServer" 10.0.2.2 VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/BootFile" /srv/tftp/boot/MyPXEBoot.pxe

9.14.3 Tuning TCP/IP buffers for NAT
The VirtualBox NAT stack performance is often determined by its interaction with the host’s TCP/IP stack and the size of several buffers (SO_RCVBUF and SO_SNDBUF). For certain setups users might want to adjust the buffer size for better performance. This can by achieved using the following commands (values are in kilobytes and can range from 8 to 1024):
VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SocketRcvBuf" 128 VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SocketSndBuf" 128 VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/TcpRcvSpace" 128 VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/TcpSndSpace" 128

Each of these buffers has a default size of 64KB.

9.14.4 Binding NAT sockets to a speciﬁc interface
By default, VirtualBox’s NAT engine will route TCP/IP packets through the default port assigned by the host’s TCP/IP stack. (The technical reason for this is that the NAT engine uses sockets for communication.) If, for some reason, you want to change this behavior, you can tell the NAT engine to bind to a particular IP address instead. Use the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/BindIP" "10.45.0.2"

After this, all outgoing trafﬁc will be sent through the interface with the IP address 10.45.0.2. Please make sure that this interface is up and running prior to this assignment. Also, if you have conﬁgured port forwarding for the NAT engine as described in chapter 6.3.1, Conﬁguring port forwarding with NAT, page 92, you can bind this conﬁguration only to a particular interface as well. Assuming that you have conﬁgured port forwarding for a “guestssh” service, you would use the following additional command:
VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/BindIP" "127.0.0.1"

This would make ssh port forwarding available from host only.

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9.14.5 Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode
For resolving network names the DHCP server of the NAT engine offers a list of registered DNS servers of the host. For some reason you might need to hide the DNS server list, thereby forcing the VirtualBox NAT engine to react to changes in the host network settings, for example about the end of DHCP leases. Replacing of the real list with the address of the DNS proxy can be achieved with the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/DNSProxy" 1

9.14.6 Using the host’s resolver as a DNS proxy in NAT mode
For resolving network names, the DHCP server of the NAT engine offers a list of registered DNS servers of the host. If for some reason you need to hide this DNS server list and use the host’s resolver settings, thereby forcing the VirtualBox NAT engine to intercept DNS requests and forward them to host’s resolver, use the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata "Linux Guest" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/UseHostResolver" 1

9.15 Conﬁguring the maximum resolution of guests when using the graphical frontend
When guest systems with the Guest Additions installed are started using the graphical frontend (the normal VirtualBox application), they will not be allowed to use screen resolutions greater than the host’s screen size unless the user manually resizes them by dragging the window, switching to fullscreen or seamless mode or sending a video mode hint using VBoxManage. This behavior is what most users will want, but if you have different needs, it is possible to change it by issuing one of the following commands from the command line:
VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution any

will remove all limits on guest resolutions.
VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution >width,height<

manually speciﬁes a maximum resolution.
VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution auto

restores the default settings. Note that these settings apply globally to all guest systems, not just to a single machine.

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9.16 Conﬁguring the BIOS DMI information
The DMI data VirtualBox provides to guests can be changed for a speciﬁc VM. Use the following commands to conﬁgure the DMI BIOS information:
VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSVendor" "Host BIOS Vendor" VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSVersion" "Host BIOS Version" VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseDate" "Host BIOS Release Date" VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseMajor" 1 VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseMinor" 2 VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSFirmwareMajor" 3 VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSFirmwareMinor" 4

If a DMI string is not set, the default value of VirtualBox is used. To set an empty string use "<EMPTY>". Changing this information can be necessary to provide the DMI information of the host to the guest to prevent Windows from asking for a new product key. On Linux hosts the DMI BIOS information can be obtained with
dmidecode -t0

and the DMI system information can be obtained with
dmidecode -t1

9.17 Conﬁguring the guest time stamp counter (TSC) to reﬂect guest execution
By default, VirtualBox keeps all sources of time visible to the guest synchronized to a single time source, the monotonic host time. This reﬂects the assumptions of many guest operating systems, which expect all time sources to reﬂect “wall clock” time. In special circumstances it may be useful however to make the TSC (time stamp counter) in the guest reﬂect the time actually spent executing the guest. This special TSC handling mode can be enabled on a per-VM basis, and for best results must be used only in combination with hardware virtualization. To enable this mode use the following command:

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VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution" 1

To revert to the default TSC handling mode use:
VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution"

Note that if you use the special TSC handling mode with a guest operating system which is very strict about the consistency of time sources you may get a warning or error message about the timing inconsistency. It may also cause clocks to become unreliable with some guest operating systems depending on they use the TSC.

9.18 Conﬁguring the hard disk vendor product data (VPD)
VirtualBox reports vendor product data for its virtual hard disks which consist of hard disk serial number, ﬁrmware revision and model number. These can be changed using the following commands:
VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/SerialNumber" "serial" VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/FirmwareRevision" "firmware" VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ModelNumber" "model"

The serial number is a 20 byte alphanumeric string, the ﬁrmware revision an 8 byte alphanumeric string and the model number a 40 byte alphanumeric string. Instead of “Port0” (referring to the ﬁrst port), specify the desired SATA hard disk port. Additional three parameters are needed for CD/DVD drives to report the vendor product data:
VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIVendorId" "vendor" VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIProductId" "product" VBoxManage setextradata "My VM" "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIRevision" "revision"

The vendor id is a 8 byte alphanumeric string, the product id an 16 byte alphanumeric string and the revision a 4 byte alphanumeric string. Instead of “Port0” (referring to the ﬁrst port), specify the desired SATA hard disk port.

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10 VirtualBox programming interfaces
VirtualBox comes with comprehensive support for third-party developers. The socalled “Main API” of VirtualBox exposes the entire feature set of the virtualization engine. It is completely documented and available to anyone who wishes to control VirtualBox programmatically. With VirtualBox, all programming information (documentation, reference information, header and other interface ﬁles as well as samples) have been split out to a separate Software Development Kit (SDK), which is available for download from http://www.virtualbox.org. In particular, the SDK comes with a “Programming Guide and Reference” in PDF format, which contains, among other things, the information that was previously in this chapter of the User Manual.

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11 Troubleshooting
This chapter provides answers to commonly asked questions. In order to improve your user experience with VirtualBox, it is recommended to read this section to learn more about common pitfalls and get recommendations on how to use the product.

11.1 General
11.1.1 Collecting debugging information
For problem determination, it is often important to collect debugging information which can be analyzed by VirtualBox support. This section contains information about what kind of information can be obtained. Every time VirtualBox starts up a VM, a log ﬁle is created containing some information about the VM conﬁguration and runtime events. The log ﬁle is called VBox.log and resides in the VM log ﬁle folder. Typically this will be a directory like this:
$HOME/.VirtualBox/Machines/{machinename}/Logs

When starting a VM, the conﬁguration ﬁle of the last run will be renamed to .1, up to .3. Sometimes when there is a problem, it is useful to have a look at the logs. Also when requesting support for VirtualBox, supplying the corresponding log ﬁle is mandatory. For convenience, for each virtual machine, the VirtualBox main window can show these logs in a window. To access it, select a virtual machine from the list on the left and select “Show logs...“ from the “Machine” window.

11.1.2 Guest shows IDE/SATA errors for ﬁle-based images on slow host ﬁle system
Occasionally, some host ﬁle systems provide very poor writing performance and as a consequence cause the guest to time out IDE/SATA commands. This is normal behavior and should normally cause no real problems, as the guest should repeat commands that have timed out. However some guests (e.g. some Linux versions) have severe problems if a write to an image ﬁle takes longer than about 15 seconds. Some ﬁle systems however require more than a minute to complete a single write, if the host cache contains a large amount of data that needs to be written. The symptom for this problem is that the guest can no longer access its ﬁles during large write or copying operations, usually leading to an immediate hang of the guest.

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11 Troubleshooting In order to work around this problem (the true ﬁx is to use a faster ﬁle system that doesn’t exhibit such unacceptable write performance), it is possible to ﬂush the image ﬁle after a certain amount of data has been written. This interval is normally inﬁnite, but can be conﬁgured individually for each disk of a VM. For IDE disks use the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/LUN#[x]/Config/FlushInterval" [b]

For SATA disks use the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#[x]/Config/FlushInterval" [b]

The value [x] that selects the disk for IDE is 0 for the master device on the ﬁrst channel, 1 for the slave device on the ﬁrst channel, 2 for the master device on the second channel or 3 for the master device on the second channel. For SATA use values between 0 and 29. Only disks support this conﬁguration option; it must not be set for CD/DVD drives. The unit of the interval [b] is the number of bytes written since the last ﬂush. The value for it must be selected so that the occasional long write delays do not occur. Since the proper ﬂush interval depends on the performance of the host and the host ﬁlesystem, ﬁnding the optimal value that makes the problem disappear requires some experimentation. Values between 1000000 and 10000000 (1 to 10 megabytes) are a good starting point. Decreasing the interval both decreases the probability of the problem and the write performance of the guest. Setting the value unnecessarily low will cost performance without providing any beneﬁts. An interval of 1 will cause a ﬂush for each write operation and should solve the problem in any case, but has a severe write performance penalty. Providing a value of 0 for [b] is treated as an inﬁnite ﬂush interval, effectively disabling this workaround. Removing the extra data key by specifying no value for [b] has the same effect.

11.1.3 Responding to guest IDE/SATA ﬂush requests
If desired, the virtual disk images can be ﬂushed when the guest issues the IDE FLUSH CACHE command. Normally these requests are ignored for improved performance. The parameters below are only accepted for disk drives. They must not be set for DVD drives. To enable ﬂushing for IDE disks, issue the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/LUN#[x]/Config/IgnoreFlush" 0

The value [x] that selects the disk is 0 for the master device on the ﬁrst channel, 1 for the slave device on the ﬁrst channel, 2 for the master device on the second channel or 3 for the master device on the second channel. To enable ﬂushing for SATA disks, issue the following command:

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VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#[x]/Config/IgnoreFlush" 0

The value [x] that selects the disk can be a value between 0 and 29. Note that this doesn’t affect the ﬂushes performed according to the conﬁguration described in chapter 11.1.2, Guest shows IDE/SATA errors for ﬁle-based images on slow host ﬁle system, page 158. Restoring the default of ignoring ﬂush commands is possible by setting the value to 1 or by removing the key.

11.2 Windows guests
11.2.1 Windows bluescreens after changing VM conﬁguration
Changing certain virtual machine settings can cause Windows guests to fail during start up with a bluescreen. This may happen if you change VM settings after installing Windows, or if you copy a disk image with an already installed Windows to a newly created VM which has settings that differ from the original machine. This applies in particular to the following settings: • The ACPI and I/O APIC settings should never be changed after installing Windows. Depending on the presence of these hardware features, the Windows installation program chooses special kernel and device driver versions and will fail to startup should these hardware features be removed. (Enabling them for a Windows VM which was installed without them does not cause any harm. However, Windows will not use these features in this case.) • Changing the storage controller hardware will cause bootup failures as well. This might also apply to you if you copy a disk image from an older version of VirtualBox to a virtual machine created with a newer VirtualBox version; the default subtype of IDE controller hardware was changed from PIIX3 to PIIX4 with VirtualBox 2.2. Make sure these settings are identical.

11.2.2 Windows 0x101 bluescreens with SMP enabled (IPI timeout)
If a VM is conﬁgured to have more than one processor (symmetrical multiprocessing, SMP), some conﬁgurations of Windows guests crash with an 0x101 error message, indicating a timeout for inter-processor interrupts (IPIs). These interrupts synchronize memory management between processors. According to Microsoft, this is due to a race condition in Windows. A hotﬁx is available.1 If this does not help, please reduce the number of virtual processors to 1.
1 See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955076.

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11.2.3 Windows 2000 installation failures
When installing Windows 2000 guests, you might run into one of the following issues: • Installation reboots, usually during component registration. • Installation ﬁlls the whole hard disk with empty log ﬁles. • Installation complains about a failure installing msgina.dll. These problems are all caused by a bug in the hard disk driver of Windows 2000. After issuing a hard disk request, there is a race condition in the Windows driver code which leads to corruption if the operation completes too fast, i.e. the hardware interrupt from the IDE controller arrives too soon. With physical hardware, there is a guaranteed delay in most systems so the problem is usually hidden there (however it should be possible to reproduce it on physical hardware as well). In a virtual environment, it is possible for the operation to be done immediately (especially on very fast systems with multiple CPUs) and the interrupt is signaled sooner than on a physical system. The solution is to introduce an artiﬁcial delay before delivering such interrupts. This delay can be conﬁgured for a VM using the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/IRQDelay" 1

This sets the delay to one millisecond. In case this doesn’t help, increase it to a value between 1 and 5 milliseconds. Please note that this slows down disk performance. After installation, you should be able to remove the key (or set it to 0).

11.2.4 How to record bluescreen information from Windows guests
When Windows guests run into a kernel crash, they display the infamous bluescreen. Depending on how Windows is conﬁgured, the information will remain on the screen until the machine is restarted or it will reboot automatically. During installation, Windows is usually conﬁgured to reboot automatically. With automatic reboots, there is no chance to record the bluescreen information which might be important for problem determination. VirtualBox provides a method of halting a guest when it wants to perform a reset. In order to enable this feature, issue the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/PDM/HaltOnReset" 1

11.2.5 No networking in Windows Vista guests
Unfortunately, with Vista, Microsoft dropped support for the virtual AMD PCNet card that we are providing to virtual machines. As a result, after installation, Vista guests initially have no networking. VirtualBox therefore ships a driver for that card with the Windows Guest Additions; see chapter 4.3.5, Windows Vista networking, page 64.

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11 Troubleshooting Starting with version 1.6.0 VirtualBox can emulate an Intel E1000 network device which is supported by Vista without any third-party drivers.

11.2.6 Windows guests may cause a high CPU load
Several background applications of Windows guests, especially virus scanners, are known to increases the CPU load notably even if the guest appears to be idle. We recommend to deactivate virus scanners within virtualized guests if possible.

11.3 Linux and X11 guests
11.3.1 Linux guests may cause a high CPU load
Some Linux guests may cause a high CPU load even if the guest system appears to be idle. This can be caused by a high timer frequency of the guest kernel. Some Linux distributions, for example Fedora, ship a Linux kernel conﬁgured for a timer frequency of 1000Hz. We recommend to recompile the guest kernel and to select a timer frequency of 100Hz.

11.3.2 AMD Barcelona CPUs
Most Linux-based guests will fail with AMD Phenoms or Barcelona-level Opterons due to a bug in the Linux kernel. Enable the I/O-APIC to work around the problem (see chapter 3.3.2, “Advanced” tab, page 46).

11.3.3 Buggy Linux 2.6 kernel versions
The following bugs in Linux kernels prevent them from executing correctly in VirtualBox, causing VM boot crashes: • The Linux kernel version 2.6.18 (and some 2.6.17 versions) introduced a race condition that can cause boot crashes in VirtualBox. Please use a kernel version 2.6.19 or later. • With hardware virtualization and the I/O APIC enabled, kernels before 2.6.24rc6 may panic on boot with the following message:
Kernel panic - not syncing: IO-APIC + timer doesn’t work! Boot with apic=debug and send a report. Then try booting with the ’noapic’ option

If you see this message, either disable hardware virtualization or the I/O APIC (see chapter 3.4, System settings, page 47), or upgrade the guest to a newer kernel.2
2 See http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg30813.html

for de-

tails about the kernel ﬁx.

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11.3.4 Shared clipboard, auto-resizing and seamless desktop in X11 guests
Guest desktop services in guests running the X11 window system (Solaris, Linux and others) are provided by a guest service called VBoxClient, which runs under the ID of the user who started the desktop session and is automatically started using the following command lines
VBoxClient --clipboard VBoxClient --display VBoxClient --seamless

when your X11 user session is started if you are using a common desktop environment (Gnome, KDE and others). If a particular desktop service is not working correctly, it is worth checking whether the process which should provide it is running. The VBoxClient processes create ﬁles in the user’s home directory with names of the form .vboxclient-*.pid when they are running in order to prevent a given service from being started twice. It can happen due to misconﬁguration that these ﬁles are created owned by root and not deleted when the services are stopped, which will prevent them from being started in future sessions. If the services cannot be started, you may wish to check whether these ﬁles still exist.

11.4 Windows hosts
11.4.1 VBoxSVC out-of-process COM server issues
VirtualBox makes use of the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) for interand intra-process communication. This allows VirtualBox to share a common conﬁguration among different virtual machine processes and provide several user interface options based on a common architecture. All global status information and conﬁguration is maintained by the process VBoxSVC.exe, which is an out-of-process COM server. Whenever a VirtualBox process is started, it requests access to the COM server and Windows automatically starts the process. Note that it should never be started by the end user. When the last process disconnects from the COM server, it will terminate itself after some seconds. The VirtualBox conﬁguration (XML ﬁles) is maintained and owned by the COM server and the ﬁles are locked whenever the server runs. In some cases - such as when a virtual machine is terminated unexpectedly - the COM server will not notice that the client is disconnected and stay active for a longer period (10 minutes or so) keeping the conﬁguration ﬁles locked. In other rare cases the COM server might experience an internal error and subsequently other processes fail to initialize it. In these situations, it is recommended to use the Windows task manager to kill the process VBoxSVC.exe.

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11.4.2 CD/DVD changes not recognized
In case you have assigned a physical CD/DVD drive to a guest and the guest does not notice when the medium changes, make sure that the Windows media change notiﬁcation (MCN) feature is not turned off. This is represented by the following key in the Windows registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom\Autorun

Certain applications may disable this key against Microsoft’s advice. If it is set to 0, change it to 1 and reboot your system. VirtualBox relies on Windows notifying it of media changes.

11.4.3 Sluggish response when using Microsoft RDP client
If connecting to a Virtual Machine via the Microsoft RDP client (called Remote Desktop Connection), there can be large delays between input (moving the mouse over a menu is the most obvious situation) and output. This is because this RDP client collects input for a certain time before sending it to the VRDP server built into VirtualBox. The interval can be decreased by setting a Windows registry key to smaller values than the default of 100. The key does not exist initially and must be of type DWORD. The unit for its values is milliseconds. Values around 20 are suitable for low-bandwidth connections between the RDP client and server. Values around 4 can be used for a gigabit Ethernet connection. Generally values below 10 achieve a performance that is very close to that of the local input devices and screen of the host on which the Virtual Machine is running. Depending whether the setting should be changed for an individual user or for the system, either
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Min Send Interval

or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Min Send Interval

can be set appropriately.

11.4.4 Running an iSCSI initiator and target on a single system
Deadlocks can occur on a Windows host when attempting to access an iSCSI target running in a guest virtual machine with an iSCSI initiator (e.g. Microsoft iSCSI Initiator) that is running on the host. This is caused by a ﬂaw in the Windows cache manager component, and causes sluggish host system response for several minutes, followed by a “Delayed Write Failed” error message in the system tray or in a separate message window. The guest is blocked during that period and may show error messages or become unstable.

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11 Troubleshooting Setting the environment variable VBOX_DISABLE_HOST_DISK_CACHE to 1 will enable a workaround for this problem until Microsoft addresses the issue. For example, open a command prompt window and start VirtualBox like this:
set VBOX_DISABLE_HOST_DISK_CACHE=1 VirtualBox

While this will decrease guest disk performance (especially writes), it does not affect the performance of other applications running on the host.

11.5 Linux hosts
11.5.1 Linux kernel module refuses to load
If the VirtualBox kernel module (vboxdrv) refuses to load, i.e. you get an “Error inserting vboxdrv: Invalid argument”, check (as root) the output of the dmesg command to ﬁnd out why the load failed. The most common reasons are: • With Linux 2.6.19 and higher, the NMI watchdog may be active. Add nmi_watchdog=0 to the kernel command line (e.g. in your grub conﬁguration) and reboot. With the Debian and Ubuntu installation modules, execute sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox again. • The kernel disagrees about the version of the gcc used to compile the module. Make sure that you use the same compiler as used to build the kernel.

11.5.2 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found
If you have conﬁgured a virtual machine to use the host’s CD/DVD drive, but this does not appear to work, make sure that the current user has permission to access the corresponding Linux device ﬁle (/dev/hdc or /dev/scd0 or /dev/cdrom or similar). On most distributions, the user must be added to a corresponding group (usually called cdrom or cdrw).

11.5.3 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found (older distributions)
On older Linux distributions, if your CD/DVD device has a different name, VirtualBox may be unable to ﬁnd it. On older Linux hosts, VirtualBox performs the following steps to locate your CD/DVD drives: 1. VirtualBox examines if the environment variable VBOX_CDROM is deﬁned (see below). If so, VirtualBox omits all the following checks. 2. VirtualBox tests if /dev/cdrom works. 3. In addition, VirtualBox checks if any CD/DVD drives are currently mounted by checking /etc/mtab.

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11 Troubleshooting 4. In addition, VirtualBox checks if any of the entries in /etc/fstab point to CD/DVD devices. In other words, you can try to set VBOX_CDROM to contain a list of your CD/DVD devices, separated by colons, for example as follows:
export VBOX_CDROM=’/dev/cdrom0:/dev/cdrom1’

On modern Linux distributions, VirtualBox uses the hardware abstraction layer (hal) to locate CD and DVD hardware.

11.5.4 Linux host ﬂoppy not found
The previous instructions (for CD and DVD drives) apply accordingly to ﬂoppy disks, except that on older distributions VirtualBox tests for /dev/fd* devices by default, and this can be overridden with the VBOX_FLOPPY environment variable.

11.5.5 Strange guest IDE error messages when writing to CD/DVD
If the experimental CD/DVD writer support is enabled with an incorrect VirtualBox, host or guest conﬁguration, it is possible that any attempt to access the CD/DVD writer fails and simply results in guest kernel error messages (for Linux guests) or application error messages (for Windows guests). VirtualBox performs the usual consistency checks when a VM is powered up (in particular it aborts with an error message if the device for the CD/DVD writer is not writable by the user starting the VM), but it cannot detect all misconﬁgurations. The necessary host and guest OS conﬁguration is not speciﬁc for VirtualBox, but a few frequent problems are listed here which occurred in connection with VirtualBox. Special care must be taken to use the correct device. The conﬁgured host CD/DVD device ﬁle name (in most cases /dev/cdrom) must point to the device that allows writing to the CD/DVD unit. For CD/DVD writer units connected to a SCSI controller or to a IDE controller that interfaces to the Linux SCSI subsystem (common for some SATA controllers), this must refer to the SCSI device node (e.g. /dev/scd0). Even for IDE CD/DVD writer units this must refer to the appropriate SCSI CD-ROM device node (e.g. /dev/scd0) if the ide-scsi kernel module is loaded. This module is required for CD/DVD writer support with all Linux 2.4 kernels and some early 2.6 kernels. Many Linux distributions load this module whenever a CD/DVD writer is detected in the system, even if the kernel would support CD/DVD writers without the module. VirtualBox supports the use of IDE device ﬁles (e.g. /dev/hdc), provided the kernel supports this and the ide-scsi module is not loaded. Similar rules (except that within the guest the CD/DVD writer is always an IDE device) apply to the guest conﬁguration. Since this setup is very common, it is likely that the default conﬁguration of the guest works as expected.

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11.5.6 VBoxSVC IPC issues
On Linux, VirtualBox makes use of a custom version of Mozilla XPCOM (cross platform component object model) for inter- and intra-process communication (IPC). The process VBoxSVC serves as a communication hub between different VirtualBox processes and maintains the global conﬁguration, i.e. the XML database. When starting a VirtualBox component, the processes VBoxSVC and VirtualBoxXPCOMIPCD are started automatically. They are only accessible from the user account they are running under. VBoxSVC owns the VirtualBox conﬁguration database which normally resides in ˜.VirtualBox. While it is running, the conﬁguration ﬁles are locked. Communication / between the various VirtualBox components and VBoxSVC is performed through a local domain socket residing in /tmp/.vbox-<username>-ipc. In case there are communication problems (i.e. a VirtualBox application cannot communicate with VBoxSVC), terminate the daemons and remove the local domain socket directory.

11.5.7 USB not working
If USB is not working on your Linux host, make sure that the current user is a member of the vboxusers group. On older hosts, you need to make sure that the user has permission to access the USB ﬁlesystem (usbfs), which VirtualBox relies on to retrieve valid information about your host’s USB devices. The rest of this section only applies to those older systems. Note: The current rdesktop-vrdp implementation does not support accessing USB devices through the sysfs! As usbfs is a virtual ﬁlesystem, a chmod on /proc/bus/usb has no effect. The permissions for usbfs can therefore only be changed by editing the /etc/fstab ﬁle. For example, most Linux distributions have a user group called usb or similar, of which the current user must be a member. To give all users of that group access to usbfs, make sure the following line is present:
# 85 is the USB group none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=85,devmode=664 0 0

Replace 85 with the group ID that matches your system (search /etc/group for “usb” or similar). Alternatively, if you don’t mind the security hole, give all users access to USB by changing “664” to “666”. The various distributions are very creative from which script the usbfs ﬁlesystem is mounted. Sometimes the command is hidden in unexpected places. For SuSE 10.0 the mount command is part of the udev conﬁguration ﬁle /etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules. As this distribution has no user group called usb, you may e.g. use the vboxusers group which was created by the VirtualBox installer. Since group numbers are allocated dynamically, the following example uses 85 as a placeholder. Modify the line containing (a linebreak has been inserted to improve readability)

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11 Troubleshooting
DEVPATH="/module/usbcore", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/bin/mount -t usbfs usbfs /proc/bus/usb"

and add the necessary options (make sure that everything is in a single line):
DEVPATH="/module/usbcore", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/bin/mount -t usbfs usbfs /proc/bus/usb -o devgid=85,devmode=664"

Debian Etch has the mount command in /etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh. Since that distribution has no group usb, it is also the easiest solution to allow all members of the group vboxusers to access the USB subsystem. Modify the line
domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb -onoexec,nosuid,nodev

so that it contains
domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb -onoexec,nosuid,nodev,devgid=85,devmode=664

As usual, replace the 85 with the actual group number which should get access to USB devices. Other distributions do similar operations in scripts stored in the /etc/init.d directory.

11.5.8 PAX/grsec kernels
Linux kernels including the grsec patch (see http://www.grsecurity.net/) and derivates have to disable PAX_MPROTECT for the VBox binaries to be able to start a VM. The reason is that VBox has to create executable code on anonymous memory.

11.5.9 Linux kernel vmalloc pool exhausted
When running a large number of VMs with a lot of RAM on a Linux system (say 20 VMs with 1GB of RAM each), additional VMs might fail to start with a kernel error saying that the vmalloc pool is exhausted and should be extended. The error message also tells you to specify vmalloc=256MB in your kernel parameter list. If adding this parameter to your GRUB or LILO conﬁguration makes the kernel fail to boot (with a weird error message such as “failed to mount the root partition”), then you have probably run into a memory conﬂict of your kernel and initial RAM disk. This can be solved by adding the following parameter to your GRUB conﬁguration:
uppermem 524288

11.6 Solaris hosts
11.6.1 Cannot start VM, not enough contiguous memory
The ZFS ﬁle system is known to use all available RAM as cache if the default system settings are not changed. This may lead to a heavy fragmentation of the host memory

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11 Troubleshooting preventing VirtualBox VMs from being started. We recommend to limit the ZFS cache by adding a line
set zfs:zfs_arc_max = xxxx

to /etc/system where xxxx bytes is the amount of memory usable for the ZFS cache.

11.6.2 VM aborts with out of memory errors on Solaris 10 hosts
Solaris 10 hosts (bug 1225025) requires swap space equal to, or greater than the host’s physical memory size. For example, 8 GB physical memory would require at least 8 GB swap. This can be conﬁgured during a Solaris 10 install by choosing a ’custom install’ and changing the default partitions. For existing Solaris 10 installs, an additional swap image needs to be mounted and used as swap. Hence if you have 1 GB swap and 8 GB of physical memory, you require to add 7 GB more swap. This can be done as follows: For ZFS (as root user):
zfs create -V 8gb /_<ZFS volume>_/swap swap -a /dev/zvol/dsk/_<ZFS volume>_/swap

To mount if after reboot, add the following line to /etc/vfstab:
/dev/zvol/dsk/_<ZFS volume>_/swap - - swap - no -

Alternatively, you could grow the existing swap using:
zfs set volsize=8G rpool/swap

And reboot the system for the changes to take effect. For UFS (as root user):
mkfile 7g /path/to/swapfile.img swap -a /path/to/swapfile.img

To mount it after reboot, add the following line to /etc/vfstab:
/path/to/swap.img - - swap - no -

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12 Change log
This section summarizes the changes between VirtualBox versions. Note that this change log is not exhaustive; not all changes are listed. VirtualBox version numbers consist of three numbers separated by dots where the ﬁrst number represents the major version, the 2nd number the minor version and the 3rd one the build number. Build numbers of ofﬁcial releases are always even. An odd build number represents an internal development or test build.

12.1 Version 3.1.0 (2009-11-30)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added: • Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another (see chapter 7.2, Teleporting, page 104) • VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well (“branched snapshots”; see chapter 1.8, Snapshots, page 25) • 2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion (see chapter 4.10, Hardware 2D video acceleration for Windows guests, page 73) • More ﬂexible storage attachments: CD/DVD drives can be attached to arbitrary storage controllers, and there can be more than one such drive (chapter 5, Virtual storage, page 76) • The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running • Complete rewrite of experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher • Signiﬁcant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging) • Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface; see chapter 3.12, Alternative ﬁrmware (EFI), page 58) • Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net; see chapter 6.1, Virtual networking hardware, page 89)

170

12 Change log In addition, the following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: guest SMP ﬁxes for certain rare cases • GUI: snapshots include a screenshot • GUI: locked storage media can be unmounted by force • GUI: the a log window grabbed all key events from other GUI windows (bug #5291) • GUI: allow to disable USB ﬁlters (bug #5426) • GUI: improved memory slider in the VM settings • 3D support: major performance improvement in VBO processing • 3D support: added GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array support • 3D support: ﬁxed crashes in FarCry, SecondLife, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online (bugs #2801, #2791) • 3D support: ﬁxed graphics corruption in World of Warcraft (#2816) • 3D support: ﬁxed Final frame of Compiz animation not updated to the screen (#4653) • 3D support: ﬁxed incorrect rendering of non ARGB textures under compiz • iSCSI: support iSCSI targets with more than 2TiB capacity • VRDP: ﬁxed occasional VRDP server crash (bug #5424) • Network: ﬁxed the E1000 emulation for QNX (and probably other) guests (bug #3206) • NAT: added host resolver DNS proxy (see chapter 9.14.6, Using the host’s resolver as a DNS proxy in NAT mode, page 154) • VMDK: ﬁxed incorrectly rejected big images split into 2G pieces (bug #5523, #2787) • VMDK: ﬁxed compatibility issue with ﬁxed or raw disk VMDK ﬁles (bug #2723) • VHD: ﬁxed incompatibility with Hyper-V • Support for Parallels version 2 disk image (HDD) ﬁles; see chapter 5.2, Disk image ﬁles (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD), page 79 • OVF: create manifest ﬁles on export and verify the content of an optional manifest ﬁle on import

171

12 Change log • OVF: ﬁxed memory setting during import (bug #4188) • Mouse device: now ﬁve buttons are passed to the guest (bug #3773) • VBoxHeadless: ﬁxed loss of saved state when VM fails to start • VBoxSDL: ﬁxed crash during shutdown (Windows hosts only) • X11 based hosts: allow the user to specify their own scan code layout (bug #2302) • Mac OS X hosts: don’t auto show the menu and dock in fullscreen (#bug 4866) • Mac OS X hosts (64 bit): don’t interpret mouse wheel events as left click (#bug 5049) • Mac OS X hosts: ﬁxed a VM abort during shutdown under certain conditions • Solaris hosts: combined the kernel interface package into the VirtualBox main package • Solaris hosts: support for OpenSolaris Boomer architecture (with OSS audio backend). • Shared folders: VBOXSVR is visible in Network folder (Windows guests, bug #4842) • Shared folders: performance improvements (Windows guests, bug #1728) • Windows, Linux and Solaris Additions: added balloon tip notiﬁer if VirtualBox host version was updated and Additions are out of date • Solaris guests: ﬁxed keyboard emulation (bug #1589) • Solaris Additions: ﬁxed as_pagelock() failed errors affecting guest properties (bug #5337) • Windows Additions: added automatic logon support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 • Windows Additions: improved ﬁle version lookup for guest OS information • Windows Additions: ﬁxed runtime OS detection on Windows 7 for session information • Windows Additions: ﬁxed crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo) • Linux Additions: added support for uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions (bug #4039) • Linux guest shared folders: allow mounting a shared folder if a ﬁle of the same name as the folder exists in the current directory (bug #928) • SDK: added object-oriented web service bindings for PHP5

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12.2 Version 3.0.12 (2009-11-10)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: reduced IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 guests; requires 64 bits support (VT-x only; bug #4392) • VMM: ﬁxed double timer interrupt delivery on old Linux kernels using IO-APIC (caused guest time to run at double speed; bug #3135) • VMM: re-initizalize VT-x and AMD-V after host suspend or hibernate; some BIOSes forget this (Windows hosts only; bug #5421) • VMM: ﬁxed loading of saved state when RAM preallocation is enabled • BIOS: ignore unknown shutdown codes instead of causing a guru meditation (bug #5389) • GUI: never start a VM on a single click into the selector window (bug #2676) • Serial: reduce the probability of lost bytes if the host end is connected to a raw ﬁle • VMDK: ﬁxed handling of split image variants and ﬁx a 3.0.10 regression (bug #5355) • VRDP: ﬁxed occasional VRDP server crash • Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, some guests were able to send / receive packets (E1000; bug #5366) • Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, the PCNet card received some spurious packets which might confuse the guest (bug #4496) • Shared folders: ﬁxed changing case of ﬁle names (bug #2520) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed writing to ﬁles opened in O_APPEND mode (bug #3805) • Solaris Additions: ﬁxed regression in Guest Additions driver which among other things caused lost guest property updates and periodic error messages being written to the system log

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12.3 Version 3.0.10 (2009-10-29)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: guest SMP stability ﬁxes • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation with nested paging and SMP guests (bug #5222) • VMM: changed VT-x/AMD-V usage to detect other active hypervisors; necessary for e.g. Windows 7 XP compatibility mode (Windows & Mac OS X hosts only; bug #4239) • VMM: guru meditation during SCO OpenServer installation and reboot (VT-x only; bug #5164) • VMM: ﬁxed accessed bit handling in certain cases (bug #5248) • VMM: ﬁxed VPID ﬂushing (VT-x only) • VMM: ﬁxed broken nested paging for 64 bits guests on 32 bits hosts (AMD-V only; bug #5285) • VMM: ﬁxed loading of old saved states/snapshots (bug #3984) • Mac OS X hosts: ﬁxed memory leaks (bug #5084) • Mac OS X hosts (Snow Leopard): ﬁxed redraw problem in a dual screen setup (bug #4942) • Windows hosts: installer updates for Windows 7 • Solaris hosts: out of memory handled incorrectly (bug #5241) • Solaris hosts: the previous ﬁx for #5077 broke the DVD host support on Solaris 10 (VBox 3.0.8 regression) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed module compilation against Linux 2.6.32rc4 and later • Guest Additions: ﬁxed possible guest OS kernel memory exhaustion • Guest Additions: ﬁxed stability issues with SMP guests • Windows Additions: ﬁxed color depth issue with low resolution hosts, netbooks, etc. (bug #4935) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed NO_MORE_FILES error when saving to shared folders (bug #4106) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed subdirectory creation on shared folders (bug #4299) • Linux Additions: sendﬁle() returned -EOVERFLOW when executed on a shared folder (bug #2921)

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12 Change log • Linux Additions: ﬁxed incorrect disk usage value (non-Windows hosts only) • Linux installer: register the module sources at DKMS even if the package provides proper modules for the current running kernel • 3D support: removed invalid OpenGL assertion (bug #5158) • Network: ﬁxed the Am79C973 PCNet emulation for QNX (and probably other) guests (bug #3206) • VMDK: ﬁx handling of split image variants • VHD: do not delay updating the footer when expanding the image to prevent image inconsistency • USB: stability ﬁx for some USB 2.0 devices • GUI: added a search index to the .chm help ﬁle • GUI/Windows hosts: #2025) ﬁxed CapsLock handling on French keyboards (bug

• Shared clipboard/X11 hosts: ﬁxed a crash when clipboard initialisation failed (bug #4987)

12.4 Version 3.0.8 (2009-10-02)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: ﬁxed 64 bits guest on 32 bits host regression in 3.0.6 (VT-x only; bug #4947) • VMM: ﬁxed a recompiler triple fault guru meditation (VT-x & AMD-V only; bug #5058) • VMM: ﬁxed hang after guest state restore (AMD-V, 32 bits Windows guest and IO-APIC enabled only; bug #5059) • VMM: ﬁxed paging issue with OS/2 guests • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation in rare cases (2.0 regression; software virtualization only) • VMM: ﬁxed release assertion during state restore when using the Sound Blaster 16 emulation (bug #5042) • Security: ﬁxed vulnerability that allowed to execute commands with root privileges

175

12 Change log • Linux hosts: ﬁxed runtime assertion in semaphore implementation which was triggered under certain conditions (bug #616) • Linux hosts: change the default USB access mode on certain distributions (bugs #3394 and #4291) • Linux hosts: on hardened Gentoo, the VBoxSVC daemon crashed by opening the VM network settings (bug #3732) • Linux hosts, Solaris hosts: pass the XAUTHORITY variable along the DISPLAY variable when starting a VM from VBoxManage or from the VM selector (bug #5063) • Linux hosts: use sysfs to enumerate host drives if hal is not available • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed a bug which would hang the host sporadically as interrupts were not re-enabled every time • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed a kernel panic with bridged and host-only networking (bug #4775) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed incorrectly persistent CD/DVD-ROMs when changing them (bug #5077) • X11-based hosts: support additional function keys on Sun keyboards (bug #4907) • Mac OS X hosts (Snow Leopard): ﬁxed problem starting headless VMs without a graphical session (bug #5002) • Mac OS X hosts: ﬁxed problem listing host-only adapter names with trailing garbage (attached VMs won’t start) • Windows Additions: now work with Vista 64-bit Home editions (bug #3865) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed screen corruption with ZoomText Magniﬁer • Windows Additions: ﬁxed NPGetUniversalName failure (bug #4853) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed Windows NT regression (bug #4946) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed VBoxService not running if no Shared Folders are installed • Linux Additions: implemented ftrunctate (bug #4771) • VRDP: start VM even if conﬁgured VRDP port is in use • Networking: the PCnet network device stopped receiving under rare conditions (bug #4870)

176

12 Change log • VBoxManage: implemented controlvm vrdpport command • iSCSI: ﬁxed issue with NetApp targets (#5072) • SCSI: add support for virtual disks larger than 2TB • USB: ﬁxed potential crash when unplugging USB2 devices (bug #5089) • NAT: IPSEC did not properly work with Linux guests (bug #4801)

12.5 Version 3.0.6 (2009-09-09)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: ﬁxed IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003 guests (AMD-V only; bug #4392) • VMM: ﬁxed a Guru meditation under certain circumstances when enabling a disabled device (bug #4510) • VMM: ﬁxed a Guru meditation when booting certain Arch Linux guests (software virtualization only; bug #2149) • VMM: ﬁxed hangs with 64 bits Solaris & OpenSolaris guests (bug #2258) • VMM: ﬁxed decreasing rdtsc values (AMD-V & VT-x only; bug #2869) • VMM: small Solaris/OpenSolaris performance improvements (VT-x only) • VMM: cpuid change to correct reported virtual CPU id in Linux • VMM: NetBSD 5.0.1 CD hangs during boot (VT-x only; bug #3947) • Solaris hosts: worked around an issue that caused the host to hang (bug #4486) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed a rare host system deadlock when using bridged networking • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed a potential host system deadlock when CPUs were onlined or ofﬂined • Solaris hosts installer: added missing dependency for UTF-8 package (bug #4899) • Linux hosts: don’t crash on Linux PAE kernels < 2.6.11 (in particular RHEL/CentOS 4); disable VT-x on Linux kernels < 2.6.13 (bug #1842) • Linux/Solaris hosts: correctly detect keyboards with fewer keys than usual (bug #4799) • Mac OS X hosts: prevent password dialogs in 32 bits Snow Leopard

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12 Change log • Python WS: ﬁxed issue with certain enumerations constants having wrong values in Python webservices bindings • Python API: several threading and platform issues ﬁxed • Python shell: added exportVM command • Python shell: various improvements and bugﬁxes • Python shell: corrected detection of home directory in remote case • OVF: ﬁxed XML comment handling that could lead to parser errors • Main: ﬁxed a rare parsing problem with port numbers of USB device ﬁlters in machine settings XML • Main: restrict guest RAM size to 1.5 GB (32 bits Windows hosts only) • Main: ﬁxed possible hang during guest reboot (bug #3792) • GUI: ﬁxed rare crash when removing the last disk from the media manager (bug #4795) • VBoxManage: ﬁxed guestproperty for Mac OS X hosts (bug #3806) • VBoxManage: ﬁxed setting guest properties with –ﬂags or -ﬂags • Webservice: ﬁxed a severe memory leak, at least on platforms using XPCOM • Serial: ﬁxed host mode (Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X hosts; bug #4672) • VRDP: Remote USB Protocol version 3 • SATA: ﬁxed hangs and BSODs introduced with 3.0.4 (bugs #4695, #4739, #4710) • SATA: ﬁxed a bug which prevented Windows 7 from detecting more than one hard disk • SATA/SCSI: ﬁxed rare random guest crashes and hangs • SCSI: ﬁxed problem with Fedora 11 refusing to boot after kernel update • iSCSI: ﬁx logging out when the target has dropped the connection, ﬁx negotiation of parameters, ﬁx command resend when the connection was dropped, ﬁx processing SCSI status for targets which do not use phase collapse • BIOS: ﬁxed a bug that caused the OS/2 boot manager to fail (2.1.0 regression, bug #3911) • PulseAudio: don’t hang during VM termination if the connection to the server was unexpectedly terminated (bug #3100)

178

12 Change log • Mouse: ﬁxed weird mouse behaviour with SMP (Solaris) guests (bug #4538) • HostOnly Network: ﬁxed failure in CreateHostOnlyNetworkInterface() on Linux (no GUID) • HostOnly Network: ﬁxed wrong DHCP server startup while hostonly interface bringup on Linux • HostOnly Network: ﬁxed incorrect factory and default MAC address on Solaris • HostOnly Network: ﬁxed the problem with listing host-only interfaces on Mac OS X when all physical interfaces are down (bugs #4698, #4790) • DHCP: ﬁxed a bug in the DHCP server where it allocated one IP address less than the conﬁgured range • E1000: ﬁxed receiving of multicast packets • E1000: ﬁxed up/down link notiﬁcation after resuming a VM • NAT: ﬁxed ethernet address corruptions (bug #4839) • NAT: ﬁxed hangs, dropped packets and retransmission problems (bug #4343) • Bridged Network: ﬁxed packet queue issue which might cause DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSOD for Windows hosts (bug #4821) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed a bug in VBoxGINA which prevented selecting the right domain when logging in the ﬁrst time • Windows host installer: should now also work on unicode systems (like Korean, bug #3707) • Windows host installer: check for sufﬁcient disk space • Shared clipboard: do not send zero-terminated text to X11 guests and hosts (bug #4712) • Shared clipboard: use a less CPU intensive way of checking for new data on X11 guests and hosts (bug #4092) • Guest Additions: do not hide the host mouse cursor when restoring a saved state (bug #4700) • Windows guests: ﬁxed issues with the display of the mouse cursor image (bugs #2603, #2660 and #4817) • SUSE 11 guests: ﬁxed Guest Additions installation (bug #4506) • Guest Additions: support Fedora 12 Alpha guests (bugs #4731, #4733 and #4734)

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12.6 Version 3.0.4 (2009-08-04)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: 64 bits guest stability ﬁxes (AMD-V only; bugs #3923 & #3666) • VMM: SMP stability ﬁxes (AMD-V only) • VMM: SMP performance improvement (esp. for Solaris guests) • VMM: eliminated several bugs which could lead to a host reboot • VMM: ﬁxed OS/2 ACP2 boot ﬂoppy hang (VT-x only) • VMM: small performance improvement for OpenSolaris guests (AMD-V only) • VMM: ﬁxed CentOS/Xen reboot (software virtualization only; bug #4509) • SATA: ﬁxed hangs / BSOD during Windows XP installation (bug #4342) • SATA: mark the ports as non hotpluggable (bug #3920) • 3D support: ﬁx deadlocks and context/window tracking for multithreaded applications (bug #3922) • 3D support: ﬁx memory leaks when terminating OpenGL guest applications • 3D support: ﬁx crash in Call of Duty • NAT: using two or more NAT adapters in one VM was broken (3.0.0 regression) • NAT: ﬁxed network communication corruptions (bugs #4499, #4540, #4591, #4604) • NAT: ﬁxed passive ftp access to host server (bug #4427) • iSCSI: ﬁxed cloning to/from iSCSI disks • GUI: ﬁxed path separator handling for the OVF export on Windows (bug #4354) • GUI: the mini toolbar was only shown on the ﬁrst host display (bug #4654) • GUI: added a VM option to display the mini toolbar on top • GUI: don’t crash when adding plus conﬁguring host-only network interfaces • Shared Folders: ﬁxed selection of a drive root directory as a shared folder host path in VirtualBox (Windows host only) • USB: ﬁxed a bug that may have rendered USB device ﬁlter settings inactive (3.0.2 regression, bug #4668)

180

12 Change log • Guest Additions: report the Guest Additions version to the guest properties (bug #3415) • Mac OS X hosts: ﬁx creation of VMDK ﬁles giving raw partition access (bug #1461) • Mac OS X hosts: improved support for Snow Leopard • Linux hosts: ﬁxed problems leading to wrong colors or transparency in host windows with some graphics drivers (bug #3095) • Linux hosts: hardware detection fallbacks if the hal service fails to ﬁnd any DVD drives. • Linux and Solaris hosts: Work around color handling problems in Qt (bug #4353) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed memory leaks in host-only networking • Solaris Installer: ﬁxed incorrect netmask for Host-only interface (bug #4590) • Solaris Installer: added package dependency for Python and Python-devel (bug #4570) • X11 guests: prevent windows from being skipped in seamless mode KDE guests (bugs #1681 and #3574) • X11 guests: ﬁxed screen corruption in X11 guests when large amounts of video RAM were allocated (bug #4430) • X11 guests: some ﬁxes when switching between host and guest-drawn mouse pointers. • X11 guests: ﬁxed an issue which caused seamless mode to stop working as it should (the main issue listed in bug #2238).

12.7 Version 3.0.2 (2009-07-10)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: ﬁxed network regressions (guest hangs during network IO) (bug #4343) • VMM: guest SMP performance improvements • VMM: ﬁxed hangs and poor performance with Kaspersky Internet Security (VTx/AMD-V only; bug #1778) • VMM: ﬁxed crashes when executing certain Linux guests (software virtualization only; bugs #2696 & #3868)

181

12 Change log • ACPI: ﬁxed Windows 2000 kernel hangs with IO-APIC enabled (bug #4348) • APIC: ﬁxed high idle load for certain Linux guests (3.0 regression) • BIOS: properly handle Ctrl-Alt-Del in real mode • iSCSI: ﬁxed conﬁguration parsing (bug #4236) • OVF: ﬁx potential confusion when exporting networks • OVF: compatibility ﬁx (bug #4452) • OVF: accept ovf:/disk/ speciﬁers with a single slash in addition to ovf://disk/ (bug #4452) • NAT: ﬁxed crashes under certain circumstances (bug #4330) • 3D support: ﬁxed dynamic linking on Solaris/OpenSolaris guests (bug #4399) • 3D support: ﬁxed incorrect context/window tracking for multithreaded apps • Shared Folders: ﬁxed loading from saved state (bug #1595) • Shared Folders: host ﬁle permissions set to 0400 with Windows guest (bug #4381) • X11 host and guest clipboard: ﬁxed a number of issues, including bug #4380 and #4344 • X11 Additions: ﬁxed some issues with seamless windows in X11 guests (bug #3727) • Windows Additions: added VBoxServiceNT for NT4 guests (for time synchronization and guest properties) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed version lookup • Linux Installer: support Pardus Linux • Linux hosts: workaround for buggy graphics drivers showing a black VM window on recent distributions (bug #4335) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed typo in kernel module startup script (bug #4388) • Solaris hosts: several installer ﬁxes • Solaris host: ﬁxed a preemption issue causing VMs to never start on Solaris 10 (bug #4328). • Solaris guest: ﬁxed mouse integration for OpenSolaris 2009.06 (bug #4365) • Windows hosts: ﬁxed high CPU usage after resuming the host (bug #2978) • Fixed a settings ﬁle conversion bug which sometimes caused hardware acceleration to be enabled for virtual machines that had no explicit conﬁguration in the XML.

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12 Change log

12.8 Version 3.0.0 (2009-06-30)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added: • Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only; see chapter 3.4.2, “Processor” tab, page 48) • Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental; see chapter 4.9, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9), page 72) • Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests In addition, the following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • Solaris hosts: allow suspend/resume on the host when a VM is running (bug #3826) • Solaris hosts: loosen the restriction for contiguous physical memory under certain conditions • Mac OS X hosts: ﬁxed guest PAE • Linux hosts: kernel module compile ﬁxes for 2.6.31 (bug #4264) • VMM: ﬁxed occasional guru meditation when loading a saved state (VT-x only) • VMM: eliminated IO-APIC overhead with 32 bits guests (VT-x only, some Intel CPUs don’t support this feature (most do); bug #638) • VMM: ﬁxed 64 bits CentOS guest hangs during early boot (AMD-V only; bug #3927) • VMM: performance improvements for certain PAE guests (e.g. Linux 2.6.29+ kernels) • VMM: some Windows guests detected a completely wrong CPU frequency (bug #2227) • VMM: ﬁxed hanging and unkillable VM processes (bug #4040) • VMM: ﬁxed random infrequent guest crashes due XMM state corruption (Win64 hosts only) • VMM: performance improvements for network I/O (VT-x/AMD-V only) • GUI: added mini toolbar for fullscreen and seamless mode (Thanks to Huihong Luo) • GUI: redesigned settings dialogs

183

12 Change log • GUI: allow to create/remove more than one host-only network adapters (non Windows hosts) • GUI: display estimated time for long running operations (e.g. port/export) OVF im-

• GUI: ﬁxed rare hangs when open the OVF import/export wizards (bug #4157) • 3D support: ﬁxed VM crashes for client applications using incorrect OpenGL states • 3D support: ﬁxed memory corruption when querying for supported texture compression formats • 3D support: ﬁxed incorrect rendering of glDrawRangeElements • 3D support: ﬁxed memory leak when using VBOs • 3D support: ﬁxed glew library detection • 3D support: ﬁxed random textures corruption • VRDP: support Windows 7 RDP client • Networking: ﬁxed another problem with TX checksum ofﬂoading with Linux kernels up to version 2.6.18 • NAT: ﬁxed “open ports on virtual router 10.0.2.2 - 513, 514” (forum) • NAT: allow to conﬁgure socket and internal parameters • NAT: allow to bind sockets to speciﬁc interface • PXE boot: signiﬁcant performance increase (VT-x/AMD-V only) • VHD: properly write empty sectors when cloning of VHD images (bug #4080) • VHD: ﬁxed crash when discarding snapshots of a VHD image • VHD: ﬁxed access beyond the block bitmap which could lead to arbitrary crashes • VBoxManage: ﬁxed incorrect partition table processing when creating VMDK ﬁles giving raw partition access (bug #3510) • VBoxManage: support cloning to existing image ﬁle • OVF: several OVF 1.0 compatibility ﬁxes • OVF: ﬁxed exporting of disk images when multiple virtual machines are exported at once • Virtual mouse device: eliminated micro-movements of the virtual mouse which were confusing some applications (bug #3782)

184

12 Change log • Shared Folders: sometimes a ﬁle was created using the wrong permissions (2.2.0 regression; bug #3785) • Shared Folders: allow to change ﬁle attributes from Linux guests and use the correct ﬁle mode when creating ﬁles • Shared Folders: some content was incorrectly written under certain conditions (bug #11187) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed incorrect ﬁle timestamps, when using Windows guest on a Linux host (bug #3404) • X11 clipboard: ﬁx duplicate end of lines (bug #4270) • X11 guests: a number of shared clipboard ﬁxes • Linux guests: Guest Additions support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 • Linux guests: new daemon vboxadd-service to handle time synchronization and guest property lookup • Linux guests: implemented guest properties (OS info, logged in users, basic network information) • Windows host installer: VirtualBox Python API can now be installed automatically (requires Python and Win32 Extensions installed) • USB: Support for high-speed isochronous endpoints has been added. In addition, read-ahead buffering is performed for input endpoints (currently Linux hosts only). This should allow additional devices to work, notably webcams (bug #242). • USB: ﬁxed error handling for some USB dongles • Web service: ﬁxed inability to handle NULL pointers for object arguments, which are valid values for a lot of APIs, in both the raw and the object-oriented web service. • Web service: object-oriented bindings for JAX-WS did not exhibit interface inheritance correctly, ﬁxed • Web service: added support for IDisplay and IGuest interfaces, which were previously unavailable • Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now

185

12 Change log

12.9 Version 2.2.4 (2009-05-29)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • Windows Installer: ﬁxed a potential hang during installation • Windows Installer: ﬁxed several problems (bug #3892) • Solaris hosts: make it work with Solaris build 114 or later (bug #3981) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed a bug serial port character handling found during loopback (bug #3120) • Linux hosts: adapted vboxdrv.sh to the latest changes in VBoxManage list runningvms (bug #4034) • Windows hosts: ﬁxed a crash caused by host-only/bridged networking • Mac OS X hosts: ﬁxed access to host DVD with passthrough disabled (bug #4077) • Guest Additions: ﬁxed problems with KDE 4 not recognizing mouse clicks • Windows Additions: ﬁxed incorrect 8-bit guest color depth in Windows 7 guests • GUI: warn if VT-x/AMD-V could not be enabled for guests that require this setting (bug #4055) • VMM: ﬁxed occasional crash due to insufﬁcient memory • VMM: ﬁxed hanging 64 bits Solaris guests • VMM: restore from a saved state occasionally failed (bugs #3984 and #2742) • Clipboard: ﬁxed a deadlock while shutting down the shared clipboard on X11 hosts (bug #4020) • OVF: ﬁxed potential hang during import • OVF: ﬁxed potential crashes during import/export on Win64 hosts • VBoxManage modifyhd --compact: ﬁxed bug which could lead to crashes and image corruption (bug #3864) • VBoxManage metrics collect: now ﬂushes the output stream • VHD: made VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid work for .vhd ﬁles (bug #3443) • VHD: some .vhd ﬁles could not be cloned (bug #4080) • NAT: improvement of TCP connection establishment (bug #2987)

186

12 Change log • NAT: ﬁxed order of DNS servers in DHCP lease (bug #4091) • NAT: ﬁxed DHCP lease for multiple name servers (bug #3692) • NAT: ﬁxed a potential segfault if the host lost its connectivity (bug #3964) • Shared Folders: deny access to parent directories on Windows hosts (bug #4090) • Shared Folders: make rm/rmdir work with Solaris guests on Windows hosts • Networking: ﬁxed the problem with blocked receiving thread when a broadcast packet arrives too early to be handled by uninitialized e1000 adapter • Networking: ﬁxed the problem that caused host freezes/crashes when using bridged mode with host’s interface having RX checksum ofﬂoading on (bug #3926 and related). Fixes problems with TX ofﬂoading as well (bug #3870) • PXE boot: Added support for PRO/1000 MT Server adapter • Python bindings: ﬁxed keyword conﬂict • SCSI: ﬁxed occasional crashes on Win64 • Serial: allow to redirect the serial port to a raw ﬁle (bug #1023) • VRDP: ﬁxed a rare incorrect screen update • VMDK: ﬁxed creating snapshots

12.10 Version 2.2.2 (2009-04-27)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • Host and guest clipboard: ﬁxed a number of issues affecting hosts and guests running the X window system • Guest Additions: make sure the virtual mouse autodetection works on ﬁrst reboot after installing the Additions on X.Org server 1.5 and later • Guest Additions: properly report process identity number of running services • Guest Additions: clean up properly if the X Window server terminates • Linux Additions: ﬁxed installation path for OpenGL libraries in some 64-bit guests (bug #3693) • Solaris Additions: ﬁxed installation to work when X.Org is not installed on the guest

187

12 Change log • Solaris Additions: ﬁxed a bug that could panic the guest when unmounting a busy shared folder • Windows Additions: ﬁxed mouse pointer integration of some Windows guests (2.2.0 regression, bug #3734) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed installation on Windows Server 2008 Core (bug #2628) • Main: do not try to use older versions of D-Bus (Linux hosts only, bug #3732) • VMM: ﬁxed out-of-memory conditions on Windows hosts (bug #3657) • VMM: ﬁxed occasional hangs when attaching USB devices during VM startup (2.2.0 regression; bugs #3787) • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation related to memory management (software virtualization only) • Virtual disks: ﬁx possible data corruption when writing to diff images, incorrect detection of redundant writes • GUI: reworked network settings dialog • GUI: properly show the detailed settings dialog of NAT networks (bug #3702) • GUI: HostKey could not be changed (2.2.0 regression, bug #3689) • GUI: ﬁxed memory textﬁeld size (Windows hosts only; bug #3679) • GUI: ﬁxed crash when selecting a shared folder path (Windows hosts only; bugs #3694, #3751, #3756) • VBoxManage modifyhd --compact: implemented again for VDI ﬁles, and now supports relative paths (bug #2180, #2833) • VBoxManage snapshot discard: made it work again (2.1.0 regression; bug #3714) • NAT: on some Windows hosts, the guest didn’t receive a DHCP lease (bug #3655) • NAT: ﬁxed release assertion during poll() (bug #3667) • Networking: ﬁxed a deadlock caused by the PCnet network device emulation (2.2.0 regression, bug #3676) • Clipboard: ﬁxed random crashes (X11 hosts only, bug #3723) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed incorrect permissions for Solaris guests • Shared Folders: ﬁxed wrong ﬁle sizes with Solaris guests

188

12 Change log • CBindings: ﬁxed possible memory leak while releasing the IVirtualBox and ISession Objects • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed host-only network interface incompatibility with nwam/dhcpagent (bug #3754) • Windows installer: ﬁxed several install and uninstall issues (bugs #3659, #3686, #1730, #3711, #3373, #3382, #3701, #3685, #3710) • Mac OS X hosts: preliminary support for Snow Leopard

12.11 Version 2.2.0 (2009-04-08)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added: • OVF (Open Virtualization Format) appliance import and export (see chapter 1.11, Importing and exporting virtual machines, page 29) • Host-only networking mode (see chapter 6.6, Host-only networking, page 96) • Hypervisor optimizations with signiﬁcant performance gains for high context switching rates • Raised the memory limit for VMs on 64-bit hosts to 16GB • VT-x/AMD-V are enabled by default for newly created virtual machines • USB (OHCI & EHCI) is enabled by default for newly created virtual machines (Qt GUI only) • Experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts • Shared Folders for Solaris and OpenSolaris guests • OpenGL 3D acceleration for Linux and Solaris guests (see chapter 4.9, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9), page 72) • Added C API in addition to C++, Java, Python and Web Services In addition, the following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: FreeBSD guest related ﬁx for V86 ﬂags (bug #2342) • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation when booting an AsteriskNow Linux VM (bug #2342) • VMM: ﬁxed PGMPOOLKIND_FREE guru meditation (bugs #3356, #3431) • VMM: ﬁxed Windows XP boot hang (guest PAE + nested paging only)

189

12 Change log • VMM: allow mixing of VT-x/AMD-V and software virtualization • VMM: ﬁxed extremely slow safe mode booting in e.g. Windows 2008 (VTx/AMD-V only) • VMM: signiﬁcant speedup of certain GRUB boot loaders (e.g. Solaris) (VTx/AMD-V only) • VMM: real-mode IOPL ﬁx for DOS guests (VT-x only) • VMM: ﬁxed VT-x detection with certain BIOSes that enable VT-x, but don’t set the lock bit in MSR_IA32_FEATURE_CONTROL • VMM: ﬁxed hibernation issues on Windows XP hosts (VT-x only; bug #1794) • VMM: properly emulate RDMSR from the TSC MSR, should ﬁx some NetBSD guests • VMM: emulate RDPMC; ﬁxes Windows guests crashes when using the Kaspersky virus scanner (bug #1778) • NAT: ﬁxed truncated downloads (FTP) (bug #3257) • NAT: blocked UDP packets caused a crash (bug #3426) • NAT: allow to conﬁgure the next server and the boot ﬁle via VBoxManage (bug #2759) • IDE: ﬁxed hard disk upgrade from XML-1.2 settings (bug #1518) • Hard disk: support more VMDK ﬁle variants (including ﬁxed-size ESX server images) • Hard disks: refuse to start the VM if a disk image is not writable • USB: further reduced host CPU utilization for OHCI and EHCI; the “VBoxInternal/Devices/usbohci/0/Conﬁg/FrameRate” CFG key is no longer necessary and no longer supported • USB: ﬁxed BSOD on the host with certain USB devices (Windows hosts only; bug #1654) • E1000: properly handle cable disconnects (bug #3421) • VRDP: ﬁxed hangs when VRDP server is enabled or disabled in runtime • Shared Folders: respect umask settings on Linux, OSX and Solaris hosts when creating ﬁles • X11 guests: prevented setting the locale in vboxmouse, as this caused problems with Turkish locales (bug #3563)

190

12 Change log • X11 guests: show the guest mouse pointer at the right position if the virtual desktop is larger than the guest resolution (bug #2306) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed typo when detecting Xorg 1.6 (bug #3555) • Solaris guests: added xpg4/xcu4 dependency to the Guest Additions installer (bug #3524) • Windows guests: bind the VBoxMouse.sys ﬁlter driver to the correct guest pointing device (bug #1324) • Windows hosts: ﬁxed BSOD when starting a VM with enabled host interface (bug #3414) • Linux hosts: do proper reference counting to prevent unloading the vboxnetﬂt module as long as this code is in use (bug #3104) • Linux hosts: do not leave zombies of VBoxSysInfo.sh (bug #3586) • Linux installers: ﬁxes for Slackware, Arch Linux and Linux from Scratch systems • Windows installers: combined installer executable which contains both (32- and 64-bit) architectures • VBoxManage: less cryptic command-line error messages • VBoxManage list vms commands now default to compact format • VBoxManage controlvm dvdattach did not work if the image was attached before • VBoxManage: allow creation of all supported disk image variants • VBoxManage showvminfo: don’t spam the release log if the Guest Additions don’t support statistics information (bug #3457) • VBoxManage: big command line processing cleanup, the legacy single-dash options are deprecated and will be removed in the next major release, so switch to the new options now • Hard disks: improved immutable disk support to auto-reset diff ﬁle at VM startup (related to bug #2772) • GUI: enable the audio adapter by default for new VMs • GUI: warn if VT-x/AMD-V is not operational when starting a 64-bit guest • GUI: deactivate 64-bit guest support when the host CPU does not support VTx/AMD-V • GUI: removed ﬂoppy icon from the status bar

191

12 Change log • GUI: show build revision in about dialog • GUI: ﬁxed sticky status bar text • GUI: improved error dialogs • GUI: fail with an appropriate error message when trying to boot a read-only disk image (bug #1745) • GUI/Mac OS X: ﬁxed disabled close button • GUI/Windows: re-enabled support for copy and paste (Windows hosts 2.0 regression; bug #2065) • 3D support: added OpenGL select/feedback support (bug #2920) • 3D support: close OpenGL subsystem for terminated guest applications (bug #3243) • 3D support: ﬁxed VM hangs when starting guests with 3D acceleration enabled (bug #3437) • PXE: ﬁxed boot hangs when hardware virtualization is used (bug #2536) • LsiLogic: ﬁxed problems with Solaris guests • Main API: close machine settings XML ﬁle when unregistering machine (bug #3548)

12.12 Version 2.1.4 (2009-02-16)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • Windows hosts: ﬁxed host crashes/hangs on certain 32 bits Windows systems when running Linux guests (bugs #1606, #2269, #2763) • Windows hosts: ﬁxed network component BSOD issue (bugs #3168, #2916) • Windows hosts: ﬁxed installation issues (bugs #2517, #1730, #3130) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed occasional kernel oopses (bug #2556) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed module dependency for shipped modules (bug #3115) • Linux hosts: moved the udev rules for USB forward so that they don’t override existing system rules (bug #3143) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed the issue with guest not being able to communicate with each other when attached via TAP interfaces (bug #3215)

192

12 Change log • Linux hosts: give up probing for USB gracefully if DBus or hal are not available (bug #3136) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed warnings in installer when SELinux was disabled (bug #3098) • Linux hosts: VirtualBox sometimes failed to start if it had been started using sudo previously (bug #3270) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed high CPU load while running many guests in parallel • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed inability to start more than 128 VMs • VMM: ﬁxed performance regression for Windows guests (bug #3172) • VMM: ignore CPU stepping when restoring a saved state/snapshot • REM: ﬁxed inability to use gdb to debug programs in Linux guests with software virtualization (bug #3245) • GUI: ﬁxed dead key handling on Solaris hosts (bug #3256) • GUI: in the shutdown dialog, disable the action send the shutdown signal if the guest is currently not using ACPI • GUI: suppress additional key release events sent by X11 hosts when keys are auto-repeated (bug #1296) • API: restore case insensitive OS type name lookup (bug #3087) • VBoxHeadless: really don’t start X11 services (clipboard service, 3D acceleration; Solaris & Darwin hosts only; bug #3199) • NAT: ﬁxed occasional crashes when the guest is doing traceroute (non-Windows hosts; bug #3200) • NAT: ﬁxed crashes under high load (bug #3110) • NAT: ﬁxed truncated downloads (Windows hosts only, bug #3257) • NAT: don’t intercept TFTP packages with a destination address different from the builtin TFTP server (bug #3112) • USB: several ﬁxes for USB passthrough on Linux hosts • USB: reduced host CPU utilization if EHCI is active • VRDP: ﬁxed VRDP server black screen after a client reconnect (bug #1989) • VRDP: modiﬁed rdesktop client (rdesktop-vrdp) now uses NumLock state synchronization (bug #3253) • LsiLogic: make FreeBSD guests work (bug #3174)

193

12 Change log • ATA: ﬁxed deadlock when pausing VM due to problems with the virtual disk (e.g. disk full, iSCSI target unavailable) • iSCSI: ﬁxed possible crash when pausing the VM • 3D support: added missing GL_MAX_TEXTURE_COORDS_ARB (bug #3246) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed ERROR (e0000101) error during installation (bug #1923) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed Windows Explorer hang when browsing shared folders with 64 bit guests (bug #2225) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed guest screen distortions during a video mode change • Windows Additions: ﬁxed the Network drive not connected message for mapped shared folders drives after the guest startup (bug #3157) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed occasional ﬁle corruption when writing ﬁles in O_APPEND mode to a shared folder (bug #2844) • Linux Additions: the mouse driver was not properly set up on X.Org release candidates (bug #3212) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed installer to work with openSUSE 11.1 (bug #3213) • Linux Additions: disable dynamic resizing if the X server is conﬁgured for ﬁxed resolutions • Linux/Solaris Additions: handle virtual resolutions properly which are larger than the actual guest resolution (bug #3096)

12.13 Version 2.1.2 (2009-01-21)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • USB: Linux host support ﬁxes (bug #3136) • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation for PAE guests on non-PAE hosts (AMD-V) • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation on Mac OS X hosts when using VT-x • VMM: allow running up to 1023 VMs on 64-bit hosts (used to be 127) • VMM: several FreeBSD guest related ﬁxes (bugs #2342, #2341, #2761) • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation when installing Suse Enterprise Server 10U2 (VT-x only; bug #3039)

194

12 Change log • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation when booting Novell Netware 4.11 (VT-x only; bug #2898) • VMM: ﬁxed VERR_ADDRESS_TOO_BIG error on some Mac OS X systems when starting a VM • VMM: clear MSR_K6_EFER_SVME after probing for AMD-V (bug #3058) • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation during Windows 7 boot with more than 2 GB guest RAM (VT-x, nested paging only) • VMM: ﬁxed hang during OS/2 MCP2 boot (AMD-V and VT-x only) • VMM: ﬁxed loop during OpenBSD 4.0 boot (VT-x only) • VMM: ﬁxed random crashes related to FPU/XMM with 64 bits guests on 32 bits hosts • VMM: ﬁxed occasional XMM state corruption with 64 bits guests • GUI: raised the RAM limit for new VMs to 75% of the host memory • GUI: added Windows 7 as operating system type • VBoxSDL: ﬁxed -fixed fixedmode parameter (bug #3067) • Clipboard: stability ﬁxes (Linux and Solaris hosts only, bug #2675 and #3003) • 3D support: ﬁxed VM crashes for certain guest applications (bugs #2781, #2797, #2972, #3089) • LsiLogic: improved support for Windows guests (still experimental) • VGA: ﬁxed a 2.1.0 regression where guest screen resize events were not properly handled (bug #2783) • VGA: signiﬁcant performance improvements when using VT-x/AMD-V on Mac OS X hosts • VGA: better handling for VRAM offset changes (ﬁxes GRUB2 and Dos DOOM display issues) • VGA: custom VESA modes with invalid widths are now rounded up to correct ones (bug #2895) • IDE: ﬁxed ATAPI passthrough support (Linux hosts only; bug #2795) • Networking: ﬁxed kernel panics due to NULL pointer dereference in Linux kernels < 2.6.20 (Linux hosts only; bug #2827) • Networking: ﬁxed intermittent BSODs when using the new host interface (Windows hosts only; bugs #2832, #2937, #2929)

195

12 Change log • Networking: ﬁxed several issues with displaying hostif NICs in the GUI (Windows hosts only; bugs 2814, #2842) • Networking: ﬁxed the issue with displaying hostif NICs without assigned IP addresses (Linux hosts only; bug #2780) • Networking: ﬁxed the issue with sent packets coming back to internal network when using hostif (Linux hosts only; bug #3056). • NAT: ﬁxed port forwarding (Windows hosts only; bug #2808) • NAT: ﬁxed booting from the builtin TFTP server (bug #1959) • NAT: ﬁxed occasional crashes (bug #2709) • SATA: vendor product data (VPD) is now conﬁgurable • SATA: raw disk partitions were not recognized (2.1.0 regression, Windows host only, bug #2778) • SATA: ﬁxed timeouts in the guest when using raw VMDK ﬁles (Linux host only, bug #2796) • SATA: huge speed up during certain I/O operations like formatting a drive • SATA/IDE: ﬁxed possible crash/errors during VM shutdown • VRDP: ﬁxed loading of libpam.so.1 from the host (Solaris hosts only) • VRDP: ﬁxed RDP client disconnects • VRDP: ﬁxed VRDP server misbehavior after a broken client connection • VBoxManage showvminfo: ﬁxed assertion for running VMs (bug #2773) • VBoxManage convertfromraw: added parameter checking and made it default to creating VDI ﬁles; ﬁxed and documented format parameter (bug #2776) • VBoxManage clonehd: ﬁxed garbled output image when creating VDI ﬁles (bug #2813) • VBoxManage guestproperty: ﬁxed property enumeration (incorrect parameters/exception) • VHD: ﬁxed error when attaching certain container ﬁles (bug #2768) • Solaris hosts: added support for serial ports (bug #1849) • Solaris hosts: ﬁx for Japanese keyboards (bug #2847) • Solaris hosts: 32-bit and 64-bit versions now available as a single, uniﬁed package

196

12 Change log • Linux hosts: don’t depend on libcap1 anymore (bug #2859) • Linux hosts: kernel module compile ﬁxes for 2.6.29-rc1 • Linux hosts: don’t drop any capability if the VM was started by root (2.1.0 regression) • Mac OS X hosts: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level • Mac OS X hosts: improved window resizing of the VM window • Mac OS X hosts: added GUI option to disable the dock icon realtime preview in the GUI to decrease the host CPU load when the guest is doing 3D • Mac OS X hosts: polished realtime preview dock icon • Windows Additions: ﬁxed guest property and logging OS type detection for Windows 2008 and Windows 7 Beta • Windows Additions: added support for Windows 7 Beta (bugs #2995, #3015) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed Windows 2000 guest freeze when accessing ﬁles on shared folders (bug #2764) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed CTRL-ALT-DEL handling when using VBoxGINA • Windows Additions Installer: added /extract switch to only extract (not install) the ﬁles to a directory (can be speciﬁed with /D=path) • Linux installer and Additions: added support for the Linux From Scratch distribution (bug #1587) and recent Gentoo versions (bug #2938) • Additions: added experimental support for X.Org Server 1.6 RC on Linux guests • Linux Additions: ﬁxed bug which prevented to properly set fmode on mapped shared folders (bug #1776) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed appending of ﬁles on shared folders (bug #1612) • Linux Additions: ignore noauto option when mounting a shared folder (bug #2498) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed a driver issue preventing X11 from compiling keymaps (bug #2793 and #2905) • X11 Additions: workaround in the mouse driver for a server crash when the driver is loaded manually (bug #2397)

197

12 Change log

12.14 Version 2.1.0 (2008-12-17)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added: • Support for hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) on Mac OS X hosts • Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems (experimental; see chapter 3.2, 64-bit guests, page 45) • Added support for Intel Nehalem virtualization enhancements (EPT and VPID; see chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49) • Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL (see chapter 4.9, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9), page 72) • Experimental LsiLogic and BusLogic SCSI controllers (see chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76) • Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots (see chapter 5.2, Disk image ﬁles (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD), page 79) • New NAT engine with signiﬁcantly better performance, reliability and ICMP echo (ping) support (bugs #1046, #2438, #2223, #1247) • New Host Interface Networking implementations for Windows and Linux hosts with easier setup (replaces TUN/TAP on Linux and manual bridging on Windows) In addition, the following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: signiﬁcant performance improvements for VT-x (real mode execution) • VMM: support for hardware breakpoints (VT-x and AMD-V only; bug #477) • VMM: VGA performance improvements for VT-x and AMD-V • VMM: Solaris and OpenSolaris guest performance improvements for AMD-V (Barcelona family CPUs only) • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation while running the Dr. Web virus scanner (software virtualization only; bug #1439) • VMM: deactivate VT-x and AMD-V when the host machine goes into suspend mode; reactivate when the host machine resumes (Windows, Mac OS X & Linux hosts; bug #1660) • VMM: ﬁxed guest hangs when restoring VT-x or AMD-V saved states/snapshots • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation when executing a one byte debug instruction (VT-x only; bug #2617)

198

12 Change log • VMM: ﬁxed guru meditation for PAE guests on non-PAE hosts (VT-x) • VMM: disallow mixing of software and hardware virtualization execution in general (bug #2404) • VMM: ﬁxed black screen when booting OS/2 1.x (AMD-V only) • GUI: pause running VMs when the host machine goes into suspend mode (Windows & Mac OS X hosts) • GUI: resume previously paused VMs when the host machine resumes after suspend (Windows & Mac OS X hosts) • GUI: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level (Windows hosts) • GUI: properly restore the position of the selector window when running on the compiz window manager • GUI: properly restore the VM in seamless mode (2.0 regression) • GUI: warn user about non optimal memory settings • GUI: structure operating system list according to family and version for improved usability • GUI: predeﬁned settings for QNX guests • IDE: improved ATAPI passthrough support • Networking: added support for up to 8 Ethernet adapters per VM • Networking: ﬁxed issue where a VM could lose connectivity after a reboot • iSCSI: allow snapshot/diff creation using local VDI ﬁle • iSCSI: improved interoperability with iSCSI targets • Graphics: ﬁxed handling of a guest video memory which is not a power of two (bug #2724) • VBoxManage: ﬁxed bug which prevented setting up the serial port for direct device access • VBoxManage: added support for VMDK and VHD image creation • VBoxManage: added support for image conversion (VDI/VMDK/VHD/RAW) • Solaris hosts: added IPv6 support between host and guest when using host interface networking • Mac OS X hosts: added ACPI host power status reporting

199

12 Change log • API: redesigned storage model with better generalization • API: allow attaching a hard disk to more than one VM at a time • API: added methods to return network conﬁguration information of the host system • Shared Folders: performance and stability ﬁxes for Windows guests (Microsoft Ofﬁce Applications)

12.15 Version 2.0.8 (2009-03-10)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: ﬁxed guest hangs when restoring VT-x or AMD-V saved states/snapshots • VMM: ﬁxed memory allocation issues which can cause VM start failures with VERR_PGM_MAPPING_CONFLICT error • VMM: ﬁxed host crashes/hangs on certain 32 bits Windows systems when running Linux guests (bugs #1606, #2269, #2763) • XPCOM/Main: ﬁxed synchronization bug caused by SYSV semaphore key collisions • ATA: ﬁxed deadlock when pausing VM due to problems with the virtual disk (e.g. disk full, iSCSI target unavailable) • iSCSI: ﬁxed possible crash when pausing the VM • iSCSI: ﬁx PDU validity checking and detect ﬁnal PDU reliably • VBoxHeadless: really don’t start X11 services (clipboard service, 3D acceleration; Solaris & Darwin hosts only; bug #3199) • Networking: ﬁxed issue where a VM could lose connectivity after a reboot • Linux hosts: ﬁxed occasional kernel oopses (bug #2556) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed high CPU load while running many guests in parallel • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed inability to start more than 128 VMs • Solaris/Web services: ﬁxed SMF script to set home directory correctly • Linux Additions: ﬁxed occasional ﬁle corruption when writing ﬁles in O_APPEND mode to a shared folder (bug #2844)

200

12 Change log

12.16 Version 2.0.6 (2008-11-21)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: ﬁxed Guru meditation when running 64 bits Windows guests (bug #2220) • VMM: ﬁxed Solaris 10U6 boot hangs (VT-x and AMD-V) bug #2565) • VMM: ﬁxed Solaris 10U6 reboot hangs (AMD-V only; bug #2565) • GUI: the host key was sometimes not properly displayed (Windows hosts only, bug #1996) • GUI: the keyboard focus was lost after minimizing and restoring the VM window via the Windows taskbar (bugs #784) • VBoxManage: properly show SATA disks when showing the VM information (bug #2624) • SATA: ﬁxed access if the buffer size is not sector-aligned (bug #2024) • SATA: improved performance • SATA: ﬁxed snapshot function with ports>1 (bug #2510) • E1000: ﬁxed crash under rare circumstances • USB: ﬁxed support for iPhone and Nokia devices (Linux host: bugs #470 & #491) • Windows host installer: added proper handling of open VirtualBox applications when updating the installation • Windows host installer: ﬁxed default installation directory on 64-bit on new installations (bug #2501) • Linux/Solaris/Darwin hosts: verify permissions in /tmp/vbox-$USER-ipc • Linux hosts: ﬁxed assertion on high network load (AMD64 hosts, ﬁx for Linux distributions with glibc 2.6 and newer (bug #616) • Linux hosts: don’t crash during shutdown with serial ports connected to a host device • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed incompatibility between IPSEC and host interface networking • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed a rare race condition while powering off VMs with host interface networking • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed VBoxSDL on Solaris 10 by shipping the required SDL library (bug #2475)

201

12 Change log • Windows Additions: ﬁxed logged in users reporting via guest properties when using native RDP connections • Windows Additions: ﬁxed Vista crashes when accessing shared folders under certain circumstances (bug #2461) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed shared folders access with MS-Ofﬁce (bug #2591) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed compilation of vboxvfs.ko for 64-bit guests (bug #2550) • SDK: added JAX-WS port caching to speedup connections

12.17 Version 2.0.4 (2008-10-24)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: better error reporting for VT-x failures • VMM: don’t overﬂow the release log with PATM messages (bug #1775) • VMM: ﬁxed save state restore in real mode (software virtualization only) • GUI: work around a Qt bug on Mac OS X (bug #2321) • GUI: properly install the Qt4 accessible plugin (bug #629) • SATA: error message when starting a VM with a VMDK connected to a SATA port (bug #2182) • SATA: ﬁxed Guru mediation when booting OpenSolaris/64; most likely applies to other guests as well (bug #2292) • Network: don’t crash when changing the adapter link state if no host driver is attached (bug #2333) • VHD: ﬁxed bug which prevents booting from VHD images bigger than 4GB (bug #2085) • VRDP: ﬁxed a repaint problem when the guest resolution was not equal to the client resolution • Clipboard: don’t crash when host service initialization takes longer than expected (Linux hosts only; bug #2001) • Windows hosts: VBoxSVC.exe crash (bug #2212) • Windows hosts: VBoxSVC.exe memory leak due to a Windows WMI memory leak (Vista only) (bug #2242) • Windows hosts: VBoxSVC.exe delays GUI startup

202

12 Change log • Linux hosts: handle jifﬁes counter overﬂow (VM stuck after 300 seconds of host uptime; bug #2247) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed host or guest side networking going stale while using host interface networking (bug #2474) • Solaris hosts: added support for using unplumbed network interfaces and Crossbow Virtual Network Interfaces (VNICs) with host interface networking • Solaris hosts: reworked threading model improves performance for host interface networking • Windows Additions: ﬁxed crash when accessing deep directory structures in a shared folder • Windows Additions: improved shared folder name resolving (bug #1728) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed Windows 2000 shutdown crash (bug #2254) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed error code for MoveFile() if the target exists (bug #2350) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed seek() for ﬁles bigger than 2GB (bug #2379) • Linux Additions: support Ubuntu 8.10 • Linux Additions: clipboard ﬁxes (bug #2015) • Web services: improved documentation and ﬁxed example (bug #1642)

12.18 Version 2.0.2 (2008-09-12)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: ﬁxed inability to run more than one VM in parallel (AMD-V on CPUs with erratum 170 only; bug #2167) • VMM: VT-x stability ﬁxes (bug #2179 and others) • VMM: ﬁxed Linux 2.6.26+ kernel crashes (used by Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha, Fedora 10 Alpha; bug #1875) • VMM: ﬁxed 64 bits Linux 2.6.26 kernel crashes (Debian) • VMM: ﬁxed Vista (32 bits) guest crash during boot when PAE and NX are enabled (applied to 64 bits hosts with VT-x enabled only) • VMM: ﬁxed OS/2 guest crashes during boot (AMD-V; bug #2132)

203

12 Change log • GUI: ﬁxed crash when trying to release an inaccessible image in the virtual disk manager • GUI: ﬁxed invalid error message for a changed snapshot path even if that path wasn’t changed (bug #2064) • GUI: ﬁxed crash when creating a new hard disk image (bug #2060) • GUI: ﬁxed crash when adding a hard disk in the VM settings (bug #2081) • GUI: ﬁxed a bug where VirtualBox isn’t working with the new QGtkStyle plugin (bug #2066) • GUI: ﬁxed VM close dialog in seamless mode (Mac OS X hosts only; bug #2067) • GUI: ﬁxed standard menu entries for NLS versions (Mac OS X hosts only) • GUI: disable the VT-x/AMD-V setting when it’s not supported by the CPU (or on Mac OS X hosts) • VBoxManage: ﬁxed crash during internalcommands createrawvmdk (bug #2184) • VBoxManage: ﬁxed output of snapshot showvminfo (bug #698) • Guest properties: added information about guest network interfaces (Windows guests only) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed regression that caused Windows guest crashes • API: ﬁxed number of installed CPUs (Solaris hosts only) • VRDP: allow a client to reconnect to an existing session on the VRDP server by dropping the existing connection (conﬁgurable and disabled by default; only relevant when multiconnection mode is disabled) • VRDP: ﬁxed an image repaint problem • Linux hosts: ﬁxed bug in vboxdrv.ko that could corrupt kernel memory and panic the kernel (bug #2078) • Linux hosts: compile ﬁxes for kernel module on Linux 2.6.27 • Mac OS X hosts: added Python support • Additions: ﬁxed a possible hang in HGCM communication after a VM reboot • Windows Additions: added support for Windows XP 64 bits (bug #2117) • Linux Additions: deactivate dynamic resizing on Linux guests with buggy X servers

204

12 Change log • Linux Additions: support Ubuntu 8.10 guests and Fedora 9 guests (dynamic resizing disabled for the latter) • Linux Additions: added installer check for the system architecture • Linux Additions: ﬁxed Xorg modules path for some Linux distributions (bug #2128) • VMDK: be more liberal with ambiguous parts of the format speciﬁcation and accept more format variants (bug #2062) • VHD: ﬁxed a bug in the VHD backend which resulted in reading the wrong data (bug #2085) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed kernel panic on certain machines when starting VMs with host interface networking (bug #2183) • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed inability to access NFS shares on the host when host interface networking was enabled • Solaris hosts: installer now detects and reports when installing under the wrong architecture • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed security hardening that prevented starting VMs from nonglobal zones even as root (bug #1948) • Solaris Additions: combined the 32 bit and 64 bit Additions installer into a single package • Mac OS X hosts: experimental support for attaching a real serial port to the guest

12.19 Version 2.0.0 (2008-09-04)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added: • 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only) • New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts • The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements • New-version notiﬁer • Guest property information interface • Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts • New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts • Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)

205

12 Change log • Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics) • Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain) • Clipboard integration for OS/2 Guests • Created separate SDK component featuring a new Python programming interface on Linux and Solaris hosts • Support for VHD disk images In addition, the following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: VT-x ﬁxes • AHCI: improved performance • GUI: keyboard ﬁxes • Linux installer: properly uninstall the package even if unregistering the DKMS module fails • Linux Additions: the guest screen resolution is properly restored • Network: added support for jumbo frames (> 1536 bytes) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed guest crash with Windows Media Player 11 • Mac OS X: Ctrl+Left mouse click doesn’t simulate a right mouse click in the guest anymore. Use Hostkey+Left for a right mouse click emulation. (bug #1766)

12.20 Version 1.6.6 (2008-08-26)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • VMM: ﬁxed excessive logging (bug #1901) • VMM: AMD-V stability ﬁxes (bug #1685) • GUI: added support for Ctrl+Caps reversed keyboards (bug #1891) • SATA: ﬁxed BSODs of Windows guests on a SATA disk (bug #1941) • SATA: ﬁxed hard disk detection on Solaris 10 U5 (bug #1789) • VBoxHeadless: don’t start the clipboard service (bug #1743) • VBoxHeadless: added -vrdp parameter which allows to start the VM session without VRDP (bug #1960)

206

12 Change log • VBoxManage: ﬁxes to creating raw disk/partition VMDK ﬁles, now accepts removable media on Windows (bug #1869) • VRDP: ﬁxed communication with MS Remote Desktop Connection on Mac OS X (bug #1337) • VRDP: clipboard ﬁxes (bug #1410) • VRDP: ﬁxed crash during PAM authentication (bug #1953) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed a regression introduced in version 1.6.2: the shared folders service was sometimes not properly installed (Windows guests only, bug #1915) • Shared Folders: don’t deny to load a VM if a shared folder is not accessible (bug #822) • BIOS: allow to specify empty DMI strings (bug #1957) • OSE archive: added missing Makeﬁles (bug #1912) • Linux hosts: workaround for buggy gcc-4.3 compilers (e.g. openSUSE 11) • Linux hosts: one more ﬁx for compiling the kernel modules on Linux 2.6.27 (bug #1962) • Mac OS X hosts: shared folders unicode ﬁx • Solaris hosts: ﬁxed link issue (bug #1840) • Windows Additions: allow to downgrade the package • Windows Additions: ﬁxed corrupted installer icon on Windows 2000 (bug #1486) • Windows Additions: ﬁxed bug when creating intermediate directories (bug #1870) • Windows Additions: implemented /xres=, /yres= and /depth= switches for the installer (bug #1990) • Linux Additions: properly unregister the misc device when unloading the kernel module • Linux Additions: ﬁxed startup order for recent Linux distributions again (e.g. openSUSE 11) • Linux Additions: attempt to ﬁx the autostart issue of VBoxClient with Mandriva guests (bug #1699) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed detection of patched Linux 2.6.18 kernels of RHEL5 / FC6 / CentOS 5.2 (bugs #1899, #1973)

207

12 Change log • Linux Additions: added new mount ﬂags dmode, fmode, umask, dmask and fmask allowing to override the ﬁle mode (bug #1776) • Documentation: added a note that jumbo frames don’t work (bug #1877) • Documentation: document special host interface names on openSUSE11 (bug #1892)

12.21 Version 1.6.4 (2008-07-30)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • AMD-V, VT-x: stability ﬁxes • Shared Folders: ﬁxed host crash (Solaris host only, bugs #1336, #1646) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed BSOD when debugging with Visual Studio (bug #1627) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed BSOD when compiling on a shared folder (bug #1683) • Shared Folders: several ﬁxes/stability improvements • SATA: ﬁxed a race that could cause an occasional Windows guest system hang • SATA: ﬁxed spurious BIOS log messages • Networking: ﬁxed NIC tracing with NAT interfaces (bug #1790) • USB: ﬁxed crash under certain conditions when unplugging a USB device (bug #1295) • Settings: ﬁxed bug when converting 1.5.x settings • VRDP: ﬁxed enabling the RDP server during runtime • VRDP: properly detect the rdesktop 1.6.0 RDP client • VRDP: ﬁxed RDP crash (bug #1521) • VRDP: updated modiﬁed rdesktop client to version 1.6.0 • GUI: NLS improvements • BIOS: added SMBIOS header to make Solaris and Vista recognize the DMI data • ACPI: properly hide a disabled ﬂoppy controller • VMM: small ﬁxes to protected mode without paging • VMDK: ﬁxed handling of .vmdk images without UUIDs

208

12 Change log • Windows hosts: ﬁxed driver parameter validation issue in VBoxDrv.sys that could allow an attacker on the host to crash the system • Windows hosts: installer now contains web service examples mentioned in the manual • Linux hosts: properly deregister the Linux kernel module before uninstalling a Linux deb/rpm package • Linux hosts: kernel module works now with Linux 2.6.27 • Linux hosts: ﬁxed a typo in the vboxnet setup script for host network interfaces (bug #1714) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed usage of tar in installer (bug #1767) • Linux hosts: ﬁxed long guest shutdown time when serial port is enabled • Solaris hosts: refuse to install in Sun xVM hypervisor dom0 • Solaris hosts: accept Solaris raw disks when for raw disk access • Windows Additions: made installation of shared folders more robust • Windows Additions: improved installation • Linux Additions: accept every user-deﬁned guest video mode in /etc/X11/xorg.conf • Linux Additions: ﬁxed startup order for recent Linux distributions (e.g. openSUSE 11)

12.22 Version 1.6.2 (2008-05-28)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • GUI: ﬁxed a bug which prevented to add more than one SATA drive from the GUI • GUI: ﬁxed a regression introduced in 1.6.0: the fullscreen mode was left on every guest video mode switch • GUI: ﬁxed several minor issues • Networking: ﬁxed a host interface networking regression introduced in 1.6.0 • VMM: ﬁxed starting of VMs with AMD-V enabled • VMM: massive performance enhancements for AMD-V • VMM: stability improvements for AMD-V on Windows hosts • VMM: correctly detect AMD CPUs with erratum 170 (AMD-V)

209

12 Change log • VMM: detect inconsistent timestamp counters on certain AMD Phenom motherboards (Windows host only) • VMM: ﬁxed KVM check (Linux hosts only) • VMM: ﬁxed a regression introduced in 1.6.0: Windows stuck during installation • XPCOM: ﬁxed several races • SATA: improved performance with Vista guests • SATA: ﬁxed statistics counter • Shared Folders: several ﬁxes (iTunes download, speed up browsing) • ATA/IDE: ﬁxed boot from CDROM if a medium was added while the boot menu was active • Networking: provide an Intel PRO/1000 T Server (82543GC) network device emulation which is recognized by Windows XP guests • Networking: ﬁxes for the E1000 emulation (don’t crash if not attached, ﬁxed a bug in the statistics counter implementation) • NAT: don’t crash if the guest sent a DHCPRELEASE message with an invalid IP address • NAT: ﬁxed ARP reply for the NAT gateway and for the NAT name server if the guest IP range was changed • Internal Networking: ﬁxed shutdown if more than two VMs are connected to the same network • BIOS: allow to change the DMI information (see chapter 9.16, Conﬁguring the BIOS DMI information, page 155) • RTC: ﬁxed UIP emulation to prevent jumping of time in Solaris guests • Windows host: VirtualBox installation directory corrected for 64 bits Windows • Windows host: ﬁxed VBoxVRDP.exe symlink • Windows host: solved locking problems in raw partition VMDK support • Windows host: ﬁxed stability during high system load (page fault in KeQueryActiveProcessors) • Mac OS X host: ﬁxed crashes under certain conditions • Shared Folders: limited users without admin rights now also can use Shared Folders on Windows guests

210

12 Change log • Linux hosts: ﬁxed default runlevel for the kernel module helper script • Solaris hosts: enabled support for VT-x and AMD-V • Solaris hosts: dynamic loading of libdlpi ﬁxes a problem where Solaris 10 was not able to start a VM • Linux Additions: ﬁxed runlevels for kernel module helper scripts • Linux Additions: compatibility ﬁxes with Linux 2.6.26 • Linux Additions: ﬁxed occasional guest kernel crash during unload of the vboxadd guest kernel module • X11 Guest Additions: ﬁxed a problem preventing clipboard transfers over 1K from host to guest

12.23 Version 1.6.0 (2008-04-30)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added: • Solaris and Mac OS X host support • Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests • Guest Additions for Solaris • A webservice API (see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 157) • SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller (see chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76) • Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support In addition, the following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • GUI: added accessibility support (508) • GUI: VM session information dialog • VBoxHeadless: renamed from VBoxVRDP • VMM: reduced host CPU load of idle guests • VMM: many ﬁxes for VT-x/SVM hardware-supported virtualization • ATA/IDE: better disk geometry compatibility with VMware images • ATA/IDE: virtualize an AHCI controller • Storage: better write optimization, prevent images from growing unnecessarily

211

12 Change log • Network: support PXE booting with NAT • Network: ﬁxed the Am79C973 PCNet emulation for Nexenta guests • NAT: improved builtin DHCP server (implemented DHCPNAK response) • NAT: port forwarding stopped when restoring the VM from a saved state • NAT: make subnet conﬁgurable • XPCOM: moved to libxml2 • XPCOM: ﬁxed VBoxSVC autostart race • Audio: SoundBlaster 16 emulation • USB: ﬁxed problems with USB 2.0 devices • Mac OS X: ﬁxed seamless mode • Mac OS X: better desktop integration, several look’n’feel ﬁxes • Mac OS X: switched to Quartz2D framebuffer • Mac OS X: added support for shared folders • Mac OS X: added support for clipboard integration • Solaris: added host audio playback support (experimental) • Solaris: made it possible to run VirtualBox from non-global zones • Shared Folders: many bugﬁxes to improve stability • Seamless windows: added support for Linux guests • Linux installer: support DKMS for compiling the kernel module • Linux host: compatibility ﬁxes with Linux 2.6.25 • Windows host: support for USB devices has been signiﬁcantly improved; many additional USB devices now work • Windows Additions: automatically install AMD PCNet drivers on Vista guests • Linux Additions: several ﬁxes, experimental support for RandR 1.2 • Linux Additions: compatibility ﬁxes with Linux 2.6.25

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12 Change log

12.24 Version 1.5.6 (2008-02-19)
This version is a maintenance release. It adds an experimental Intel Gigabit Ethernet device emulation and read-only shared folders. • GUI: ﬁxed several error messages • GUI: ﬁxed registration dialog crashes once and for all • GUI: really ask before resetting the VM • GUI: release mouse and keyboard before the host activates the screensaver • GUI: ﬁxed issue with license display on big screens • GUI: added setting for network name for internal networks • GUI: added setting for network device type • GUI: keyboard ﬁxes • GUI: seamless mode and fullscreen mode ﬁxes • GUI: ﬁxed soaked hostkey keyup event under certain conditions • GUI: more informative message dialog buttons • GUI: VM selector context menu • VBoxSDL: added -termacpi switch • VBoxSDL: ﬁxed automatic adaption of the guest screen resolution to the size of the VM window • VMM: under heavy guest activity, for example when copying ﬁles to/from a shared folder, the VM could crash with an assertion • VMM: added an option to select PIIX4 (improves compatibility with Windows guests created by VMware) • VMM: ﬁxed a bug which could lead to memory corruption under rare circumstances • VMM: improved performance of Solaris guests • VRDP: ﬁxed a 1.5.4 regression: VRDP client and server were out-of-sync if the VM was started using the GUI • VRDP: proper error handling if the VRDP library could not be loaded • VRDP: ﬁxed compilation of the Linux rdesktop client on newer Linux kernels

213

12 Change log • VRDP: install rdesktop-vrdp on Linux hosts • VBoxManage: ﬁxed crash during clonevdi • VBoxManage: added ’list runningvms’ command • VBoxManage: improved the compatibility when reading the partition table of a raw disk • Shared Folders: added support for read-only shared folders • Shared Clipboard: several ﬁxes • Network: don’t crash if the device is activated but not attached • Network: experimental support for Intel Gigabit Ethernet (E1000) device emulation • iSCSI: better check for misconﬁgured targets • iSCSI: allow to directly attach to internal networks with integrated mini IP stack • PulseAudio: don’t hang during VM initialization if no sound server is available • VDI: ﬁxed sized virtual disk images are now completely written during creation to workaround buggy sparse ﬁle handling on some OS (e.g. Vista) • VDI/VMDK: prevent indexing of .vdi and .vmdk ﬁles on Windows hosts • ACPI: added sleep button event • Serial: proper handling of inaccessible host devices • Windows installer: allow smooth upgrade without deinstallation • Linux installer: ﬁxed Slackware detection regression • Linux installer: updated VBoxTunctl allowing to assign a tap device to a group on Linux kernels > 2.6.23 • Windows Additions: several ﬁxes, in particular for Windows NT4 • Windows Additions: made them uninstallable • Linux Additions: ﬁxed installer for Kubuntu 8.04 • Linux Additions: add default video mode for handling video mode hints from the host • Linux host: compatibility ﬁxes with Linux > 2.6.24

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12 Change log

12.25 Version 1.5.4 (2007-12-29)
This version is a maintenance release. It adds USB 2.0 support and a PulseAudio backend. • GUI: ﬁxed registration dialog crashes • GUI: allow to enter unicode characters to the name of the registration dialog • GUI: pre-select attached media in the disk manager when opened from the VM settings dialog • GUI: remember the last active VM • GUI: ask before reset the VM • GUI: don’t accept empty paths for serial/parallel ports in XML • GUI: ﬁxed NumLock / CapsLock synchronization on Windows hosts • GUI: don’t start the kernel timer if no VM is active (Linux host) • GUI: ﬁxed accelerators in German translation • VMM: improved compatibility with Solaris guests • VMM: properly restore CR4 after leaving VT-x mode • VMM: ﬁx interrupt storm with Windows guests under certain circumstances (e.g. disable + re-enable the network adapter) • VMM: with VT-x a pending interrupt could be cleared behind our back • VMM: workaround for missed cpuid patch (some Linux guests refuse to boot on multi-core CPUs) • VMM: ﬁxed code for overriding CPUID values • VMM: improved error handling on out-of-memory conditions • API: don’t crash when trying to create a VM with a duplicate name • API: don’t crash when trying to access the settings of a VM when some other VMs are not accessible • API: ﬁxed several memory leaks • ATA/IDE: ﬁxed SuSE 9.1 CD read installer regression • Serial: several ﬁxes • Floppy: ﬁxed inverted write protect ﬂag

215

12 Change log • Floppy: ﬁxed handling of read-only images • USB: virtualize an EHCI controller • USB: several minor ﬁxes • Network: ﬁxed MAC address check • Network: host interface ﬁxes for Solaris guests • Network: guest networking stopped completely after taking a snapshot • Network: don’t crash if a network card is enabled but not attached • PXE: ﬁx for PXE-EC8 error on soft reboot • NAT: update the DNS server IP address on every DNS packet sent by the guest • VGA: reset VRAM access handers after a fullscreen update • VGA: don’t overwrite guest’s VRAM when displaying a blank screen • ACPI: implemented the sleep button event • VRDP: ﬁxed crash when querying VRDP properties • VRDP: netAddress ﬁxes • VRDP: ﬁxed the Pause/Break keys over VRDP • VRDP: workaround for scrambled icons with a guest video mode of 16bpp • VRDP: reset modiﬁer keys on RDP_INPUT_SYNCHRONIZE • VRDP: reset RDP updates after resize to prevent obsolete updates • Clipboard: Windows host/guest ﬁxes • Clipboard: ﬁxed a SEGFAULT on VM exit (Linux host) • Clipboard: ﬁxed a buffer overﬂow (Linux host) • Shared Folders: ﬁxed memory leaks • Linux installer: remove the old kernel module before compiling a new one • Linux host: compatibility ﬁxes with Linux 2.6.24 • Linux host: script ﬁxes for ArchLinux • Linux host: load correct HAL library to determine DVD/ﬂoppy (libhal.so.1 not libhal.so)

216

12 Change log • Linux host: make sure the tun kernel module is loaded before initializing static TAP interfaces • Windows Additions: ﬁxed hang during HGCM communication • Windows Additions: ﬁxed delay when shutting down the guest • Linux Additions: added sendﬁle support to allow HTTP servers to send ﬁles on shared folders • Linux Additions: make Additions work with Fedora 8 (SELinux policy added) • Linux Additions: sometimes ARGB pointers were displayed incorrectly • Linux Additions: several small script ﬁxes

12.26 Version 1.5.2 (2007-10-18)
This version is a maintenance release and mainly addresses issues discovered in VirtualBox 1.5.0 and improves compatibility with new guest and host OS revisions • Windows Installer: ﬁxed installation on Windows 2000 hosts • Windows Installer: proper warning when installing a 32-bit VirtualBox version on 64-bit Windows and vice versa • Linux Installer: no longer require license acceptance during install, instead at ﬁrst GUI startup (addresses issues with hanging installer on Debian based distributions) • GUI: added user registration dialog • GUI: ﬁxed crashes on 64-bit Linux hosts • GUI: several ﬁxes and improvements to seamless mode • GUI: ﬁxed DirectDraw mode with certain video cards (e.g. Intel i915) • GUI: ﬁxed incorrect guest resolution after leaving fullscreen mode • GUI: improved keyboard handling on Linux host • GUI: show fatal VM aborts (aka “Guru Meditation”) • GUI: ﬁxed crashes due to a display update race condition on some systems • GUI: added ACPI shutdown option to the VM close dialog • GUI: NLS improvements • BIOS: ﬁxed ﬂoppy boot menu

217

12 Change log • BIOS: expose the VM UUID in the DMI/SMBIOS area • VGA: ﬁxed CGA video modes • VGA: ﬁxed 8-bit DAC handling (Solaris setup) • VMM: ﬁxed issue with VT-x on Windows 64-bit hosts • VMM: improved compatibility with Linux KVM • VMM: ﬁxed issues with Fedora 8 guests • VMM: ﬁxed fatal errors while installing Windows guests when using AMD-V • VMM: ﬁxed sporadic hangs when minimizing VM window and using VT-x/AMDV • VMM: ﬁxed high load of ksoftirq on tickless Linux hosts • VMM: ﬁxed Windows 2000 guests hangs related to IRQ sharing • VMM: ﬁxed sporadic errors during openSUSE 10.3 installation • VMM: ﬁxed issue with Linux 2.6.23 guests • VMM: ﬁxed issues with Solaris guests • VMM: ﬁxed stability issue related to incorrect relocations • Serial: signiﬁcantly reduced CPU utilization • Network: ﬁxed issues with FreeBSD guests • Network: added MII support (100MBit detection ﬁx) • Network: improved MAC address handling • Network: added PXE release logging • IDE: large reads from CD could exceed the I/O buffer size • Audio: load ALSA dynamically on Linux (i.e. do not fail when ALSA is not present) • VRDP: support additional RDP clients (SunRay, WinConnect, Mac OS X) • VRDP: ﬁxed issues when client color depth is higher than server color depth • VRDP: make PAM authentication service name conﬁgurable • VRDP: increased stack size to deal with stack consuming PAM library calls • Additions: various ﬁxes and enhancements to clipboard handling

218

12 Change log • Windows Additions: ﬁxed issues with Additions on NT 4 guests • Windows Additions: added support for 8-bit video modes • Windows Additions: allow specifying custom resolutions for secondary screens • Windows Additions: several ﬁxes and improvements for DirectDraw • Windows Additions: improved the mouse ﬁlter driver compatibility with other mouse drivers • Linux Additions: several ﬁxes and enhancements to Shared Folders • Linux Additions: added support for X.org Server 1.4 • Shared Folders: ﬁxed MS Powerpoint access issues (Linux host) • API: ﬁxed RPC_E_CHANGED_MODE startup error on Windows hosts • API: ﬁxed SMP race condition on Linux hosts • API: ﬁxed stability issues on Windows hosts in low memory conditions

12.27 Version 1.5.0 (2007-08-31)
As major new features, Version 1.5 adds: • Seamless windows (see chapter 4.8, Seamless windows, page 71) • Virtual serial ports (see chapter 3.9, Serial ports, page 55) • Support for 64-bit Windows hosts (see chapter 1.4, Supported host operating systems, page 14) • Intel PXE 2.1 network boot • Guest Additions for IBM OS/2 Warp In addition, the following items were ﬁxed and/or added: • GUI: sometimes two mouse cursors were visible when Windows guest Additions became active • GUI: added VT-x/AMD-V settings • GUI: disable ’Show log...’ menu entry to prevent crash if VM list is empty • GUI: the log window grabbed the keyboard • GUI: ﬁxed error handling if Linux host clipboard initialization fails

219

12 Change log • GUI: pass the Pause key and the PrtScrn key to the guest (Linux hosts) • GUI: increased maximum guest RAM to 2 GB (Windows host) • GUI: improved rendering performance (Windows host) • GUI: status lights for USB and shared folders • GUI: properly respect the DISPLAY environment variable • GUI: download Guest Additions from virtualbox.org in case they are not present locally • VRDP: support for multimonitor conﬁgurations in Windows guests • VRDP: support for MS RDP6 and MS RDP Mac clients • VRDP: added support for WinConnect RDP client • VRDP: performance improvements • VRDP: ﬁxed sporadic client disconnects • VBoxManage: never delete existing target during clonevdi • VBoxManage: properly print the size of currently used hard disks • VMM: ﬁxed Xandros Desktop 4.1 hang • VMM: ﬁxed VT-x/AMD-V hang with newer versions of gcc (Linux hosts) • VMM: improved stability of VT-x • VMM: check for disabled AMD-V when detecting support • VMM: ﬁxed AMD-V issue when running OS/2 guests • VMM: ﬁxed application startup regressions (e.g. VideoReDo) • VMM: ﬁxed regression that broke disk access in OS/2 and OpenBSD guests (possibly much more) • VMM: ﬁxed crashes if memory allocation failed (Linux) • VMM: ﬁxed enabling of Local APIC on AMD hosts (ﬁxed Ubuntu Feisty installation kernel hang during boot) • VMM: ﬁxed XFree86 4.3 (Debian/Sarge) segfaults when switching to text mode • VMM: refuse to start when KVM is active (Linux Host) • VMM: ﬁxed bootup hangs with ReactOS

220

12 Change log • VMM: ﬁxed out-of-memory errors under certain environments with enough appropriate memory available • API: ﬁxed occasional crashes of the VBoxSVC server during VM shutdown (Linux host) • API: some components were not notiﬁed when mounting a CD/DVD • VMDK: improve geometry compatibility with existing VMDK images • IDE/Floppy: optionally make non-available host device non-fatal • IDE: improve emulation accuracy of the IRQ line between master and slave drive • IDE: guest could freeze when unmounting the CD/DVD drive • VGA: several text mode ﬁxes in particular with Windows DOS boxes • USB: ﬁxed some issues with Windows hosts • USB: ﬁxed race condition between udev and USB ﬁlters (Linux host) • Shared Folders: reversed network provider order to increase mapping performance (Windows guest) • Shared Folders: browsable from Windows Explorer (Windows guests) • Shared Folders: stability ﬁxes (Windows guest) • Shared Folders: case sensitivity ﬁxes (Windows guest and Linux host) • Audio: fall back to the NULL audio driver if no voice could be opened • NAT: ﬁxed crash • Guest Additions: reworked the shared clipboard for Linux hosts and guests based on user feedback about problems with individual applications • Guest Additions: don’t allow to disable mouse pointer integration for Linux guests as an Xorg hardware mouse cursor cannot be turned into a software mouse cursor • Guest Additions: Linux guests shipping Xorg 1.3 (e.g. Fedora 7, Ubuntu Gutsy) are now supported • Guest Additions: added DirectDraw support to the Windows display driver

221

12 Change log

12.28 Version 1.4.0 (2007-06-06)
• General: added support for OS X hosts • General: added support for AMD64 hosts • General: signed all executables and device drivers on Windows • GUI: added user interface for Shared Folders • GUI: added context menu for network adapters • GUI: added VM description ﬁeld for taking notes • GUI: always restore guest mouse pointer when entering VM window (Windows host) • GUI: added conﬁguration options for clipboard synchronization • GUI: improved keyboard handling on Linux hosts • GUI: added ﬁrst run wizard • GUI: improved boot device order dialog • GUI: auto-resize did not work after save/restore • GUI: restore original window size when returning from fullscreen mode • GUI: ﬁxed screen update when switching to fullscreen mode • GUI: the size of the VM window was sometimes resetted to 640x480 • GUI: added localizations • GUI: ﬁxed size report of ISO images greater than 4GB • GUI: various minor improvements • VBoxManage: added convertdd command • API: automatically start and terminate VBoxSVC on Linux and OS X hosts • VMM: increased startup performance due to lazy memory allocation • VMM: signiﬁcantly increased maximum guest memory size • VMM: ﬁxed issues with V86 mode • VMM: support V86 extensions (VME) • VMM: support guests with a full GDT • VMM: ﬁxed boot hangs for some Linux kernels

222

12 Change log • VMM: improved FreeBSD and OpenBSD support • VMM: improved performance of guests that aggressively patch kernel code (very recent Linux 2.6 kernels) • VMM: added workaround for a design ﬂaw in AMD AM2 CPUs where the timestamp counter shows large differences among CPU cores • VMM: ﬁxed Linux guests with grsecurity • VMM: ﬁxed issue on 2G/2G Linux kernels (even 1G/3G kernels should work) • VMM: ﬁxed Linux detection of Local APIC on non-Intel and non-AMD CPUs • VMM: timing improvements with high host system loads (VM starvation) • VMM: experimental AMD SVM hardware virtualization support now also handles real and protected mode without paging • VMM: added system time offset parameter to allow for VMs to run in the past or future • VMM: provide an MPS 1.4 table if the IOAPIC is enabled • VRDP: allow binding the VRDP server to a speciﬁc interface • VRDP: added support for clipboard synchronization • VRDP: ﬁxed problems with OS X RDP client • VRDP: added support for multiple simultaneous connections to one VM • VRDP: added support for MS RDP6 clients (Vista) • Storage: experimental support for VMDK images (writethrough mode only, no snapshots yet) • Storage: raw host disk support, including individual partitions • IDE: improve CHS geometry detection • IDE: ﬁxed problem that only one VM could open an immutable image • NAT: allow more than one card conﬁgured for NAT networking • NAT: pass ﬁrst entry in DNS search list (Linux host) or primary DNS sufﬁx (Windows host) as domain name in DHCP • NAT: support UDP broadcasts, which enables using Windows shares • NAT: only warn if the name server could not be determined, no fatal error anymore

223

12 Change log • NAT: ﬁx a potential problem with incorrect memory allocation • Internal Networking: ﬁxed issue on Windows hosts • Host Interface Networking: ﬁxed sporadic crashes on interface creation/destruction (Windows host) • Host Interface Networking: reworked TAP handling for Linux 2.6.18+ compatibility • PXE: show error for unsupported V86 case • PXE: small ﬁx for parsing PXE menu entry without boot server IP • Network: ﬁxed network card hang after save/restore • USB: rewrote Windows USB handling without the need for a ﬁlter driver • USB: possible to steal arbitrary devices in Windows • Serial: added serial ports with support for named pipes (local domain sockets) on the host • Audio: ﬁxed problem with ALSA on Linux before 2.6.18 blocking other ALSA clients on the system • Audio: ﬁxed problem with ALSA on AMD64 hosts • Input: ﬁxed PS/2 mouse detection in Win 3.x guests • Shared Folders: ﬁxed VM save/restore behaviour • Shared Folders: functionality and stability ﬁxes • Shared Folders: allow non admin users to map folders • Additions: added clipboard synchronization • Windows Additions: ﬁxed dynamic resolution changes after save/restore • Windows Additions: added AMD PCNet driver for Windows Vista guests (with kind permission from AMD) • Linux Additions: ﬁxed a dependency problem which caused the vboxadd kernel module sometimes start after the X server • Linux Additions: make VBox version visible in Linux modules with modinfo • Linux Additions: make X11 guest video driver accept arbitrary X resolutions • Linux Additions: make X11 setup work if /tmp uses a separate ﬁle system • Linux Additions: better support unknown distributions

224

12 Change log • Linux Installer: force a non-executable stack for all binaries and shared libraries • Linux Installer: make it work on SELinux-enabled systems • Linux Installer: ship VBoxTunctl

12.29 Version 1.3.8 (2007-03-14)
• Windows installer: ﬁxed installation problem if UAC is active • Linux installer: added RPM for rhel4 and Mandriva 2007.1 • Linux installer: remove any old vboxdrv modules in /lib/modules/*/misc • Linux installer: many small improvements for .deb and .rpm packages • Linux installer: improved setup of kernel module • GUI: Host-Fn sends Ctrl-Alt-Fn to the guest (Linux guest VT switch) • GUI: ﬁxed setting for Internal Networking • GUI: show correct audio backend on Windows (dsound) • GUI: improved error messages if the kernel module is not accessible • GUI: never fail to start the GUI if the kernel module is not accessible • VMM: ﬁxed occasional crashes when shutting down Windows TAP device • VMM: ﬁxed issues with IBM’s 1.4.2 JVM in Linux guests • VRDP: ﬁxed color encoding with 24bpp • BIOS: zero main memory on reboot • BIOS: added release logging • USB: ﬁxed parsing of certain devices to prevent VBoxSVC crashes • USB: properly wakeup suspended ports • USB: ﬁxed a problem with unplugged USB devices during suspend • Audio: ﬁxed crashes on Vista hosts • NAT: allow conﬁguration of incoming connections (aka port mapping) • Network: hard reset network device on reboot • iSCSI: ﬁxed a hang of unpaused VMs accessing unresponsive iSCSI disks

225

12 Change log • Linux Additions: support Xorg 7.2.x • Linux Additions: ﬁxed default video mode if all other modes are invalid • Linux Additions: set default DPI to 100,100 • Linux Additions: ﬁxed initialization of video driver on X server reset

12.30 Version 1.3.6 (2007-02-20)
• Windows installer: perform installation for all users instead of just the current user (old behavior still available) • Linux installer: ﬁxed license display to not block installation • Linux installer: added RPM for openSUSE 10.2 • GUI: ﬁxed problems with several keyboard layouts on Linux hosts • GUI: added online help on Linux hosts (using kchmviewer) • GUI: ﬁxed handle leak on Windows hosts • Graphics: increased VRAM limit to 128MB • BIOS: ﬁxed CD/DVD-ROM detection in Windows Vista guests • VMM: ﬁxed incompatibility with OpenBSD 4.0 • VDI: ﬁxed issues with snapshot merging • Network: ﬁxed incompatibility between Vista UAC and Host Interface Networking • Network: ﬁxed issues with Windows NT 4.0 guests • Audio: ﬁxed problem with ALSA on Linux before 2.6.18 causing system reboots • VRDP: added support for MS RDP 6.0 clients • VRDP: ﬁxed issue with PAM authentication on certain distributions • VRDP: ﬁxed sporadic disconnects with MS RDP clients • iSCSI: improved behavior when pausing a VM with iSCSI connections • iSCSI: improved read timeout handling

226

12 Change log

12.31 Version 1.3.4 (2007-02-12)
• General: ﬁxed unresolved symbol issue on Windows 2000 hosts • General: added warnings at VirtualBox startup when there is no valid Linux kernel module • General: ﬁxed problem with unrecognized host CDROM/DVD drives on Linux • General: ﬁxed compatibility issue with SELinux • GUI: improved USB user interface, easier ﬁlter deﬁnitions, menu to directly attach speciﬁc devices • GUI: added VM settings options for VRDP • GUI: ﬁxed GDI handle leak on Windows hosts • GUI: worked around issue in the Metacity window manager (GNOME) leading to unmovable VM windows • GUI: show an information dialog before entering fullscreen mode about how to get back • GUI: several ﬁxes and improvements • VMM: ﬁxed occasional crashes when shutting down a Windows guest • VMM: ﬁxed crash while loading Xorg on openSUSE 10.2 • VMM: ﬁxed problems with OpenBSD 3.9 and 4.0 • VMM: ﬁxed crash while loading XFree86 in SUSE 9.1 • VMM: ﬁxed Debian 3.1 (Sarge) installation problem (network failure) • VMM: ﬁxed crash during SUSE 10.2 installation • VMM: ﬁxed crash during Ubuntu 7.04 RC boot • VMM: ﬁxed crash during ThinClientOS (Linux 2.4.33) bootup • ATA/IDE: pause VM when host disk is full and display message • ATA/IDE: ﬁxed incompatibility with OpenSolaris 10 • VDI containers: do not allocate blocks when guest only writes zeros to it (size optimization when zeroing freespace prior to compacting) • CDROM/DVD: ﬁxed media recognition by Linux guests • Network: corrected reporting of physical interfaces (ﬁxes Linux guest warnings)

227

12 Change log • Network: ﬁxed IRQ conﬂict causing occasional major slowdowns with XP guests • Network: signiﬁcantly improved send performance • Audio: added mixer support to the AC’97 codec (master volume only) • Audio: added support for ALSA on Linux (native, no OSS emulation) • iSCSI: improved LUN handling • iSCSI: ﬁxed hang due to packet overﬂow • iSCSI: pause VM on iSCSI connection loss • Linux module: never fail unloading the module (blocks Ubuntu/Debian uninstall) • Linux module: improved compatibility with NMI watchdog enabled • Windows Additions: ﬁxed hardware mouse pointer with Windows 2003 Server guests • Linux Additions: compile everything from sources instead of using precompiled objects • Linux Additions: better compatibility with older glibc versions • Linux Additions: when uninstalling, only delete the ﬁles we put there during installation, don’t remove the directory recursively to prevent unwanted data loss • Linux Installer: added support for Slackware • Linux Additions: added support for Linux 2.4.28 to 2.4.34 • VRDP: ﬁxed sporadic disconnects with MS RDP clients • VRDP: ﬁxed race condition during resolution resize leading to rare crashes

12.32 Version 1.3.2 (2007-01-15)
• General: added experimental support for Windows Vista as a host • General: added support for Windows Vista as a guest • GUI: numerous improvements including a redesigned media manager • BIOS: added DMI information for recent Linux kernels • VMM: experimental support for AMD SVM hardware virtualization extensions

228

12 Change log • VMM: signiﬁcant performance improvements for Linux 2.6 guests • VMM: performance improvements for Windows guests • Network: ﬁxed issues with DOS guests • Network: ﬁxed creation of more than one host interface during process lifetime on Windows • VBoxManage: added support for compacting VDI ﬁles (requires zeroing freespace in the guest) • API: startup even when a VM conﬁguration ﬁle is inaccessible or corrupted • API: faster startup using lazy media access checking • Linux Additions: ﬁxed several installation issues and added better error checks • Linux Additions: added support for X.org 7.1 • Installer: added packages for Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft), Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) and Debian 4.0 (Etch)

12.33 Version 1.2.4 (2006-11-16)
Several bug ﬁxes that accidentally didn’t make it into 1.2.2

12.34 Version 1.2.2 (2006-11-14)
Note: Guest Additions have to be updated for the enhanced VRDP features to work. • Linux Additions: improved compatibility with Red Hat distributions • Linux Additions: enhanced display performance, solved several issues • Linux Additions: added color pointer support • Linux Additions: added support for X.org 7.x • VMM: ﬁxed sporadic mouse reset problem • VMM: ﬁxed several issues with Linux guests • VMM: signiﬁcant performance improvements for Linux 2.6 guests • VMM: signiﬁcant general performance improvements • VMM: ﬁxed sporadic reboot problems (logo hang) • VMM: added support for Intel VT-x (aka Vanderpool)

229

12 Change log • VMM: experimental support for IBM OS/2 Warp (requires VT-x to be enabled) • USB: added support for isochronous transfers (webcams, audio, etc.) • USB: ﬁxed problem with devices not showing up after a guest reboot • USB: ﬁxed several issues • BIOS: ﬁxed use of fourth boot device • BIOS: added boot menu support • BIOS: added support for disks up to 2 Terabytes • VRDP: signiﬁcantly enhanced performance and reduced bandwidth usage through new acceleration architecture • VBoxManage: added support for capturing network trafﬁc • GUI: added fullscreen mode • GUI: ﬁxed several problems

12.35 Version 1.1.12 (2006-11-14)
• Additions: enabled more display modes for X.org 7.x • VMM: stability improvements • VMM: resolved excessive performance degradation caused by Symantec Antivirus • iSCSI: ﬁxed memory corruption issue • VBoxSDL: made hostkey conﬁgurable • VRDP: report error in case binding to the port fails • VRDP: added mouse wheel support • NAT: signiﬁcant performance improvements • Network: stability ﬁxes • Network: signiﬁcant performance improvements • ACPI: improved host power status reporting • PXE: added support for Microsoft RIS / ProxyDHCP • PXE: ﬁxed several issues, added diagnostic messages

230

12 Change log

12.36 Version 1.1.10 (2006-07-28)
• IDE: added workaround for Acronis TrueImage (violates IDE speciﬁcation) • IDE: resolved issues with certain Linux guests • ACPI: further improved host power status reporting • API: ﬁxed several race conditions and improved reliability • API: increased maximum guest RAM size to 2GB (Linux host) and 1.2GB (Windows host) • USB: added option to set the OHCI timer rate • VMM: ﬁxed several issues • VRDP: ﬁxed inﬁnite resize loop • GUI: changed the default host key to Right Control

12.37 Version 1.1.8 (2006-07-17)
• IDE: new ATA implementation with improved performance, reliability and better standards compliance • IDE: added experimental support for ATAPI passthrough (to use CD/DVD burners inside VMs) • VMM: ﬁxed user mode IOPL handling (hwclock failure) • VMM: ﬁxed crashes upon termination in Linux X servers • VMM: ﬁxed problems with Knoppix 5.0 (and other Linux kernels 2.6.15+) • VMM: improved handling of self modifying code (aka Linux 2.6.15+ errors) • VMM: introduce release logging for better serviceability • VMM: signiﬁcant performance improvements, especially for Linux 2.6 guests • VRDP: several issues have been ﬁxed • VRDP: ﬁxed enhanced rdesktop to build correctly under Linux 2.6.15+ • Additions: added support for SUSE 10.1 and Fedora Core 5 • NAT: improved performance and stability • NAT: handle host IP conﬁguration changes at runtime

231

12 Change log • VBoxManage: made VRDP authentication conﬁgurable • VDI: added workaround against possible Windows host deadlocks caused by a synchronization ﬂaw in Windows • ACPI: improved host power status reporting

12.38 Version 1.1.6 (2006-04-18)
• ACPI: added workaround for XP SP2 crash in intelppm.sys (the real problem is a bug in this driver) • IDE: added support for image ﬁles of up to 8 terabytes • API: ﬁxed several race conditions on SMP systems • Network: signiﬁcant performance improvements • VRDP: ﬁxed several issues with USB redirection • IDE: added workaround for Windows 2000 installation problems due to a bug in the Windows disk driver (see troubleshooting section) • VRDP: provide extensive connection information (also exposed through VBoxManage) • Linux module: added support for Linux 2.6.16 • VBoxManage: improved support for immutable disk images • iSCSI: several ﬁxes • USB: several ﬁxes • VBoxSDL: added switch for ﬁxed video mode and guest image centering • VMM: improved performance of Linux 2.6.x guests

12.39 Version 1.1.4 (2006-03-09)
Note: The conﬁguration ﬁle format has been changed. After applying this update, execute “VBoxManage updatesettings” to convert your conﬁguration to the new format. Note: Guest Additions have to be updated. • General: added support for multi-generation snapshots • VMM: ﬁxed Linux guest reboot regression

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12 Change log • VRDP: added client authentication through external authentication libraries (WinLogon and PAM interfaces are provided as sample code) • VRDP: close TCP connection immediately when receiving bad data from the remote side • VRDP: improved Microsoft RDP client support • XPCOM: ﬁxed race condition on SMP systems that could lead to hung client processes (Linux host) • API: ﬁxed race condition on SMP systems • Network: added AMD PC-Net II 100MBit network card (Am79C973) • Network: added PXE boot ROM for network boot • Audio: ﬁxed regression with Windows 2000 guests • Audio: pause playback when VM is paused • iSCSI: added standards compliant iSCSI initiator for transparent access of iSCSI targets • VBoxSDL: ship on Windows as well • VBoxManage: added command to clone a VDI ﬁle to another one having a different UUID • Additions: added Linux Additions (timesync, mouse pointer integration and graphics driver) • Additions: added Shared Folders for Windows guests (except NT) • Linux module: ﬁxed compilation problem on SUSE 10 system • Linux installer: added custom shell script installer

12.40 Version 1.1.2 (2006-02-03)
Note: Guest Additions have to be updated. The installation method has changed. • BIOS: ﬁxed CMOS checksum calculation (to avoid guest warnings) • BIOS: improved APM support (to avoid guest warnings) • IDE: Linux 2.6.14+ and OpenBSD now operate the controller in UDMA mode by default • VMM: ﬁxed hang when rebooting Windows 2000 guests with enabled audio adapter

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12 Change log • VMM: ﬁxed random user mode crashes with OpenBSD guests • VMM: increased timing accuracy (PIT, RTC), reduced PIT query overhead • VMM: tamed execution thread to make GUI more responsive (esp. when executing real mode guest code such as bootloaders) • VMM: signiﬁcant performance enhancements for OpenBSD guests • VMM: several performance enhancements • VMM: improved memory layout on Windows hosts to allow for large amounts of guest RAM • VMM: signiﬁcantly improved VM execution state saving and restoring (at the expense of state ﬁle sizes) • ACPI: ﬁxed Windows bluescreen when assigning more than 512MB RAM to a guest • ACPI: correctly report battery state when multiple batteries are present on the host (Linux hosts) • ACPI: enabled by default for newly created VMs • APIC: added optional I/O APIC • Graphics: ﬁxed distortion when changing guest color depth without changing the resolution • VRDP: added support for remote USB (requires special rdesktop client) • VRDP: added support for the Microsoft RDP client • VRDP: improved audio support • Floppy: controller can be disabled • Floppy: ﬁxed “no disk in drive” reporting • Floppy: ﬁxed writing to ﬂoppy images • VBoxManage: restructured USB device ﬁlter syntax to make it more intuitive • VBoxManage: added command for setting guest logon credentials • Additions: added installer for Windows 2000/XP/2003 guests • Additions: added custom GINA module which hooks MSGINA and can perform automatic logons using credentials retrieved from the VMM • Documentation: added draft of VirtualBox user manual

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12 Change log

12.41 Version 1.0.50 (2005-12-16)
Note: Guest Additions have to be updated • VMM: added support for OpenBSD guests • VMM: ﬁxed a memory leak • Network: added Internal Networking (to directly wire VMs without using host interfaces and making the trafﬁc visible on the host) • Network: ﬁxed crash/hang at exit with TAP on Linux • Graphics: added support for additional custom VESA modes • Graphics: added support for VESA modes with y offset • VRDP: added support for remote audio (PCM encoding) • USB: ﬁxed several potential crashes • USB: ﬁxed revision ﬁlter matching • USB: ﬁxed support for devices with integrated USB hubs

12.42 Version 1.0.48 (2005-11-23)
Note: The conﬁguration has to be deleted as the format has changed. On Linux, issue rm -rf ˜ /.VirtualBox. On Windows, remove the directory C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.VirtualBox. If you fail to do so, VirtualBox will not startup. Note: Guest Additions have to be updated • VMM: ﬁxed a Linux 2.6 guest panic on certain P4 CPUs • VMM: performance improvements • Graphics: ﬁxed y offset handling in dynamic resolution mode (secure labeling support) • VDI: added support for immutable independent images (part of the upcoming snapshot feature) • Additions: added VBoxControl command line utility to get/set the guest video acceleration status • Additions: video acceleration is turned off by default, use VBoxControl to enable it. It usually helps for VRDP performance. • GUI: DirectDraw support for faster display handling on Win32.

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12 Change log • GUI: allow creation and assignment of disk images in the New VM wizard. • USB: ﬁxed high CPU load on certain Linux distributions • VBoxSDL: ﬁxed several secure labeling issues (crash at exit, protection against guest video modes greater than what SDL provides on the host) • VBoxManage: convert command line parameters from the current codepage to Unicode

12.43 Version 1.0.46 (2005-11-04)
Note: Guest Additions have to be updated • Linux: VirtualBox binaries can now be started from directories other than the installation directory • VMM: added support for PAE guest mode • VMM: added support for hosts running in NX (No Execute) / DEP (Data Execution Prevention) mode • Graphics: ﬁxes for dynamic resolution handling • Linux module: yet another kernel panic ﬁx due to weird patches in RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 2 • VBoxSVC: if VBOX_USER_HOME is set, look for conﬁguration in this directory (default: $HOME/.VirtualBox)

12.44 Version 1.0.44 (2005-10-25)
Note: Guest Additions have to be updated. • Installer: greatly improved Windows installer, ﬁxed uninstall and perform driver and COM registration through MSI • VBoxManage: added commands to create and delete Win32 Host Interface Networking adapters • VDI: updated virtual disk image format (for newly created images; old images continue to work) with enhanced write performance and support for the upcoming snapshot feature • Network: performance improvements • Graphics: added hardware acceleration to virtual graphics adapter and corresponding Guest Additions driver

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12 Change log • Graphics/Additions/GUI: added dynamic resizing support • Graphics: added workaround for buggy VESA support in Windows Vista/Longhorn • VRDP: performance and stability improvements; added support for graphics acceleration architecture • USB: restructured USB subsystem; added support for ﬁlters to autocapture devices that meet deﬁned criteria • GUI: added mouse wheel support • VMM: added support for PAE host mode

12.45 Version 1.0.42 (2005-08-30)
Note: The conﬁguration has to be deleted as the format has changed. On Linux, issue rm -rf ˜ /.VirtualBox. On Windows, remove the directory C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.VirtualBox. If you fail to do so, VirtualBox will not startup. Note: Guest Additions have to be updated. • USB: added USB support for Windows hosts • Network: renamed TUN to “Host Interface Networking” and TAP on Linux • Network: added support for Host Interface Networking on Windows hosts • Network: added “cable connected” property to the virtual network cards • Floppy: added a virtual ﬂoppy drive to the VM and support for attaching ﬂoppy images and capturing host ﬂoppy drives • DVD/CD: added host CD/DVD drive support • BIOS: added boot order support • Saved states: made location conﬁgurable (default, global setting, machine speciﬁc setting, including VBoxManage command support) • VMM: added support for host CPUs without FXSR (e.g. Via Centaur) • VMM: increased performance of Linux 2.6 guests • VMM: improved timing • VMM: ﬁxed traps in XP guests with ACPI enabled • VBoxManage: added remote session start function (tstHeadless has been removed from the distribution)

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12 Change log • VBoxManage: restructured commands, added numerous improvements • GUI: propagate hostkey change to all running instances • GUI: perform image access tests asynchronously • GUI: added boot order support • GUI: user interface redesign

12.46 Version 1.0.40 (2005-06-17)
Note: The conﬁguration has to be deleted as the format has changed. On Linux, issue rm -rf ˜ /.VirtualBox. On Windows, remove the directory C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.VirtualBox. If you fail to do so, VirtualBox will not startup. Note: Guest Additions have to be updated. • SDK: ship VirtualBox development tools and sample program • BIOS: made startup logo animation conﬁgurable for OEM customers • BIOS: ﬁxed network card detection under DOS • Graphics: ﬁxed VESA modes in XP and XFree86/X.org • Network: ﬁxed Linux guest issues • Network: ﬁxed NAT DHCP server to work with MS-DOS TCP/IP • Network: ﬁxed performance issue under heavy guest CPU load • Network: ﬁxed errors with more than one network card • USB: added experimental USB support for Linux hosts • VMM: ﬁxed DOS A20 gate handling in real mode • VMM: ﬁxed TSS IO bitmap handling (crash in Debian/Knoppix hardware detection routine) • VMM: ﬁxed IO issue which broke VESA in X11 • VMM: performance improvements for Linux guests • VMM: added local APIC support • VBoxSDL: added pointer shape support and use host pointer in fullscreen mode if available • GUI: determine system parameters (e.g. maximum VDI size) using the API

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12 Change log • GUI: added detailed error information dialogs • GUI: special handling of inaccessible media • API: better error message handling, provide system parameters, handle inaccessible media • Guest Additions: implemented full pointer shape support for all pointer color depths including alpha channel • VBoxManage: several command extensions

12.47 Version 1.0.39 (2005-05-05)
Note: Guest Additions have to be updated. • Linux: converted XPCOM runtime to a single shared object • Linux: ﬁxed SIGALRM process crash on certain distributions • VMM: ﬁxed Linux guests with grsecurity (address space scrambling) • ACPI: added experimental ACPI support • VRDP: added shadow buffer for reduced bandwidth usage • VRDP: added support for pointer shapes and remote pointer cache • GUI: added support for pointer shapes • Windows Additions: added support for high resolution video modes, including multi screen modes (2, 3 and 4 screens) • VBoxManage: added new command line tool to automate simple administration tasks without having to write application code

12.48 Version 1.0.38 (2005-04-27)
• GUI: ﬁxed creation of disk images larger than 4GB • GUI: added network and audio conﬁguration panels • GUI: several keyboard issues ﬁxed • VBoxSDL: ﬁxed -tunfd handling and added -tundev (Linux host) • IDE: signiﬁcant performance improvements in DMA modes • Video: VRAM size is now conﬁgurable (1MB - 128MB; default 4MB)

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12 Change log • VMM: ﬁxed several crashes and hangs while installing certain builds of Windows 2000 and XP • VMM: allow guests to have more than 512MB of RAM • VMM: resolved compatibility issues with SMP systems (Windows Host) • VRDP: process cleanup on Linux ﬁxed • Linux module: ﬁxed build error on Red Hat 2.4.21-15-EL • NT Additions: ﬁxed installation and a trap • Win2k/XP Additions: ﬁxed installation

12.49 Version 1.0.37 (2005-04-12)
Initial build with change log.

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13 Known limitations
The following section describes some issues that are known not to work in VirtualBox 3.1.0. Unless marked otherwise these issues are planned to be ﬁxed in later releases. • The following Guest SMP (multiprocessor) limitations exist: – Poor performance with 32-bit guests on AMD CPUs. This affects mainly Windows and Solaris guests, but possibly also some Linux kernel revisions. Partially solved in 3.0.6 for 32 bits Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003 guests. Requires 3.0.6 or higher Guest Additions to be installed. – Poor performance with 32-bit guests on certain Intel CPU models that do not include virtual APIC hardware optimization support. This affects mainly Windows and Solaris guests, but possibly also some Linux kernel revisions. – 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts do not support SMP yet (except on Mac OS X). • 64-bit guests on some 32-bit host systems with VT-x can cause instabilities to your system. If you experience this, do not attempt to execute 64-bit guests. Refer to the VirtualBox user forum for additional information. • Direct 3D support in Windows guests. For this to work, the Guest Additions must be installed in Windows “safe mode”. Press F8 when the Windows guest is booting and select “Safe mode”, then install the Guest Additions. Otherwise Windows’ ﬁle protection mechanism will interfere with the replacement DLLs installed by VirtualBox and keep restoring the original Windows system DLLs. • Compacting virtual disk images is limited to VDI ﬁles. The VBoxManage modifyhd -compact command is currently only implemented for VDI ﬁles. At the moment the only way to optimize the size of a virtual disk images in other formats (VMDK, VHD) is to clone the image and then use the cloned image in the VM conﬁguration. • OVF import/export: – Some virtual machine properties supported by VirtualBox’s own XML ﬁle format are not exported. As a result, when exporting and then re-importing a virtual machine with VirtualBox, the settings need not be identical. This is especially true for the I/O APIC setting, 3D acceleration, hardware virtualization, nested paging and other VM properties. – OVF localization (multiple languages in one OVF ﬁle) is not yet supported.

241

13 Known limitations – Some OVF sections like StartupSection, DeploymentOptionSection and InstallSection are ignored. – OVF environment documents, including their property sections and appliance conﬁguration with ISO images, are not yet supported. – OVA archives (TAR containers) are not yet supported. – Remote ﬁles via HTTP or other mechanisms are not yet supported. • Vista 64-bit hosts have stability issues when using USB. • Seamless mode does not work correctly on host systems with multiple monitors. • Mac OS X host. The following restrictions apply (all of which will be resolved in future versions): – No support for audio input. – The numlock emulation has not yet been implemented. – The CPU frequency metric is not supported. – 3D OpenGL acceleration. In general the OpenGL support for Linux guest is experimental. This counts especially in combination with compiz enabled window managers. Additional we are aware of the following issues: ∗ There are several redraw problems with compiz enabled window managers on Linux guests. E.g. after save/restore state or a resize of the guest window. • Linux hosts. There are a few problems when compiz is used as the host’s window manager, notably: – seamless mode does not work well (garbled screen display if no windows are open in the guest); – OpenGL guest acceleration (added with 2.1) is very slow. If you experience these problems, you way want to try using a different window manager, such as metacity. • Solaris hosts. For OpenSolaris and Solaris 10 U5/U6, the following restrictions apply: – There is no support for USB on Solaris 10 hosts. – Experimental USB support for OpenSolaris/Nevada hosts (versions 124 and higher recommended). – No ACPI information (battery status, power source) is reported to the guest. – No support for using wireless with bridged networking.

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13 Known limitations • Guest Additions for OS/2. Shared folders are not yet supported with OS/2 guests. In addition, seamless windows and automatic guest resizing will probably never be implemented due to inherent limitations of the OS/2 graphics system.

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14 Third-party licenses
VirtualBox incorporates materials from several Open Source software projects. Therefore the use of these materials by VirtualBox is governed by different Open Source licenses. This document reproduces these licenses and provides a list of the materials used and their respective licensing conditions. Section 1 contains a list of the materials used. Section 2 reproduces the applicable Open Source licenses. For each material, a reference to its license is provided.

14.1 Materials
• VirtualBox contains portions of QEMU which is governed by the licenses in chapter 14.2.5, X Consortium License (X11), page 266 and chapter 14.2.2, GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), page 251 and (C) 2003-2005 Fabrice Bellard; Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Vassili Karpov (malc); Copyright (c) 2004 Antony T Curtis; Copyright (C) 2003 Jocelyn Mayer • VirtualBox contains code which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.5, X Consortium License (X11), page 266 and Copyright 2004 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. • VirtualBox contains code of the BOCHS VGA BIOS which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.2, GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), page 251 and Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 the LGPL VGABios developers Team. • VirtualBox contains code of the BOCHS ROM BIOS which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.2, GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), page 251 and Copyright (C) 2002 MandrakeSoft S.A.; Copyright (C) 2004 Fabrice Bellard; Copyright (C) 2005 Struan Bartlett. • VirtualBox contains the zlib library which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.6, zlib license, page 266 and Copyright (C) 1995-2003 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler. • VirtualBox may contain OpenSSL which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.7, OpenSSL license, page 266 and Copyright (C) 1995-1998 Eric Young ([email protected]). This product includes software written by Tim Hudson ([email protected]).

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14 Third-party licenses • VirtualBox may contain NSPR and XPCOM which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.3, Mozilla Public License (MPL), page 258 and Copyright (C) The Authors. • VirtualBox contains Slirp which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.8, Slirp license, page 267 and was written by Danny Gasparovski. Copyright (C) 1995, 1996 All Rights Reserved. • VirtualBox contains liblzf which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.9, liblzf license, page 268 and Copyright (C) 2000-2005 Marc Alexander Lehmann <[email protected]> • VirtualBox may ship with a modiﬁed copy of rdesktop which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.1, GNU General Public License (GPL), page 246 and Copyright (C) Matthew Chapman and others. • VirtualBox may ship with a copy of kchmviewer which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.1, GNU General Public License (GPL), page 246 and Copyright (C) George Yunaev and others. • VirtualBox may contain Etherboot which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.1, GNU General Public License (GPL), page 246 with the exception that aggregating Etherboot with another work does not require the other work to be released under the same license (see http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/ clinks.html). Etherboot is Copyright (C) Etherboot team. • VirtualBox may contain code from Wine which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.2, GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), page 251 and Copyright 1993 Bob Amstadt, Copyright 1996 Albrecht Kleine, Copyright 1997 David Faure, Copyright 1998 Morten Welinder, Copyright 1998 Ulrich Weigand, Copyright 1999 Ove Koven • VirtualBox contains code from lwIP which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.11, lwIP license, page 269 and Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Swedish Institute of Computer Science. • VirtualBox contains libxml which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.12, libxml license, page 269 and Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Daniel Veillard. • VirtualBox contains libxslt which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.13, libxslt licenses, page 270 and Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Daniel Veillard and Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Thomas Broyer, Charlie Bozeman and Daniel Veillard.

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14 Third-party licenses • VirtualBox may contain code from the gSOAP XML web services tools, which are licensed under the license in chapter 14.2.14, gSOAP Public License Version 1.3a, page 271 and Copyright (C) 2000-2007, Robert van Engelen, Genivia Inc., and others. • VirtualBox may ship with the application tunctl (shipped as VBoxTunctl) from the User-mode Linux suite which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.1, GNU General Public License (GPL), page 246 and Copyright (C) 2002 Jeff Dike. • VirtualBox contains code from Chromium, an OpenGL implementation, which is goverened by the licenses in chapter 14.2.15, Chromium licenses, page 277 and Copyright (C) Stanford University, The Regents of the University of California, Red Hat, and others. • VirtualBox contains libcurl which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.16, curl license, page 280 and Copyright (C) 1996-2009, Daniel Stenberg. • VirtualBox contains dnsproxy which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.4, MIT License, page 265 and Copyright (c) 2003, 2004, 2005 Armin Wolfermann. • VirtualBox may contain iniparser which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.4, MIT License, page 265 and Copyright (c) 2000-2008 by Nicolas Devillard. • VirtualBox contains some code from libgd which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.17, libgd license, page 280 and Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Pierre-Alain Joye ([email protected]).

14.2 Licenses
14.2.1 GNU General Public License (GPL)
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee

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14 Third-party licenses your freedom to share and change free software–to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things. To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights. We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software. Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modiﬁed by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reﬂect on the original authors’ reputations. Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all. The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modiﬁcation follow. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The “Program”, below, refers to any such program or work, and a “work based on the Program” means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modiﬁcations and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term “modiﬁcation”.) Each licensee is addressed as “you”. Activities other than copying, distribution and modiﬁcation are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

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14 Third-party licenses 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modiﬁcations or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) You must cause the modiﬁed ﬁles to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the ﬁles and the date of any change. b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. c) If the modiﬁed program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.) These requirements apply to the modiﬁed work as a whole. If identiﬁable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

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14 Third-party licenses b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modiﬁcations to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface deﬁnition ﬁles, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code. 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it. 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. 7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of

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14 Third-party licenses the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances. It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice. This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License. 8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License. 9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program speciﬁes a version number of this License which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation. 10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally. NO WARRANTY 11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE

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14 Third-party licenses PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. 12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

14.2.2 GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2.1, February 1999 Copyright (C) 1991, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. [This is the ﬁrst released version of the Lesser GPL. It also counts as the successor of the GNU Library Public License, version 2, hence the version number 2.1.] Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software–to make sure the software is free for all its users. This license, the Lesser General Public License, applies to some specially designated software packages–typically libraries–of the Free Software Foundation and other authors who decide to use it. You can use it too, but we suggest you ﬁrst think carefully about whether this license or the ordinary General Public License is the better strategy to use in any particular case, based on the explanations below. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom of use, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish); that you receive source code or can get it if you want it; that you can change the software and use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you are informed that you can do these things. To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid distributors to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender these rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the library or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of the library, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that we gave you. You must make sure that they,

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14 Third-party licenses too, receive or can get the source code. If you link other code with the library, you must provide complete object ﬁles to the recipients, so that they can relink them with the library after making changes to the library and recompiling it. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights. We protect your rights with a two-step method: (1) we copyright the library, and (2) we offer you this license, which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the library. To protect each distributor, we want to make it very clear that there is no warranty for the free library. Also, if the library is modiﬁed by someone else and passed on, the recipients should know that what they have is not the original version, so that the original author’s reputation will not be affected by problems that might be introduced by others. Finally, software patents pose a constant threat to the existence of any free program. We wish to make sure that a company cannot effectively restrict the users of a free program by obtaining a restrictive license from a patent holder. Therefore, we insist that any patent license obtained for a version of the library must be consistent with the full freedom of use speciﬁed in this license. Most GNU software, including some libraries, is covered by the ordinary GNU General Public License. This license, the GNU Lesser General Public License, applies to certain designated libraries, and is quite different from the ordinary General Public License. We use this license for certain libraries in order to permit linking those libraries into non-free programs. When a program is linked with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination of the two is legally speaking a combined work, a derivative of the original library. The ordinary General Public License therefore permits such linking only if the entire combination ﬁts its criteria of freedom. The Lesser General Public License permits more lax criteria for linking other code with the library. We call this license the “Lesser” General Public License because it does Less to protect the user’s freedom than the ordinary General Public License. It also provides other free software developers Less of an advantage over competing non-free programs. These disadvantages are the reason we use the ordinary General Public License for many libraries. However, the Lesser license provides advantages in certain special circumstances. For example, on rare occasions, there may be a special need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must be allowed to use the library. A more frequent case is that a free library does the same job as widely used non-free libraries. In this case, there is little to gain by limiting the free library to free software only, so we use the Lesser General Public License. In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-free programs enables a greater number of people to use a large body of free software. For example, permission to use the GNU C Library in non-free programs enables many more people to use the whole GNU operating system, as well as its variant, the GNU/Linux operating system.

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14 Third-party licenses Although the Lesser General Public License is Less protective of the users’ freedom, it does ensure that the user of a program that is linked with the Library has the freedom and the wherewithal to run that program using a modiﬁed version of the Library. The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modiﬁcation follow. Pay close attention to the difference between a “work based on the library” and a “work that uses the library”. The former contains code derived from the library, whereas the latter must be combined with the library in order to run. GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0. This License Agreement applies to any software library or other program which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder or other authorized party saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Lesser General Public License (also called “this License”). Each licensee is addressed as “you”. A “library” means a collection of software functions and/or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked with application programs (which use some of those functions and data) to form executables. The “Library”, below, refers to any such software library or work which has been distributed under these terms. A “work based on the Library” means either the Library or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Library or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modiﬁcations and/or translated straightforwardly into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term “modiﬁcation”.) “Source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modiﬁcations to it. For a library, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface deﬁnition ﬁles, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the library. Activities other than copying, distribution and modiﬁcation are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running a program using the Library is not restricted, and output from such a program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Library (independent of the use of the Library in a tool for writing it). Whether that is true depends on what the Library does and what the program that uses the Library does. 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Library’s complete source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and distribute a copy of this License along with the Library. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and distribute such modiﬁcations or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) The modiﬁed work must itself be a software library.

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14 Third-party licenses b) You must cause the ﬁles modiﬁed to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the ﬁles and the date of any change. c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. d) If a facility in the modiﬁed Library refers to a function or a table of data to be supplied by an application program that uses the facility, other than as an argument passed when the facility is invoked, then you must make a good faith effort to ensure that, in the event an application does not supply such function or table, the facility still operates, and performs whatever part of its purpose remains meaningful. (For example, a function in a library to compute square roots has a purpose that is entirely well-deﬁned independent of the application. Therefore, Subsection 2d requires that any application-supplied function or table used by this function must be optional: if the application does not supply it, the square root function must still compute square roots.) These requirements apply to the modiﬁed work as a whole. If identiﬁable sections of that work are not derived from the Library, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Library, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Library. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Library with the Library (or with a work based on the Library) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. 3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library. To do this, you must alter all the notices that refer to this License, so that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License, version 2, instead of to this License. (If a newer version than version 2 of the ordinary GNU General Public License has appeared, then you can specify that version instead if you wish.) Do not make any other change in these notices. Once this change is made in a given copy, it is irreversible for that copy, so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all subsequent copies and derivative works made from that copy. This option is useful when you wish to copy part of the code of the Library into a program that is not a library. 4. You may copy and distribute the Library (or a portion or derivative of it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange.

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14 Third-party licenses If distribution of object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place satisﬁes the requirement to distribute the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code. 5. A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called a “work that uses the Library”. Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License. However, linking a “work that uses the Library” with the Library creates an executable that is a derivative of the Library (because it contains portions of the Library), rather than a “work that uses the library”. The executable is therefore covered by this License. Section 6 states terms for distribution of such executables. When a “work that uses the Library” uses material from a header ﬁle that is part of the Library, the object code for the work may be a derivative work of the Library even though the source code is not. Whether this is true is especially signiﬁcant if the work can be linked without the Library, or if the work is itself a library. The threshold for this to be true is not precisely deﬁned by law. If such an object ﬁle uses only numerical parameters, data structure layouts and accessors, and small macros and small inline functions (ten lines or less in length), then the use of the object ﬁle is unrestricted, regardless of whether it is legally a derivative work. (Executables containing this object code plus portions of the Library will still fall under Section 6.) Otherwise, if the work is a derivative of the Library, you may distribute the object code for the work under the terms of Section 6. Any executables containing that work also fall under Section 6, whether or not they are linked directly with the Library itself. 6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a “work that uses the Library” with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modiﬁcation of the work for the customer’s own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modiﬁcations. You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License. You must supply a copy of this License. If the work during execution displays copyright notices, you must include the copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as a reference directing the user to the copy of this License. Also, you must do one of these things: a) Accompany the work with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code for the Library including whatever changes were used in the work (which must be distributed under Sections 1 and 2 above); and, if the work is an executable linked with the Library, with the complete machine-readable “work that uses the Library”, as object code and/or source code, so that the user can modify the Library and then relink to produce a modiﬁed executable containing the modiﬁed Library. (It is understood that the user who changes the contents of deﬁnitions ﬁles in the Library will not necessarily be able to recompile the application to use the modiﬁed deﬁnitions.) b) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (1) uses at run time a copy of the library already present on

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14 Third-party licenses the user’s computer system, rather than copying library functions into the executable, and (2) will operate properly with a modiﬁed version of the library, if the user installs one, as long as the modiﬁed version is interface-compatible with the version that the work was made with. c) Accompany the work with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give the same user the materials speciﬁed in Subsection 6a, above, for a charge no more than the cost of performing this distribution. d) If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, offer equivalent access to copy the above speciﬁed materials from the same place. e) Verify that the user has already received a copy of these materials or that you have already sent this user a copy. For an executable, the required form of the “work that uses the Library” must include any data and utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from it. However, as a special exception, the materials to be distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. It may happen that this requirement contradicts the license restrictions of other proprietary libraries that do not normally accompany the operating system. Such a contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library together in an executable that you distribute. 7. You may place library facilities that are a work based on the Library side-by-side in a single library together with other library facilities not covered by this License, and distribute such a combined library, provided that the separate distribution of the work based on the Library and of the other library facilities is otherwise permitted, and provided that you do these two things: a) Accompany the combined library with a copy of the same work based on the Library, uncombined with any other library facilities. This must be distributed under the terms of the Sections above. b) Give prominent notice with the combined library of the fact that part of it is a work based on the Library, and explaining where to ﬁnd the accompanying uncombined form of the same work. 8. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, link with, or distribute the Library except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, link with, or distribute the Library is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 9. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Library or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Library (or any work based on the Library), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Library or works based on it.

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14 Third-party licenses 10. Each time you redistribute the Library (or any work based on the Library), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute, link with or modify the Library subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties with this License. 11. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Library at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Library. If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply, and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances. It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice. This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License. 12. If the distribution and/or use of the Library is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Library under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License. 13. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the Lesser General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Library speciﬁes a version number of this License which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Library does not specify a license version number, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

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14 Third-party licenses 14. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Library into other free programs whose distribution conditions are incompatible with these, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally. NO WARRANTY 15. BECAUSE THE LIBRARY IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE LIBRARY, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE LIBRARY “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE LIBRARY IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE LIBRARY PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. 16. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE LIBRARY AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE LIBRARY (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE LIBRARY TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER SOFTWARE), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

14.2.3 Mozilla Public License (MPL)
MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE Version 1.1 1. Deﬁnitions. 1.0.1. “Commercial Use” means distribution or otherwise making the Covered Code available to a third party. 1.1. “Contributor” means each entity that creates or contributes to the creation of Modiﬁcations. 1.2. “Contributor Version” means the combination of the Original Code, prior Modiﬁcations used by a Contributor, and the Modiﬁcations made by that particular Contributor. 1.3. “Covered Code” means the Original Code or Modiﬁcations or the combination of the Original Code and Modiﬁcations, in each case including portions thereof. 1.4. “Electronic Distribution Mechanism” means a mechanism generally accepted in the software development community for the electronic transfer of data. 1.5. “Executable” means Covered Code in any form other than Source Code.

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14 Third-party licenses 1.6. “Initial Developer” means the individual or entity identiﬁed as the Initial Developer in the Source Code notice required by Exhibit A. 1.7. “Larger Work” means a work which combines Covered Code or portions thereof with code not governed by the terms of this License. 1.8. “License” means this document. 1.8.1. “Licensable” means having the right to grant, to the maximum extent possible, whether at the time of the initial grant or subsequently acquired, any and all of the rights conveyed herein. 1.9. “Modiﬁcations” means any addition to or deletion from the substance or structure of either the Original Code or any previous Modiﬁcations. When Covered Code is released as a series of ﬁles, a Modiﬁcation is: A. Any addition to or deletion from the contents of a ﬁle containing Original Code or previous Modiﬁcations. B. Any new ﬁle that contains any part of the Original Code or previous Modiﬁcations. 1.10. “Original Code” means Source Code of computer software code which is described in the Source Code notice required by Exhibit A as Original Code, and which, at the time of its release under this License is not already Covered Code governed by this License. 1.10.1. “Patent Claims” means any patent claim(s), now owned or hereafter acquired, including without limitation, method, process, and apparatus claims, in any patent Licensable by grantor. 1.11. “Source Code” means the preferred form of the Covered Code for making modiﬁcations to it, including all modules it contains, plus any associated interface deﬁnition ﬁles, scripts used to control compilation and installation of an Executable, or source code differential comparisons against either the Original Code or another well known, available Covered Code of the Contributor’s choice. The Source Code can be in a compressed or archival form, provided the appropriate decompression or de-archiving software is widely available for no charge. 1.12. “You” (or “Your”) means an individual or a legal entity exercising rights under, and complying with all of the terms of, this License or a future version of this License issued under Section 6.1. For legal entities, “You” includes any entity which controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with You. For purposes of this deﬁnition, “control” means (a) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (b) ownership of more than ﬁfty percent (50%) of the outstanding shares or beneﬁcial ownership of such entity. 2. Source Code License. 2.1. The Initial Developer Grant. The Initial Developer hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license, subject to third party intellectual property claims: (a) under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by Initial Developer to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Original Code (or portions thereof) with or without Modiﬁcations, and/or as part of a Larger Work; and

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14 Third-party licenses (b) under Patents Claims infringed by the making, using or selling of Original Code, to make, have made, use, practice, sell, and offer for sale, and/or otherwise dispose of the Original Code (or portions thereof). (c) the licenses granted in this Section 2.1(a) and (b) are effective on the date Initial Developer ﬁrst distributes Original Code under the terms of this License. (d) Notwithstanding Section 2.1(b) above, no patent license is granted: 1) for code that You delete from the Original Code; 2) separate from the Original Code; or 3) for infringements caused by: i) the modiﬁcation of the Original Code or ii) the combination of the Original Code with other software or devices. 2.2. Contributor Grant. Subject to third party intellectual property claims, each Contributor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license (a) under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by Contributor, to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Modiﬁcations created by such Contributor (or portions thereof) either on an unmodiﬁed basis, with other Modiﬁcations, as Covered Code and/or as part of a Larger Work; and (b) under Patent Claims infringed by the making, using, or selling of Modiﬁcations made by that Contributor either alone and/or in combination with its Contributor Version (or portions of such combination), to make, use, sell, offer for sale, have made, and/or otherwise dispose of: 1) Modiﬁcations made by that Contributor (or portions thereof); and 2) the combination of Modiﬁcations made by that Contributor with its Contributor Version (or portions of such combination). (c) the licenses granted in Sections 2.2(a) and 2.2(b) are effective on the date Contributor ﬁrst makes Commercial Use of the Covered Code. (d) Notwithstanding Section 2.2(b) above, no patent license is granted: 1) for any code that Contributor has deleted from the Contributor Version; 2) separate from the Contributor Version; 3) for infringements caused by: i) third party modiﬁcations of Contributor Version or ii) the combination of Modiﬁcations made by that Contributor with other software (except as part of the Contributor Version) or other devices; or 4) under Patent Claims infringed by Covered Code in the absence of Modiﬁcations made by that Contributor. 3. Distribution Obligations. 3.1. Application of License. The Modiﬁcations which You create or to which You contribute are governed by the terms of this License, including without limitation Section 2.2. The Source Code version of Covered Code may be distributed only under the terms of this License or a future version of this License released under Section 6.1, and You must include a copy of this License with every copy of the Source Code You distribute. You may not offer or impose any terms on any Source Code version that alters or restricts the applicable version of this License or the recipients’ rights hereunder. However, You may include an additional document offering the additional rights described in Section 3.5. 3.2. Availability of Source Code. Any Modiﬁcation which You create or to which You contribute must be made available in Source Code form under the terms of this License either on the same media as an Executable version or via an accepted Electronic Distribution Mechanism to anyone to whom you made an Executable version

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14 Third-party licenses available; and if made available via Electronic Distribution Mechanism, must remain available for at least twelve (12) months after the date it initially became available, or at least six (6) months after a subsequent version of that particular Modiﬁcation has been made available to such recipients. You are responsible for ensuring that the Source Code version remains available even if the Electronic Distribution Mechanism is maintained by a third party. 3.3. Description of Modiﬁcations. You must cause all Covered Code to which You contribute to contain a ﬁle documenting the changes You made to create that Covered Code and the date of any change. You must include a prominent statement that the Modiﬁcation is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Code provided by the Initial Developer and including the name of the Initial Developer in (a) the Source Code, and (b) in any notice in an Executable version or related documentation in which You describe the origin or ownership of the Covered Code. 3.4. Intellectual Property Matters (a) Third Party Claims. If Contributor has knowledge that a license under a third party’s intellectual property rights is required to exercise the rights granted by such Contributor under Sections 2.1 or 2.2, Contributor must include a text ﬁle with the Source Code distribution titled “LEGAL” which describes the claim and the party making the claim in sufﬁcient detail that a recipient will know whom to contact. If Contributor obtains such knowledge after the Modiﬁcation is made available as described in Section 3.2, Contributor shall promptly modify the LEGAL ﬁle in all copies Contributor makes available thereafter and shall take other steps (such as notifying appropriate mailing lists or newsgroups) reasonably calculated to inform those who received the Covered Code that new knowledge has been obtained. (b) Contributor APIs. If Contributor’s Modiﬁcations include an application programming interface and Contributor has knowledge of patent licenses which are reasonably necessary to implement that API, Contributor must also include this information in the LEGAL ﬁle. 3.5. Required Notices. You must duplicate the notice in Exhibit A in each ﬁle of the Source Code. If it is not possible to put such notice in a particular Source Code ﬁle due to its structure, then You must include such notice in a location (such as a relevant directory) where a user would be likely to look for such a notice. If You created one or more Modiﬁcation(s) You may add your name as a Contributor to the notice described in Exhibit A. You must also duplicate this License in any documentation for the Source Code where You describe recipients’ rights or ownership rights relating to Covered Code. You may choose to offer, and to charge a fee for, warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligations to one or more recipients of Covered Code. However, You may do so only on Your own behalf, and not on behalf of the Initial Developer or any Contributor. You must make it absolutely clear than any such warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligation is offered by You alone, and You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Developer and every Contributor for any liability incurred by the Initial Developer or such Contributor as a result of warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You offer. 3.6. Distribution of Executable Versions. You may distribute Covered Code in Executable form only if the requirements of Section 3.1-3.5 have been met for that Cov-

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14 Third-party licenses ered Code, and if You include a notice stating that the Source Code version of the Covered Code is available under the terms of this License, including a description of how and where You have fulﬁlled the obligations of Section 3.2. The notice must be conspicuously included in any notice in an Executable version, related documentation or collateral in which You describe recipients’ rights relating to the Covered Code. You may distribute the Executable version of Covered Code or ownership rights under a license of Your choice, which may contain terms different from this License, provided that You are in compliance with the terms of this License and that the license for the Executable version does not attempt to limit or alter the recipient’s rights in the Source Code version from the rights set forth in this License. If You distribute the Executable version under a different license You must make it absolutely clear that any terms which differ from this License are offered by You alone, not by the Initial Developer or any Contributor. You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Developer and every Contributor for any liability incurred by the Initial Developer or such Contributor as a result of any such terms You offer. 3.7. Larger Works. You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Code with other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulﬁlled for the Covered Code. 4. Inability to Comply Due to Statute or Regulation.If it is impossible for You to comply with any of the terms of this License with respect to some or all of the Covered Code due to statute, judicial order, or regulation then You must: (a) comply with the terms of this License to the maximum extent possible; and (b) describe the limitations and the code they affect. Such description must be included in the LEGAL ﬁle described in Section 3.4 and must be included with all distributions of the Source Code. Except to the extent prohibited by statute or regulation, such description must be sufﬁciently detailed for a recipient of ordinary skill to be able to understand it. 5. Application of this License. This License applies to code to which the Initial Developer has attached the notice in Exhibit A and to related Covered Code. 6. Versions of the License. 6.1. New Versions. Netscape Communications Corporation (“Netscape”) may publish revised and/or new versions of the License from time to time. Each version will be given a distinguishing version number. 6.2. Effect of New Versions. Once Covered Code has been published under a particular version of the License, You may always continue to use it under the terms of that version. You may also choose to use such Covered Code under the terms of any subsequent version of the License published by Netscape. No one other than Netscape has the right to modify the terms applicable to Covered Code created under this License. 6.3. Derivative Works. If You create or use a modiﬁed version of this License (which you may only do in order to apply it to code which is not already Covered Code governed by this License), You must (a) rename Your license so that the phrases “Mozilla”, “MOZILLAPL”, “MOZPL”, “Netscape”, “MPL”, “NPL” or any confusingly similar phrase do not appear in your license (except to note that your license differs from this License) and (b) otherwise make it clear that Your version of the license contains terms which differ from the Mozilla Public License and Netscape Public License. (Filling in

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14 Third-party licenses the name of the Initial Developer, Original Code or Contributor in the notice described in Exhibit A shall not of themselves be deemed to be modiﬁcations of this License.) 7. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. COVERED CODE IS PROVIDED UNDER THIS LICENSE ON AN “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES THAT THE COVERED CODE IS FREE OF DEFECTS, MERCHANTABLE, FIT FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGING. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE COVERED CODE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD ANY COVERED CODE PROVE DEFECTIVE IN ANY RESPECT, YOU (NOT THE INITIAL DEVELOPER OR ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR) ASSUME THE COST OF ANY NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY CONSTITUTES AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THIS LICENSE. NO USE OF ANY COVERED CODE IS AUTHORIZED HEREUNDER EXCEPT UNDER THIS DISCLAIMER. 8. TERMINATION. 8.1. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with terms herein and fail to cure such breach within 30 days of becoming aware of the breach. All sublicenses to the Covered Code which are properly granted shall survive any termination of this License. Provisions which, by their nature, must remain in effect beyond the termination of this License shall survive. 8.2. If You initiate litigation by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declaratory judgment actions) against Initial Developer or a Contributor (the Initial Developer or Contributor against whom You ﬁle such action is referred to as “Participant”) alleging that: (a) such Participant’s Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then any and all rights granted by such Participant to You under Sections 2.1 and/or 2.2 of this License shall, upon 60 days notice from Participant terminate prospectively, unless if within 60 days after receipt of notice You either: (i) agree in writing to pay Participant a mutually agreeable reasonable royalty for Your past and future use of Modiﬁcations made by such Participant, or (ii) withdraw Your litigation claim with respect to the Contributor Version against such Participant. If within 60 days of notice, a reasonable royalty and payment arrangement are not mutually agreed upon in writing by the parties or the litigation claim is not withdrawn, the rights granted by Participant to You under Sections 2.1 and/or 2.2 automatically terminate at the expiration of the 60 day notice period speciﬁed above. (b) any software, hardware, or device, other than such Participant’s Contributor Version, directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then any rights granted to You by such Participant under Sections 2.1(b) and 2.2(b) are revoked effective as of the date You ﬁrst made, used, sold, distributed, or had made, Modiﬁcations made by that Participant. 8.3. If You assert a patent infringement claim against Participant alleging that such Participant’s Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent where such claim is resolved (such as by license or settlement) prior to the initiation of patent infringement litigation, then the reasonable value of the licenses granted by such Partic-

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14 Third-party licenses ipant under Sections 2.1 or 2.2 shall be taken into account in determining the amount or value of any payment or license. 8.4. In the event of termination under Sections 8.1 or 8.2 above, all end user license agreements (excluding distributors and resellers) which have been validly granted by You or any distributor hereunder prior to termination shall survive termination. 9. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AND UNDER NO LEGAL THEORY, WHETHER TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), CONTRACT, OR OTHERWISE, SHALL YOU, THE INITIAL DEVELOPER, ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR, OR ANY DISTRIBUTOR OF COVERED CODE, OR ANY SUPPLIER OF ANY OF SUCH PARTIES, BE LIABLE TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY CHARACTER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER COMMERCIAL DAMAGES OR LOSSES, EVEN IF SUCH PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN INFORMED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY SHALL NOT APPLY TO LIABILITY FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY RESULTING FROM SUCH PARTY’S NEGLIGENCE TO THE EXTENT APPLICABLE LAW PROHIBITS SUCH LIMITATION. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THIS EXCLUSION AND LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. 10. U.S. GOVERNMENT END USERS. The Covered Code is a “commercial item,“ as that term is deﬁned in 48 C.F.R. 2.101 (Oct. 1995), consisting of “commercial computer software” and “commercial computer software documentation,“ as such terms are used in 48 C.F.R. 12.212 (Sept. 1995). Consistent with 48 C.F.R. 12.212 and 48 C.F.R. 227.7202-1 through 227.7202-4 (June 1995), all U.S. Government End Users acquire Covered Code with only those rights set forth herein. 11. MISCELLANEOUS. This License represents the complete agreement concerning subject matter hereof. If any provision of this License is held to be unenforceable, such provision shall be reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable. This License shall be governed by California law provisions (except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise), excluding its conﬂict-of-law provisions. With respect to disputes in which at least one party is a citizen of, or an entity chartered or registered to do business in the United States of America, any litigation relating to this License shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts of the Northern District of California, with venue lying in Santa Clara County, California, with the losing party responsible for costs, including without limitation, court costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses. The application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded. Any law or regulation which provides that the language of a contract shall be construed against the drafter shall not apply to this License. 12. RESPONSIBILITY FOR CLAIMS. As between Initial Developer and the Contributors, each party is responsible for claims and damages arising, directly or indirectly, out of its utilization of rights under this License and You agree to work with Initial Developer and Contributors to distribute such responsibility on an equitable basis. Nothing herein is intended or shall be deemed to constitute any admission of liability.

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14 Third-party licenses 13. MULTIPLE-LICENSED CODE. Initial Developer may designate portions of the Covered Code as “Multiple-Licensed”. “Multiple-Licensed” means that the Initial Developer permits you to utilize portions of the Covered Code under Your choice of the NPL or the alternative licenses, if any, speciﬁed by the Initial Developer in the ﬁle described in Exhibit A. EXHIBIT A -Mozilla Public License. “The contents of this ﬁle are subject to the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 (the “License”); you may not use this ﬁle except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/ Software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the speciﬁc language governing rights and limitations under the License. The Original Code is ______________________________________. The Initial Developer of the Original Code is ________________________. Portions created by ______________________ are Copyright (C) ______ _______________________. All Rights Reserved. Contributor(s): ______________________________________. Alternatively, the contents of this ﬁle may be used under the terms of the _____ license (the “[___] License”), in which case the provisions of [______] License are applicable instead of those above. If you wish to allow use of your version of this ﬁle only under the terms of the [____] License and not to allow others to use your version of this ﬁle under the MPL, indicate your decision by deleting the provisions above and replace them with the notice and other provisions required by the [___] License. If you do not delete the provisions above, a recipient may use your version of this ﬁle under either the MPL or the [___] License.“ [NOTE: The text of this Exhibit A may differ slightly from the text of the notices in the Source Code ﬁles of the Original Code. You should use the text of this Exhibit A rather than the text found in the Original Code Source Code for Your Modiﬁcations.]

14.2.4 MIT License
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation ﬁles (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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14 Third-party licenses

14.2.5 X Consortium License (X11)
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation ﬁles (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

14.2.6 zlib license
This software is provided ’as-is’, without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required. 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
Jean-loup Gailly [email protected] Mark Adler [email protected]

14.2.7 OpenSSL license
This package is an SSL implementation written by Eric Young ([email protected]). The implementation was written so as to conform with Netscape’s SSL. This library is free for commercial and non-commercial use as long as the following conditions are adhered to. The following conditions apply to all code found in this distribution, be it the RC4, RSA, lhash, DES, etc., code; not just the SSL code. The SSL documentation included with this distribution is covered by the same copyright terms except that the holder is Tim Hudson ([email protected]). Copyright remains Eric Young’s, and as such any Copyright notices in the code are not to be removed. If this package is used in a product, Eric Young should be given attribution as the author of the parts of the library used. This can be in the form of a

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14 Third-party licenses textual message at program startup or in documentation (online or textual) provided with the package. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modiﬁcation, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: “This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young ([email protected])“ The word ’cryptographic’ can be left out if the routines from the library being used are not cryptographic related :-). 4. If you include any Windows speciﬁc code (or a derivative thereof) from the apps directory (application code) you must include an acknowledgement: “This product includes software written by Tim Hudson ([email protected])“ THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY ERIC YOUNG “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. The licence and distribution terms for any publicly available version or derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be copied and put under another distribution licence [including the GNU Public Licence.]

14.2.8 Slirp license
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modiﬁcation, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgment: This product includes software developed by Danny Gasparovski. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MER-

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14 Third-party licenses CHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL DANNY GASPAROVSKI OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

14.2.9 liblzf license
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modiﬁcation, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without speciﬁc prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

14.2.10 libpng license
The PNG Reference Library is supplied “AS IS”. The Contributing Authors and Group 42, Inc. disclaim all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of ﬁtness for any purpose. The Contributing Authors and Group 42, Inc. assume no liability for direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages, which may result from the use of the PNG Reference Library, even if advised of the possibility of such damage. Permission is hereby granted to use, copy, modify, and distribute this source code, or portions hereof, for any purpose, without fee, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The origin of this source code must not be misrepresented.

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14 Third-party licenses 2. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such and must not be misrepresented as being the original source. 3. This Copyright notice may not be removed or altered from any source or altered source distribution. The Contributing Authors and Group 42, Inc. speciﬁcally permit, without fee, and encourage the use of this source code as a component to supporting the PNG ﬁle format in commercial products. If you use this source code in a product, acknowledgment is not required but would be appreciated.

14.2.11 lwIP license
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modiﬁcation, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without speciﬁc prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

14.2.12 libxml license
Except where otherwise noted in the source code (e.g. the ﬁles hash.c, list.c and the trio ﬁles, which are covered by a similar licence but with different Copyright notices) all the ﬁles are: Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Daniel Veillard. All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation ﬁles (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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14 Third-party licenses THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE DANIEL VEILLARD BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Except as contained in this notice, the name of Daniel Veillard shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from him.

14.2.13 libxslt licenses
Licence for libxslt except libexslt: Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Daniel Veillard. All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation ﬁles (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE DANIEL VEILLARD BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Except as contained in this notice, the name of Daniel Veillard shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from him. Licence for libexslt: Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Thomas Broyer, Charlie Bozeman and Daniel Veillard. All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation ﬁles (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

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14 Third-party licenses IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Except as contained in this notice, the name of the authors shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from him.

14.2.14 gSOAP Public License Version 1.3a
The gSOAP public license is derived from the Mozilla Public License (MPL1.1). The sections that were deleted from the original MPL1.1 text are 1.0.1, 2.1.(c),(d), 2.2.(c),(d), 8.2.(b), 10, and 11. Section 3.8 was added. The modiﬁed sections are 2.1.(b), 2.2.(b), 3.2 (simpliﬁed), 3.5 (deleted the last sentence), and 3.6 (simpliﬁed). 1 DEFINITIONS 1.1. “Contributor” means each entity that creates or contributes to the creation of Modiﬁcations. 1.2. “Contributor Version” means the combination of the Original Code, prior Modiﬁcations used by a Contributor, and the Modiﬁcations made by that particular Contributor. 1.3. “Covered Code” means the Original Code, or Modiﬁcations or the combination of the Original Code, and Modiﬁcations, in each case including portions thereof. 1.4. “Electronic Distribution Mechanism” means a mechanism generally accepted in the software development community for the electronic transfer of data. 1.5. “Executable” means Covered Code in any form other than Source Code. 1.6. “Initial Developer” means the individual or entity identiﬁed as the Initial Developer in the Source Code notice required by Exhibit A. 1.7. “Larger Work” means a work which combines Covered Code or portions thereof with code not governed by the terms of this License. 1.8. “License” means this document. 1.8.1. “Licensable” means having the right to grant, to the maximum extent possible, whether at the time of the initial grant or subsequently acquired, any and all of the rights conveyed herein. 1.9. “Modiﬁcations” means any addition to or deletion from the substance or structure of either the Original Code or any previous Modiﬁcations. When Covered Code is released as a series of ﬁles, a Modiﬁcation is: A. Any addition to or deletion from the contents of a ﬁle containing Original Code or previous Modiﬁcations. B. Any new ﬁle that contains any part of the Original Code, or previous Modiﬁcations. 1.10. “Original Code” means Source Code of computer software code which is described in the Source Code notice required by Exhibit A as Original Code, and which, at the time of its release under this License is not already Covered Code governed by this License.

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14 Third-party licenses 1.10.1. “Patent Claims” means any patent claim(s), now owned or hereafter acquired, including without limitation, method, process, and apparatus claims, in any patent Licensable by grantor. 1.11. “Source Code” means the preferred form of the Covered Code for making modiﬁcations to it, including all modules it contains, plus any associated interface deﬁnition ﬁles, scripts used to control compilation and installation of an Executable, or source code differential comparisons against either the Original Code or another well known, available Covered Code of the Contributor’s choice. The Source Code can be in a compressed or archival form, provided the appropriate decompression or de-archiving software is widely available for no charge. 1.12. “You” (or “Your”) means an individual or a legal entity exercising rights under, and complying with all of the terms of, this License or a future version of this License issued under Section 6.1. For legal entities, “You” includes any entity which controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with You. For purposes of this deﬁnition, “control” means (a) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (b) ownership of more than ﬁfty percent (50%) of the outstanding shares or beneﬁcial ownership of such entity. 2 SOURCE CODE LICENSE. 2.1. The Initial Developer Grant. The Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license, subject to third party intellectual property claims: (a) under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by Initial Developer to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Original Code (or portions thereof) with or without Modiﬁcations, and/or as part of a Larger Work; and (b) under patents now or hereafter owned or controlled by Initial Developer, to make, have made, use and sell (“offer to sell and import”) the Original Code, Modiﬁcations, or portions thereof, but solely to the extent that any such patent is reasonably necessary to enable You to utilize, alone or in combination with other software, the Original Code, Modiﬁcations, or any combination or portions thereof. (c) (d) 2.2. Contributor Grant. Subject to third party intellectual property claims, each Contributor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license (a) under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by Contributor, to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Modiﬁcations created by such Contributor (or portions thereof) either on an unmodiﬁed basis, with other Modiﬁcations, as Covered Code and/or as part of a Larger Work; and (b) under patents now or hereafter owned or controlled by Contributor, to make, have made, use and sell (“offer to sell and import”) the Contributor Version (or portions thereof), but solely to the extent that any such patent is reasonably necessary to enable You to utilize, alone or in combination with other software, the Contributor Version (or portions thereof).

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14 Third-party licenses (c) (d) 3 DISTRIBUTION OBLIGATIONS. 3.1. Application of License. The Modiﬁcations which You create or to which You contribute are governed by the terms of this License, including without limitation Section 2.2. The Source Code version of Covered Code may be distributed only under the terms of this License or a future version of this License released under Section 6.1, and You must include a copy of this License with every copy of the Source Code You distribute. You may not offer or impose any terms on any Source Code version that alters or restricts the applicable version of this License or the recipients’ rights hereunder. However, You may include an additional document offering the additional rights described in Section 3.5. 3.2. Availability of Source Code. Any Modiﬁcation created by You will be provided to the Initial Developer in Source Code form and are subject to the terms of the License. 3.3. Description of Modiﬁcations. You must cause all Covered Code to which You contribute to contain a ﬁle documenting the changes You made to create that Covered Code and the date of any change. You must include a prominent statement that the Modiﬁcation is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Code provided by the Initial Developer and including the name of the Initial Developer in (a) the Source Code, and (b) in any notice in an Executable version or related documentation in which You describe the origin or ownership of the Covered Code. 3.4. Intellectual Property Matters. (a) Third Party Claims. If Contributor has knowledge that a license under a third party’s intellectual property rights is required to exercise the rights granted by such Contributor under Sections 2.1 or 2.2, Contributor must include a text ﬁle with the Source Code distribution titled “LEGAL” which describes the claim and the party making the claim in sufﬁcient detail that a recipient will know whom to contact. If Contributor obtains such knowledge after the Modiﬁcation is made available as described in Section 3.2, Contributor shall promptly modify the LEGAL ﬁle in all copies Contributor makes available thereafter and shall take other steps (such as notifying appropriate mailing lists or newsgroups) reasonably calculated to inform those who received the Covered Code that new knowledge has been obtained. (b) Contributor APIs. If Contributor’s Modiﬁcations include an application programming interface and Contributor has knowledge of patent licenses which are reasonably necessary to implement that API, Contributor must also include this information in the LEGAL ﬁle. (c) Representations. Contributor represents that, except as disclosed pursuant to Section 3.4(a) above, Contributor believes that Contributor’s Modiﬁcations are Contributor’s original creation(s) and/or Contributor has sufﬁcient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this License. 3.5. Required Notices. You must duplicate the notice in Exhibit A in each ﬁle of the Source Code. If it is not possible to put such notice in a particular Source Code ﬁle due to its structure, then You must include such notice in a location (such as a relevant

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14 Third-party licenses directory) where a user would be likely to look for such a notice. If You created one or more Modiﬁcation(s) You may add your name as a Contributor to the notice described in Exhibit A. You must also duplicate this License in any documentation for the Source Code where You describe recipients’ rights or ownership rights relating to Covered Code. You may choose to offer, and to charge a fee for, warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligations to one or more recipients of Covered Code. However, You may do so only on Your own behalf, and not on behalf of the Initial Developer or any Contributor. 3.6. Distribution of Executable Versions. You may distribute Covered Code in Executable form only if the requirements of Section 3.1-3.5 have been met for that Covered Code. You may distribute the Executable version of Covered Code or ownership rights under a license of Your choice, which may contain terms different from this License, provided that You are in compliance with the terms of this License and that the license for the Executable version does not attempt to limit or alter the recipient’s rights in the Source Code version from the rights set forth in this License. If You distribute the Executable version under a different license You must make it absolutely clear that any terms which differ from this License are offered by You alone, not by the Initial Developer or any Contributor. If you distribute executable versions containing Covered Code as part of a product, you must reproduce the notice in Exhibit B in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the product. 3.7. Larger Works. You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Code with other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulﬁlled for the Covered Code. 3.8. Restrictions. You may not remove any product identiﬁcation, copyright, proprietary notices or labels from gSOAP. 4 INABILITY TO COMPLY DUE TO STATUTE OR REGULATION. If it is impossible for You to comply with any of the terms of this License with respect to some or all of the Covered Code due to statute, judicial order, or regulation then You must: (a) comply with the terms of this License to the maximum extent possible; and (b) describe the limitations and the code they affect. Such description must be included in the LEGAL ﬁle described in Section 3.4 and must be included with all distributions of the Source Code. Except to the extent prohibited by statute or regulation, such description must be sufﬁciently detailed for a recipient of ordinary skill to be able to understand it. 5 APPLICATION OF THIS LICENSE. This License applies to code to which the Initial Developer has attached the notice in Exhibit A and to related Covered Code. 6 VERSIONS OF THE LICENSE. 6.1. New Versions. Grantor may publish revised and/or new versions of the License from time to time. Each version will be given a distinguishing version number. 6.2. Effect of New Versions. Once Covered Code has been published under a particular version of the License, You may always continue to use it under the terms of that version. You may also

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14 Third-party licenses choose to use such Covered Code under the terms of any subsequent version of the License. 6.3. Derivative Works. If You create or use a modiﬁed version of this License (which you may only do in order to apply it to code which is not already Covered Code governed by this License), You must (a) rename Your license so that the phrase “gSOAP” or any confusingly similar phrase do not appear in your license (except to note that your license differs from this License) and (b) otherwise make it clear that Your version of the license contains terms which differ from the gSOAP Public License. (Filling in the name of the Initial Developer, Original Code or Contributor in the notice described in Exhibit A shall not of themselves be deemed to be modiﬁcations of this License.) 7 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. COVERED CODE IS PROVIDED UNDER THIS LICENSE ON AN “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT MAY ARISE BY REASON OF TRADE USAGE, CUSTOM, OR COURSE OF DEALING. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND THAT THE AUTHORS DO NOT WARRANT THE SOFTWARE WILL RUN UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. LIMITED LIABILITY THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO RESULTS AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE IS ASSUMED BY YOU. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, EXEMPLARY OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND OR NATURE WHATSOEVER, WHETHER BASED ON CONTRACT, WARRANTY, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY OR OTHERWISE, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATED TO THE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF THE AUTHORS HAVE BEEN ADVISED ON THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE OR IF SUCH DAMAGE COULD HAVE BEEN REASONABLY FORESEEN, AND NOTWITHSTANDING ANY FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY EXCLUSIVE REMEDY PROVIDED. SUCH LIMITATION ON DAMAGES INCLUDES, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, LOST PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA OR SOFTWARE, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OR IMPAIRMENT OF OTHER GOODS. IN NO EVENT WILL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR THE COSTS OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE SOFTWARE OR SERVICES. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT DESIGNED FOR USE IN ON-LINE EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS SUCH AS OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR CONTROL, OR LIFE-CRITICAL APPLICATIONS. THE AUTHORS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY LIABILITY RESULTING FROM USE OF THE SOFTWARE IN ANY SUCH ON-LINE EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS AND ACCEPTS NO LIABILITY IN RESPECT OF ANY ACTIONS OR CLAIMS BASED ON THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE IN ANY SUCH ON-LINE EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS BY YOU. FOR PURPOSES OF THIS PARAGRAPH, THE TERM “LIFE-CRITICAL APPLICATION” MEANS AN APPLICATION IN WHICH THE FUNCTIONING OR MALFUNCTIONING OF THE SOFTWARE MAY RESULT DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN PHYSICAL IN-

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14 Third-party licenses JURY OR LOSS OF HUMAN LIFE. THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY CONSTITUTES AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THIS LICENSE. NO USE OF ANY COVERED CODE IS AUTHORIZED HEREUNDER EXCEPT UNDER THIS DISCLAIMER. 8 TERMINATION. 8.1. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with terms herein and fail to cure such breach within 30 days of becoming aware of the breach. All sublicenses to the Covered Code which are properly granted shall survive any termination of this License. Provisions which, by their nature, must remain in effect beyond the termination of this License shall survive. 8.2. 8.3. If You assert a patent infringement claim against Participant alleging that such Participant’s Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent where such claim is resolved (such as by license or settlement) prior to the initiation of patent infringement litigation, then the reasonable value of the licenses granted by such Participant under Sections 2.1 or 2.2 shall be taken into account in determining the amount or value of any payment or license. 8.4. In the event of termination under Sections 8.1 or 8.2 above, all end user license agreements (excluding distributors and resellers) which have been validly granted by You or any distributor hereunder prior to termination shall survive termination. 9 LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AND UNDER NO LEGAL THEORY, WHETHER TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), CONTRACT, OR OTHERWISE, SHALL YOU, THE INITIAL DEVELOPER, ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR, OR ANY DISTRIBUTOR OF COVERED CODE, OR ANY SUPPLIER OF ANY OF SUCH PARTIES, BE LIABLE TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY CHARACTER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER COMMERCIAL DAMAGES OR LOSSES, EVEN IF SUCH PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN INFORMED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY SHALL NOT APPLY TO LIABILITY FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY RESULTING FROM SUCH PARTY’S NEGLIGENCE TO THE EXTENT APPLICABLE LAW PROHIBITS SUCH LIMITATION. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THIS EXCLUSION AND LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. 10 U.S. GOVERNMENT END USERS. 11 MISCELLANEOUS. 12 RESPONSIBILITY FOR CLAIMS. As between Initial Developer and the Contributors, each party is responsible for claims and damages arising, directly or indirectly, out of its utilization of rights under this License and You agree to work with Initial Developer and Contributors to distribute such responsibility on an equitable basis. Nothing herein is intended or shall be deemed to constitute any admission of liability. EXHIBIT A.

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14 Third-party licenses “The contents of this ﬁle are subject to the gSOAP Public License Version 1.3 (the “License”); you may not use this ﬁle except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~engelen/soaplicense. html. Software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the speciﬁc language governing rights and limitations under the License. The Original Code of the gSOAP Software is: stdsoap.h, stdsoap2.h, stdsoap.c, stdsoap2.c, stdsoap.cpp, stdsoap2.cpp, soapcpp2.h, soapcpp2.c, soapcpp2_lex.l, soapcpp2_yacc.y, error2.h, error2.c, symbol2.c, init2.c, soapdoc2.html, and soapdoc2.pdf, httpget.h, httpget.c, stl.h, stldeque.h, stllist.h, stlvector.h, stlset.h. The Initial Developer of the Original Code is Robert A. van Engelen. Portions created by Robert A. van Engelen are Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Robert A. van Engelen, Genivia inc. All Rights Reserved. Contributor(s): “________________________.“ [Note: The text of this Exhibit A may differ slightly form the text of the notices in the Source Code ﬁles of the Original code. You should use the text of this Exhibit A rather than the text found in the Original Code Source Code for Your Modiﬁcations.] EXHIBIT B. “Part of the software embedded in this product is gSOAP software. Portions created by gSOAP are Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Robert A. van Engelen, Genivia inc. All Rights Reserved. THE SOFTWARE IN THIS PRODUCT WAS IN PART PROVIDED BY GENIVIA INC AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.“

14.2.15 Chromium licenses
14.2.15.1 Main license Copyright (c) 2002, Stanford University All rights reserved. Some portions of Chromium are copyrighted by individiual organizations. Please see the ﬁles COPYRIGHT.LLNL and COPYRIGHT.REDHAT for more information. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modiﬁcation, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: • Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

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14 Third-party licenses • Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. • Neither the name of Stanford University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without speciﬁc prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 14.2.15.2 COPYRIGHT.LLNL ﬁle This Chromium distribution contains information and code which is covered under the following notice: Copyright (c) 2002, The Regents of the University of California. Produced at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory For details, contact: Randall Frank ([email protected]). UCRL-CODE-2002-058 All rights reserved. This ﬁle is part of Chromium. For details, see accompanying documentation. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modiﬁcation, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the disclaimer below. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the disclaimer (as noted below) in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. Neither the name of the UC/LLNL nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without speciﬁc prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,

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14 Third-party licenses PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. Additional BSD Notice 1. This notice is required to be provided under our contract with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This work was produced at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. W-7405-ENG-48 with the DOE. 2. Neither the United States Government nor the University of California nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately-owned rights. 3. Also, reference herein to any speciﬁc commercial products, process, or services by trade name, trademark, manufacturer or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or the University of California. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reﬂect those of the United States Government or the University of California, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

14.2.15.3 COPYRIGHT.REDHAT ﬁle This Chromium distribution contains information and code which is covered under the following notice: Copyright 2001,2002 Red Hat Inc., Durham, North Carolina. All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation ﬁles (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation on the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice (including the next paragraph) shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL RED HAT AND/OR THEIR SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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14 Third-party licenses

14.2.16 curl license
COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSION NOTICE Copyright (c) 1996 - 2009, Daniel Stenberg, [email protected]. All rights reserved. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization of the copyright holder.

14.2.17 libgd license
Portions copyright 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Funded under Grant P41-RR02188 by the National Institutes of Health. Portions copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Boutell.Com, Inc. Portions relating to GD2 format copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Philip Warner. Portions relating to PNG copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Greg Roelofs. Portions relating to gdttf.c copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 John Ellson ([email protected]). Portions relating to gdft.c copyright 2001, 2002 John Ellson ([email protected]). Portions copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Pierre-Alain Joye ([email protected]). Portions relating to JPEG and to color quantization copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, Doug Becker and copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, Thomas G. Lane. This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. See the ﬁle README-JPEG.TXT for more information. Portions relating to WBMP copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 Maurice Szmurlo and Johan Van den Brande. Permission has been granted to copy, distribute and modify gd in any context without fee, including a commercial application, provided that this notice is present in user-accessible supporting documentation. This does not affect your ownership of the derived work itself, and the intent is to assure proper credit for the authors of gd, not to interfere with your productive use of

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14 Third-party licenses gd. If you have questions, ask. “Derived works” includes all programs that utilize the library. Credit must be given in user-accessible documentation. This software is provided “AS IS.“ The copyright holders disclaim all warranties, either express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and ﬁtness for a particular purpose, with respect to this code and accompanying documentation. Although their code does not appear in gd, the authors wish to thank David Koblas, David Rowley, and Hutchison Avenue Software Corporation for their prior contributions.

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15 VirtualBox privacy policy
Policy version 1.3, June 29, 2009 This privacy policy sets out how Sun Microsystems, Inc. (“Sun”) treats personal information related to the virtualbox.org website and the VirtualBox registration process. § 1 virtualbox.org. The “virtualbox.org” website, as any other website, logs anonymous usage information such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views while you visit (collectively, “anonymous data”). In addition, but only if you choose to register, the website’s bug tracking and forum services store the data you choose to reveal upon registration, such as your user name and contact information. § 2 Cookies. The virtualbox.org website, the bug tracker and the forum services use cookies to identify and track the visiting web browser and, if you have registered, to facilitate login. Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies. While you can still visit the website with cookies disabled, logging into the bug tracker and forum services will most likely not work without them. § 3 VirtualBox registration process. The VirtualBox application may ask that the user register with Sun through the Sun Online mechanism used by many Sun products. This registration is optional. If you choose to register, your name, e-mail address, country and company will be submitted to Sun and stored together with the IP address of the submitter as well as product version and platform being used. The standard Sun Privacy Policy as posted on http://www.sun.com/privacy/ applies to this data. § 4 Update notiﬁcations. The VirtualBox application may contact Sun Microsystems to ﬁnd out whether a new version of VirtualBox has been released and notify the user if that is the case. In the process, anonymous data such as your IP address and a non-identifying counter, together with the product version and the platform being used, is sent so that the server can ﬁnd out whether an update is available. By default, this check is performed once a day. You change this interval or disable these checks altogether in the VirtualBox preferences. § 5 Usage of personal information. Sun may use anonymous and personal data collected by the means above for statistical purposes as well as to automatically inform you about new notices related to your posts on the bug tracker and forum services, to administer the website and to contact you due to technical issues. Sun may also inform you about new product releases related to VirtualBox. In no event will personal data without your express consent be provided to any third parties, unless Sun may be required to do so by law or in connection with legal proceedings.

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15 VirtualBox privacy policy § 6 Updates. Sun may update this privacy policy by posting a new version on the website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes.

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Glossary
A
ACPI Advanced Conﬁguration and Power Interface, an industry speciﬁcation for BIOS and hardware extensions to conﬁgure PC hardware and perform power management. Windows 2000 and higher as well as Linux 2.4 and higher support ACPI. Windows can only enable or disable ACPI support at installation time. AHCI Advanced Host Controller Interface, the interface that supports SATA devices such as hard disks. See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76. AMD-V The hardware virtualization features built into modern AMD processors. See chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49. API Application Programming Interface. APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller, a newer version of the original PC PIC (programmable interrupt controller). Most modern CPUs contain an onchip APIC (“local APIC”). Many systems also contain an I/O APIC (input output APIC) as a separate chip which provides more than 16 IRQs. Windows 2000 and higher use a different kernel if they detect an I/O APIC during installation. Therefore an I/O APIC must not be removed after installation. ATA Advanced Technology Attachment, an industry standard for hard disk interfaces (synonymous with IDE). See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76.

B
BIOS Basic Input/Output System, the ﬁrmware built into most personal computers which is responsible of initializing the hardware after the computer has been turned on and then booting an operating system. VirtualBox ships with its own virtual BIOS that runs when a virtual machine is started.

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Glossary

C
COM Microsoft Component Object Model, a programming infrastructure for modular software. COM allows applications to provide application programming interfaces which can be accessed from various other programming languages and applications. VirtualBox makes use of COM both internally and externally to provide a comprehensive API to 3rd party developers.

D
DHCP Dynamic Host Conﬁguration Protocol. This allows a networking device in a network to acquire its IP address (and other networking details) automatically, in order to avoid having to conﬁgure all devices in a network with ﬁxed IP addresses. VirtualBox has a built-in DHCP server that delivers an IP addresses to a virtual machine when networking is conﬁgured to NAT; see chapter 6, Virtual networking, page 89. DKMS Dynamic Kernel Module Support. A framework that simpliﬁes installing and updating external kernel modules on Linux machines; see chapter 2.3.2, The VirtualBox kernel module, page 34.

E
EFI Extensible Firmware Interface, a ﬁrmware built into computers which is designed to replace the aging BIOS. Originally designed by Intel, most modern operating systems can now boot on computers which have EFI instead of a BIOS built into them; see chapter 3.12, Alternative ﬁrmware (EFI), page 58. EHCI Enhanced Host Controller Interface, the interface that implements the USB 2.0 standard.

G
GUI Graphical User Interface. Commonly used as an antonym to a “command line interface”, in the context of VirtualBox, we sometimes refer to the main graphical VirtualBox program as the “GUI”, to differentiate it from the VBoxManage interface. GUID See UUID.

285

Glossary

I
IDE Integrated Drive Electronics, an industry standard for hard disk interfaces. See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76. I/O APIC See APIC. iSCSI Internet SCSI; see chapter 5.9, iSCSI servers, page 87.

M
MAC Media Access Control, a part of an Ethernet network card. A MAC address is a 6-byte number which identiﬁes a network card. It is typically written in hexadecimal notation where the bytes are separated by colons, such as 00:17:3A:5E:CB:08.

N
NAT Network Address Translation. A technique to share networking interfaces by which an interface modiﬁes the source and/or target IP addresses of network packets according to speciﬁc rules. Commonly employed by routers and ﬁrewalls to shield an internal network from the Internet, VirtualBox can use NAT to easily share a host’s physical networking hardware with its virtual machines. See chapter 6.3, Network Address Translation (NAT), page 91.

O
OVF Open Virtualization Format, a cross-platform industry standard to exchange virtual appliances between virtualization products; see chapter 1.11, Importing and exporting virtual machines, page 29.

P
PAE Physical Address Extension. This allows accessing more than 4 GB of RAM even in 32-bit environments; see chapter 3.3.2, “Advanced” tab, page 46. PIC See APIC. PXE Preboot Execution Environment, an industry standard for booting PC systems from remote network locations. It includes DHCP for IP conﬁguration and TFTP for ﬁle transfer. Using UNDI, a hardware independent driver stack for accessing the network card from bootstrap code is available.

286

Glossary

R
RDP Remote Desktop Protocol, a protocol developed by Microsoft as an extension to the ITU T.128 and T.124 video conferencing protocol. With RDP, a PC system can be controlled from a remote location using a network connection over which data is transferred in both directions. Typically graphics updates and audio are sent from the remote machine and keyboard and mouse input events are sent from the client. VirtualBox contains an enhanced implementation of the relevant standards called “VirtualBox RDP” (VRDP), which is largely compatible with Microsoft’s RDP implementation. See chapter 7.1, Remote display (VRDP support), page 98 for details.

S
SATA Serial ATA, an industry standard for hard disk interfaces. See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76. SCSI Small Computer System Interface. An industry standard for data transfer between devices, especially for storage. See chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 76. SMP Symmetrical Multiprocessing, meaning that the resources of a computer are shared between several processors. These can either be several processor chips or, as is more common with modern hardware, multiple CPU cores in one processor.

U
UUID A Universally Unique Identiﬁer – often also called GUID (Globally Unique Identiﬁer) – is a string of numbers and letters which can be computed dynamically and is guaranteed to be unique. Generally, it is used as a global handle to identify entities. VirtualBox makes use of UUIDs to identify VMs, Virtual Disk Images (VDI ﬁles) and other entities.

V
VM Virtual Machine – a virtual computer that VirtualBox allows you to run on top of your actual hardware. See chapter 1.2, Some terminology, page 11 for details. VRDP See RDP. VT-x The hardware virtualization features built into modern Intel processors. See chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization, page 49.

287

Glossary

X
XML The eXtensible Markup Language, a metastandard for all kinds of textual information. XML only speciﬁes how data in the document is organized generally and does not prescribe how to semantically organize content. XPCOM Mozilla Cross Platform Component Object Model, a programming infrastructure developed by the Mozilla browser project which is similar to Microsoft COM and allows applications to provide a modular programming interface. VirtualBox makes use of XPCOM on Linux both internally and externally to provide a comprehensive API to third-party developers.

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User Manual

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