Sun Microsystems Network Router VERSION 310_BETA2 User Manual
R
ꢀ
Sun VirtualBox  
User Manual  
Version 3.1.0_BETA2  
c
ꢀ 2004-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  
http://www.virtualbox.org  
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Contents  
2.4.5 Configuring a zone for running VirtualBox . . . . . . . . . . . . 43  
3
Configuring virtual machines  
44  
3.1 Supported guest operating systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44  
3.2 64-bit guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45  
3.3 General settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46  
3.3.1 “Basic” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46  
3.3.2 “Advanced” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46  
3.3.3 “Description” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47  
3.4 System settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47  
3.4.1 “Motherboard” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47  
3.4.2 “Processor” tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48  
3.4.3 “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization . . . . . 49  
3.5 Display settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51  
3.6 Storage settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51  
3.7 Audio settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54  
3.8 Network settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54  
3.9 Serial ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55  
3.10 USB support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56  
3.10.1 USB settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56  
3.10.2 Implementation notes for Windows and Linux hosts . . . . . . . 58  
3.11 Shared folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58  
3.12 Alternative firmware (EFI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58  
4
Guest Additions  
60  
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60  
4.2 Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61  
4.3 Windows Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62  
4.3.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62  
4.3.2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63  
4.3.3 Unattended Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64  
4.3.4 Manual file extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64  
4.3.5 Windows Vista networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64  
4.4 Linux Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65  
4.4.1 Installing the Linux Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65  
4.4.2 Video acceleration and high resolution graphics modes . . . . . 66  
4.4.3 Updating the Linux Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67  
4.5 Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67  
4.5.1 Installing the Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67  
4.5.2 Uninstalling the Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68  
4.5.3 Updating the Solaris Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68  
4.6 OS/2 Guest Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68  
4.7 Folder sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68  
4.8 Seamless windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71  
4.9 Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9) . . . . . . . . . 72  
3
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Contents  
4.10 Hardware 2D video acceleration for Windows guests . . . . . . . . . . . 73  
4.11 Guest properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73  
5
6
7
Virtual storage  
76  
5.1 Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76  
5.2 Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79  
5.3 The Virtual Media Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80  
5.4 Special image write modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81  
5.5 Differencing images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83  
5.6 Cloning disk images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85  
5.7 Writing CDs and DVDs using the host drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85  
5.8 iSCSI servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86  
5.8.1 Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking . . . . . . . . . . . 86  
Virtual networking  
88  
6.1 Virtual networking hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88  
6.2 Introduction to networking modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89  
6.3 Network Address Translation (NAT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90  
6.3.1 Configuring port forwarding with NAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90  
6.3.2 PXE booting with NAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91  
6.3.3 NAT limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91  
6.4 Bridged networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92  
6.5 Internal networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93  
6.6 Host-only networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94  
Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines  
96  
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96  
7.2 Using VBoxManage to control virtual machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97  
7.3 VBoxSDL, the simplified VM displayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98  
7.4 Remote virtual machines (VRDP support) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99  
7.4.1 Common third-party RDP viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100  
7.4.2 VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101  
7.4.3 Step by step: creating a virtual machine on a headless server . . 102  
7.4.4 Remote USB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103  
7.4.5 RDP authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104  
7.4.6 RDP encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105  
7.4.7 VRDP multiple connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105  
8
VBoxManage reference  
106  
8.1 VBoxManage list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111  
8.2 VBoxManage showvminfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112  
8.3 VBoxManage registervm / unregistervm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113  
8.4 VBoxManage createvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113  
8.5 VBoxManage modifyvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114  
8.5.1 General settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114  
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Contents  
8.5.2 Networking settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116  
8.5.3 Serial port, audio, clipboard, VRDP and USB settings . . . . . . 117  
8.6 VBoxManage import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118  
8.7 VBoxManage export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120  
8.8 VBoxManage startvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120  
8.9 VBoxManage controlvm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121  
8.10 VBoxManage discardstate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122  
8.11 VBoxManage snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122  
8.12 VBoxManage openmedium / closemedium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123  
8.13 VBoxManage storagectl / storageattach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123  
8.13.1 VBoxManage storagectl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124  
8.13.2 VBoxManage storageattach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124  
8.14 VBoxManage showhdinfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125  
8.15 VBoxManage createhd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125  
8.16 VBoxManage modifyhd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126  
8.17 VBoxManage clonehd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127  
8.18 VBoxManage convertfromraw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127  
8.19 VBoxManage addiscsidisk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128  
8.20 VBoxManage getextradata/setextradata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129  
8.21 VBoxManage setproperty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130  
8.22 VBoxManage usbfilter add/modify/remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130  
8.23 VBoxManage sharedfolder add/remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131  
8.24 VBoxManage metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131  
8.25 VBoxManage guestproperty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132  
8.26 VBoxManage dhcpserver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133  
9
Advanced topics  
135  
9.1 VirtualBox configuration data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135  
9.2 Automated Windows guest logons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137  
9.3 Automated Windows system preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138  
9.4 Custom external VRDP authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139  
9.5 Secure labeling with VBoxSDL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141  
9.6 Custom VESA resolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142  
9.7 Multiple monitors for the guest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143  
9.8 Releasing modifiers with VBoxSDL on Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143  
9.9 Launching more than 120 VMs on Solaris hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144  
9.10 Using serial ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144  
9.11 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145  
9.11.1 Access to entire physical hard disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145  
9.11.2 Access to individual physical hard disk partitions . . . . . . . . . 146  
9.12 Allowing a virtual machine to start even with unavailable CD/DVD/floppy  
devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148  
9.13 Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148  
9.13.1 Configuring the address of a NAT network interface . . . . . . . 148  
5
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9.13.2 Configuring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network in-  
terface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149  
9.13.3 Tuning TCP/IP buffers for NAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149  
9.13.4 Binding NAT sockets to a specific interface . . . . . . . . . . . . 149  
9.13.5 Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150  
9.13.6 Using the host’s resolver as a DNS proxy in NAT mode . . . . . . 150  
9.14 Configuring the maximum resolution of guests when using the graphi-  
cal frontend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150  
9.15 Configuring the BIOS DMI information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151  
9.16 Configuring the guest time stamp counter (TSC) to reflect guest execution152  
9.17 Configuring the hard disk vendor product data (VPD) . . . . . . . . . . 152  
10 VirtualBox programming interfaces  
11 Troubleshooting  
154  
155  
11.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155  
11.1.1 Collecting debugging information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155  
11.1.2 Guest shows IDE/SATA errors for file-based images on slow host  
file system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155  
11.1.3 Responding to guest IDE/SATA flush requests . . . . . . . . . . . 156  
11.2 Windows guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157  
11.2.1 Windows bluescreens after changing VM configuration . . . . . 157  
11.2.2 Windows 0x101 bluescreens with SMP enabled (IPI timeout) . . 157  
11.2.3 Windows 2000 installation failures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157  
11.2.4 How to record bluescreen information from Windows guests . . 158  
11.2.5 No networking in Windows Vista guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158  
11.2.6 Windows guests may cause a high CPU load . . . . . . . . . . . 158  
11.3 Linux and X11 guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159  
11.3.1 Linux guests may cause a high CPU load . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159  
11.3.2 AMD Barcelona CPUs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159  
11.3.3 Buggy Linux 2.6 kernel versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159  
11.3.4 Shared clipboard, auto-resizing and seamless desktop in X11  
guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159  
11.4 Windows hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160  
11.4.1 VBoxSVC out-of-process COM server issues . . . . . . . . . . . . 160  
11.4.2 CD/DVD changes not recognized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160  
11.4.3 Sluggish response when using Microsoft RDP client . . . . . . . 161  
11.4.4 Running an iSCSI initiator and target on a single system . . . . . 161  
11.5 Linux hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162  
11.5.1 Linux kernel module refuses to load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162  
11.5.2 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162  
11.5.3 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found (older distributions) . . . . 162  
11.5.4 Linux host floppy not found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163  
11.5.5 Strange guest IDE error messages when writing to CD/DVD . . . 163  
11.5.6 VBoxSVC IPC issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163  
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11.5.7 USB not working . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164  
11.5.8 PAX/grsec kernels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165  
11.5.9 Linux kernel vmalloc pool exhausted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165  
11.6 Solaris hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165  
11.6.1 Cannot start VM, not enough contiguous memory . . . . . . . . 165  
11.6.2 VM aborts with out of memory errors on Solaris 10 hosts . . . . 166  
12 Change log  
167  
12.1 Version 3.1.0 Beta 2 (2009-11-19) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167  
12.2 Version 3.0.12 (2009-11-10) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169  
12.3 Version 3.0.10 (2009-10-29) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170  
12.4 Version 3.0.8 (2009-10-02) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171  
12.5 Version 3.0.6 (2009-09-09) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173  
12.6 Version 3.0.4 (2009-08-04) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176  
12.7 Version 3.0.2 (2009-07-10) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177  
12.8 Version 3.0.0 (2009-06-30) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179  
12.9 Version 2.2.4 (2009-05-29) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182  
12.10Version 2.2.2 (2009-04-27) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183  
12.11Version 2.2.0 (2009-04-08) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185  
12.12Version 2.1.4 (2009-02-16) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188  
12.13Version 2.1.2 (2009-01-21) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190  
12.14Version 2.1.0 (2008-12-17) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194  
12.15Version 2.0.8 (2009-03-10) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196  
12.16Version 2.0.6 (2008-11-21) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197  
12.17Version 2.0.4 (2008-10-24) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198  
12.18Version 2.0.2 (2008-09-12) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199  
12.19Version 2.0.0 (2008-09-04) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201  
12.20Version 1.6.6 (2008-08-26) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202  
12.21Version 1.6.4 (2008-07-30) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204  
12.22Version 1.6.2 (2008-05-28) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205  
12.23Version 1.6.0 (2008-04-30) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207  
12.24Version 1.5.6 (2008-02-19) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209  
12.25Version 1.5.4 (2007-12-29) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211  
12.26Version 1.5.2 (2007-10-18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213  
12.27Version 1.5.0 (2007-08-31) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215  
12.28Version 1.4.0 (2007-06-06) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218  
12.29Version 1.3.8 (2007-03-14) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221  
12.30Version 1.3.6 (2007-02-20) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222  
12.31Version 1.3.4 (2007-02-12) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223  
12.32Version 1.3.2 (2007-01-15) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224  
12.33Version 1.2.4 (2006-11-16) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225  
12.34Version 1.2.2 (2006-11-14) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225  
12.35Version 1.1.12 (2006-11-14) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226  
12.36Version 1.1.10 (2006-07-28) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227  
12.37Version 1.1.8 (2006-07-17) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227  
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Contents  
12.38Version 1.1.6 (2006-04-18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228  
12.39Version 1.1.4 (2006-03-09) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228  
12.40Version 1.1.2 (2006-02-03) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229  
12.41Version 1.0.50 (2005-12-16) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231  
12.42Version 1.0.48 (2005-11-23) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231  
12.43Version 1.0.46 (2005-11-04) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232  
12.44Version 1.0.44 (2005-10-25) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232  
12.45Version 1.0.42 (2005-08-30) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233  
12.46Version 1.0.40 (2005-06-17) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234  
12.47Version 1.0.39 (2005-05-05) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235  
12.48Version 1.0.38 (2005-04-27) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235  
12.49Version 1.0.37 (2005-04-12) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236  
13 Known limitations  
14 Third-party licenses  
237  
240  
14.1 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240  
14.2 Licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242  
14.2.1 GNU General Public License (GPL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242  
14.2.2 GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) . . . . . . . . . . . . 247  
14.2.3 Mozilla Public License (MPL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254  
14.2.4 MIT License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261  
14.2.5 X Consortium License (X11) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262  
14.2.6 zlib license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262  
14.2.7 OpenSSL license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262  
14.2.8 Slirp license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263  
14.2.9 liblzf license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264  
14.2.10libpng license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264  
14.2.11lwIP license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265  
14.2.12libxml license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265  
14.2.13libxslt licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266  
14.2.14gSOAP Public License Version 1.3a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267  
14.2.15Chromium licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273  
14.2.16curl license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276  
15 VirtualBox privacy policy  
Glossary  
277  
279  
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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 de-  
ployments 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.  
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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 167.  
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 for-  
ward 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 ven-  
dors 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 Win-  
dows, 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 sys-  
tem (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 vari-  
ous 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. Inter-  
nally, VirtualBox thinks of a VM as a set of parameters that determine its behav-  
ior. They include hardware settings (how much memory the VM should have,  
what hard disks VirtualBox should virtualize through which container files, what  
CD-ROMs 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 reference,  
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 oper-  
ating 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 vir-  
tual 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 addi-  
tional 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.  
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1 First steps  
– Hardware compatibility. VirtualBox virtualizes a vast array of virtual de-  
vices, among them many devices that are typically provided by other virtu-  
alization 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 ma-  
chines 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 ACPI-  
aware 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 res-  
olutions 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 vir-  
tual 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 5.8, iSCSI servers, page 86.  
– 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 7, Alternative front-ends;  
remote virtual machines, page 96 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 sys-  
tems. Please see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces, page 154 for  
details.  
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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 Pro-  
tocol (VRDP), a backward-compatible extension of the standard Remote Desk-  
top 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 7.4, Remote virtual machines  
(VRDP support), page 99.  
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 139 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 7.4.4, Remote  
USB, page 103 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)  
1Support for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox 1.5.  
2Preliminary 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.  
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1 First steps  
– 10.6 (Snow Leopard, 32-bit and 64-bit)  
Intel hardware is required; please see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 237  
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 237:  
– 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.  
3Support for 64-bit Linux was added with VirtualBox 1.4.  
4Support for OpenSolaris was added with VirtualBox 1.6.  
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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:  
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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):  
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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 im-  
portant 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 mem-  
ory 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 cre-  
ated the VM.  
3. Next, you must specify a virtual hard disk for your VM.  
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1 First steps  
There are many and potentially complicated ways in which VirtualBox can pro-  
vide 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 drop-  
down 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 Disk 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:  
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1 First steps  
• A dynamically expanding file will only grow in size when the guest actu-  
ally 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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1.7 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-ROM 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-ROM 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 com-  
puter. 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 run-  
ning 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 full-  
screen 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:  
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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 key-  
board 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  
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there are three candidates as to who receives keyboard input: the host operating sys-  
tem, 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 com-  
bination 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 com-  
bination, 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 sys-  
tem 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 lat-  
ter will only have an effect with Linux or Solaris guests, however.  
– Press special key combinations with the Host key (normally the right Con-  
trol 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.  
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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 ma-  
chine 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 vir-  
tual 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.  
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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 snap-  
shot” 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  
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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 limi-  
tation 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 con-  
nected 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 snap-  
shot 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 snap-  
shots, they remain unaltered when a machine is reverted. See chapter 5.4,  
Special image write modes, page 81 for details.  
5Both 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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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 snap-  
shot, 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.  
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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 ma-  
chine. 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 reference,  
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-  
ROM or a DVD-ROM 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 Disk Image 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 Disk Image Manager is described in detail in chapter 5.3, The Virtual  
Media Manager, page 80.  
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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 Disk 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 appli-  
ances created by other virtualization software. For a list of know limitations,  
please see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 237.  
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 chap-  
ter 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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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 ma-  
chines 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 8.6, VBoxMan-  
age import, page 118.  
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 8.7, VBoxMan-  
age export, page 120.  
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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.  
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As installation of VirtualBox varies depending on your host operating system, we pro-  
vide 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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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 in-  
staller 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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2.2.2 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.  
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The VirtualBox kernel module is automatically installed on your system when you  
install VirtualBox. To maintain it with future kernel updates, for recent Linux distribu-  
tions – for example Fedora Core 5 and later, Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) and later and Man-  
driva 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 pack-  
ages 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.  
1See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support for an introduction.  
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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 92.  
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_BETA2_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 ker-  
nel 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 162 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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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  
comma-separated 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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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 mod-  
ule. 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 -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VirtualBox  
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxSVC  
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxManage  
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxHeadless  
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /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:  
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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 deb-  
conf 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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2.3.5 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 exe-  
cute 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 in-  
stances 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 installa-  
tion 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_BETA2-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_BETA2-SunOS.pkg  
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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 unin-  
stallation, 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_BETA2-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 exe-  
cute:  
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.  
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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 CD-  
ROM 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 per-  
formance for a select list of guest systems:  
Windows NT 4.0 All versions/editions and service packs are fully supported; how-  
ever, 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 ver-  
sions/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 Addi-  
tions 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 exe-  
cuting in a virtual environment; please see chapter 11.3.3, Buggy Linux 2.6  
kernel versions, page 159 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 Limited support. Guest Additions are not available yet.  
OpenBSD 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 Win-  
dows 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 network-  
ing device, since there is no 64-bit driver support for the AMD PCNet card;  
see chapter 6.1, Virtual networking hardware, page 88.  
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.  
1See chapter 13, Known limitations, page 237.  
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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 135. 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 ma-  
chine’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 hard-  
ware changes, if you are changing hardware settings for a Windows guest,  
some of these changes may trigger a request for another activation with Mi-  
crosoft.  
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 8.5, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 114.  
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Enable I/O APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers (APICs) are a newer  
x86 hardware feature that have replaced old-style Programmable Interrupt Con-  
trollers (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 operat-  
ing 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 8.5,  
VBoxManage modifyvm, page 114.  
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 multi-  
processing (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.  
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In addition, the “Enable PAE/NX” setting determines whether the PAE and NX capa-  
bilities 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 sensi-  
ble 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 “hard-  
ware virtualization”. This means that these processors aid virtualization soft-  
ware 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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You can select for each virtual machine individually whether VirtualBox should use  
software or hardware virtualization. Prior to VirtualBox version 2.2, software virtu-  
alization 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 pro-  
cessor instructions that are not supported with our software virtualization. For  
virtual machines that are configured to contain such an operating system, hard-  
ware 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 en-  
abled. (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 sig-  
nificantly 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 virtu-  
alization products) together with VirtualBox! While several hypervisors can  
normally be installed in parallel, do not attempt to run several virtual ma-  
chines 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 cer-  
tain 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 ad-  
ditional 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.  
2VirtualBox 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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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 expen-  
sive 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 8.5, VBox-  
Manage modifyvm, page 114.  
3.5 Display settings  
Video memory size This sets the size of the memory provided by the virtual graph-  
ics 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 sup-  
port 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 re-  
motely. 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 7.4, Re-  
mote virtual machines (VRDP support), page 99.  
3.6 Storage settings  
In the VM Settings window, the “Storage” section allows you to connect virtual hard  
disk, CD-ROM/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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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 5.7, Writing CDs and DVDs using the  
host drive, page 85.  
– 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 con-  
figuration 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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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 run-  
ning. 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 configura-  
tion.  
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 proba-  
bly 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 88.  
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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 null-  
modem 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 8.5, VBoxManage  
modifyvm, page 114; 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  
3Serial port support was added with VirtualBox 1.5.  
4See, 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 Gate-  
way, 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 con-  
nections 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 di-  
rectly. 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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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 237.  
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 7.4.4, Remote USB, page 103.  
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 reference, 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 iden-  
tify 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 imple-  
ments 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 ma-  
chine. 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. There-  
fore, 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= en-  
try in /proc/bus/usb/devices will show you which devices are currently claimed.  
Please refer to chapter 11.5.7, USB not working, page 164 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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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 pro-  
vided 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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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 Di-  
rect3D 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 op-  
erating 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 de-  
tails, please see chapter 9.2, Automated Windows guest logons, page 137.  
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 communi-  
cates 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 instruc-  
tions is displayed in the guest.  
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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 Win-  
dows 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  
237 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 Disk Man-  
ager described in chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager, page 80.  
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3. In the Virtual Disk 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 Disk Manager, select that ISO file and press the “Select” but-  
ton. 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, Win-  
dows 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 ex-  
ecute 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 88).  
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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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 dif-  
ferences 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 chap-  
ter 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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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 Sys-  
tem. 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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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  
Device  
Monitor  
"Default Screen"  
"VirtualBox graphics card"  
"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 proce-  
dure 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 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.  
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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 Ad-  
ditions 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 237 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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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 reference, 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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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 Open-  
Solaris:  
$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 (nor-  
mally 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 back-  
ground. To go back to the “normal” VM display (i.e. to disable seamless windows),  
press the Host key and “L” again.  
1The 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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4.9 Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D  
8/9)  
The VirtualBox Guest Additions contain experimental hardware 3D support for Win-  
dows, 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 op-  
tion that must be explicitly enabled.Also, you must install the Guest Additions  
in “Safe Mode”; see chapter 13, Known limitations, page 237 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 soft-  
ware running the guest. The third-party code that VirtualBox uses for this  
purpose (Chromium) is not hardened enough to prevent every risky 3D oper-  
ation on the host.  
2OpenGL support for Windows guests was added with VirtualBox 2.1; support for Linux and Solaris fol-  
lowed 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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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 imple-  
mented 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 hard-  
ware 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 con-  
version 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 capa-  
bilities 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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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 be-  
tween 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 op-  
erating 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 hier-  
archical 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 8.25, VBoxManage guestproperty, page 132 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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4 Guest Additions  
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 154.  
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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 5.8, iSCSI servers, page 86.  
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  
9.11, Using a raw host hard disk from a guest, page 145.  
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-ROM/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 stan-  
dard 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  
1SATA 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-ROM/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-ROM/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 sys-  
tem 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 set-  
tings 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.  
2The assignment of the machine’s CD-ROM/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 or at other storage  
controller such as the SATA 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 (in-  
cluding those in IDE compatibility mode) will not be seen by operating sys-  
tems that do not have device support for AHCI. In particular, there is no sup-  
port 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 8.13, VBoxManage storagectl / storageattach, page 123.  
• 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 option-  
ally 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 set-  
tings 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. three slots attached to the traditional IDE controller, which are always present  
(plus one for the virtual CD-ROM device);  
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 rep-  
resents 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 re-  
sources, 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.  
3Initial 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.  
4Support was added with VirtualBox 3.1.  
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5 Virtual storage  
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, con-  
veniently 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 expand-  
ing 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 er-  
ror, 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 bet-  
ter 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 snap-  
shots 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 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 below for  
details.)  
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While you can attach the same “normal” image to more than one virtual ma-  
chine, only one of these virtual machines attached to the same image file can  
be executed simultaneously, as otherwise there would be conflicts if several ma-  
chines write to the same image file.5  
2. By contrast, immutable images only remember write accesses temporarily while  
the virtual machine is running; all changes are lost when the virtual machine is  
restarted. As a result, as opposed to “normal” images, the same immutable image  
can be used with several virtual machines without restrictions.  
(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 started, the differencing image is reset so that  
every time the VM starts, its immutable images have exactly the same content.6)  
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 8.16, VBoxManage modifyhd, page 126 for details.  
With respect to snapshots, the behavior of immutable images is identical to that  
of “normal” images. When reverting to a snapshot taken of an immutable image,  
its state will be fully reset to that of the snapshot.  
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 8.16, VBoxManage modifyhd, page 126. Alternatively, open  
an existing image in “immutable” mode using VBoxManage openmedium; see  
chapter 8.12, VBoxManage openmedium / closemedium, page 123.  
3. Finally, write-through hard disks are like normal hard disks in that they fully  
support read and write operations. However, such images are completely unaf-  
fected 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 8.15, VBoxManage createhd, page 125. To  
mark an existing image as write-through, use VBoxManage modifyhd; see  
chapter 8.16, VBoxManage modifyhd, page 126.  
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  
5This 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.  
6This behavior also changed with VirtualBox 2.2. Previously, the differencing images were discarded when  
the VM session ended; now they are discarded every time the VM starts.  
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5 Virtual storage  
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  
revert the state of the VM, 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,  
irrespective of the snapshot, all it takes is to shut down and restart 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 snap-  
shots, 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 an-  
other 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  
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 Disk 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  
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5 Virtual storage  
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 “write-  
through” 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.  
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 im-  
age 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 dif-  
ferencing 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.  
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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  
8.17, VBoxManage clonehd, page 127. 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.  
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 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 only, audio is not sup-  
ported), it is possible to give the guest access to the CD/DVD writing features of the  
host drive (if available):  
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 8.13, VBoxManage storagectl / storageattach, page 123.  
Even if pass-through is enabled, unsafe commands, such as updating the drive  
firmware, will be blocked.  
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5.8 iSCSI servers  
iSCSI stands for “Internet SCSI” and is a standard that allows for using the SCSI proto-  
col 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 8.19, VBoxManage addiscsidisk, page 128. 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.  
5.8.1 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 de-  
scribed in chapter 6.5, Internal networking, page 93). 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 ma-  
chine 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  
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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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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 8.5, VBoxManage  
modifyvm, page 114.  
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 five 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.  
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  
1Support 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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VirtualBox 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 virtualiza-  
tion 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 unex-  
pected 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 91 for details).  
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 in-  
terface. 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.  
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6.3 Network Address Translation (NAT)  
Network Address Translation (NAT) is the simplest way of accessing an external net-  
work 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 network-  
ing 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 9.13, Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine, page 148.  
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.  
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 ma-  
chine 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  
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6 Virtual networking  
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 com-  
mands. 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 con-  
figuration. 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  
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.  
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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) can-  
not 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, So-  
laris, 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 forward-  
ing, 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 work-  
ing. 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,  
depending on the host operating system. From the user perspective, the main differ-  
ence is that complex configuration is no longer necessary on any of the supported host  
operating systems.2  
Note: Even though TAP is no longer necessary on Linux with bridged network-  
ing, 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  
2For 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  
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 wire-  
less 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.  
– The VNIC and the guest network interface that uses the VNIC must be as-  
signed identical MAC addresses.  
6.5 Internal networking  
Internal Networking is similar to bridged networking in that the VM can directly com-  
municate 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 inter-  
face 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  
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6 Virtual networking  
any reason, you prefer two or more VMs on the same machine to communi-  
cate 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 con-  
figuration. 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 exist-  
ing 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. Op-  
tionally, 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  
the DHCP server that is built into VirtualBox to manage IP addresses for the internal  
network. Please see chapter 8.26, VBoxManage dhcpserver, page 133 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 net-  
working 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. Sim-  
ilarly, 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.  
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Instead, when host-only networking is used, VirtualBox creates a new software in-  
terface 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 8.5, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 114 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.  
• Alternatively, you can use VBoxManage dhcpserver on the command line;  
please see chapter 8.26, VBoxManage dhcpserver, page 133 for details.  
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7 Alternative front-ends; remote  
virtual machines  
7.1 Introduction  
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 and is described in the next section.  
3. VBoxSDL is an alternative, simple graphical front-end with an intentionally lim-  
ited 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 7.3, VBoxSDL, the simplified VM displayer, page 98.  
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 built-  
in 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 7.4.2, VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server, page 101.  
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 154.  
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7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines  
7.2 Using VBoxManage to control virtual machines  
This section will give you a brief introduction to VBoxManage and how you can use it  
to create and operate virtual machines.  
In essence, VBoxManage supports everything that our graphical user interface al-  
lows you to do with the click of a button. VBoxManage supports a lot more than that,  
however. 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 de-  
scribed in detail in chapter 8, VBoxManage reference, 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 dou-  
ble 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  
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 reg-  
ister it with VirtualBox, use VBoxManage createvm with the --register  
option,1 like this:  
1For details, see chapter 8.4, VBoxManage createvm, page 113.  
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7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines  
$ 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 8.2, VBoxManage showvminfo, page 112 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 8.5, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 114.  
• To control VM operation, use one of the following:  
– To start a VM that is currently powered off, use VBoxManage startvm;  
see chapter 8.8, VBoxManage startvm, page 120 for details.  
– To pause or save a VM that is currently running, use VBoxManage  
controlvm; see chapter 8.9, VBoxManage controlvm, page 121 for details.  
7.3 VBoxSDL, the simplified VM displayer  
VBoxSDL 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:  
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7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines  
To start a virtual machine with VBoxSDL instead of the VirtualBox GUI, enter the  
following on a command line:  
VBoxSDL --startvm <vm>  
where <vm> is, as usual with VirtualBox command line parameters, the name or  
UUID of an existing virtual machine.  
7.4 Remote virtual machines (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 auto-  
matically enabled since VBoxHeadless has no other means of output.  
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7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines  
7.4.1 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 inter-  
face 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 8.5, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 114 for details.  
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 win-  
dow.  
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 nec-  
essary.  
• On other systems, you can use the standard open-source rdesktop program.  
This ships with most Linux distributions, but VirtualBox also comes with a modi-  
fied variant of rdesktop for remote USB support (see chapter 7.4.4, Remote USB,  
page 103 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  
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7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines  
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.  
7.4.2 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  
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.2  
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  
2Before 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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To have the VRDP server use the setting from the VM configuration, as the other front-  
ends would, use this:  
VBoxHeadless --startvm <uuid|name> --vrdp=config  
7.4.3 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);  
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 7.4.1, Common third-party RDP  
viewers, page 100 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"  
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7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines  
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 8.9, VBoxManage con-  
trolvm, page 121 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.  
8. On the client machine, fire up the RDP viewer and try to connect to the server  
(see chapter 7.4.1, Common third-party RDP viewers, page 100 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.  
7.4.4 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 exten-  
sion. 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  
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Note that rdesktop-vrdp can access USB devices only through /proc/bus/usb.  
Please refer to chapter 11.5.7, USB not working, page 164 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.  
7.4.5 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 op-  
tion; see chapter 8.5, VBoxManage modifyvm, page 114 for a general introduction.  
Three methods of authentication are available:  
• 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 au-  
thentication 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 authentica-  
tion 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 139 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.  
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7.4.6 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 correspond-  
ing private key. However, as this hard-coded private key became public some  
years ago, RDP5.1 authentication is also insecure and cannot be recommended.  
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.  
7.4.7 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 9.7, Multiple monitors for the guest,  
page 143).  
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When running VBoxManage without parameters or when supplying an invalid com-  
mand 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.  
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]  
VBoxManage registervm  
VBoxManage unregistervm  
VBoxManage createvm  
<filename>  
<uuid>|<name> [--delete]  
--name <name>  
[--ostype <ostype>]  
[--register]  
[--basefolder <path> | --settingsfile <path>]  
[--uuid <uuid>]  
VBoxManage modifyvm  
<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]  
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[--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>]  
[--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>]  
[--teleporterenabled on|off]  
[--teleporterport <port>]  
[--teleporteraddress <address|empty>  
[--teleporterpassword <password>]  
[--hardwareuuid <uuid>]  
VBoxManage import  
VBoxManage export  
<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>]  
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[--eula <license text>]  
[--eulafile <filename>]  
VBoxManage startvm  
<uuid>|<name>  
[--type gui|sdl|vrdp|headless]  
VBoxManage controlvm  
<uuid>|<name>  
pause|resume|reset|poweroff|savestate|  
acpipowerbutton|acpisleepbutton|  
keyboardputscancode <hex> [<hex> ...]|  
injectnmi|  
setlinkstate<1-N> on|off |  
usbattach <uuid>|<address> |  
usbdetach <uuid>|<address> |  
vrdp on|off |  
vrdpport default|<ports> |  
setvideomodehint <xres> <yres> <bpp> [display] |  
setcredentials <username> <password> <domain>  
[--allowlocallogon <yes|no>] |  
teleport --hostname <name> --port <port>  
[--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>  
VBoxManage openmedium  
disk|dvd|floppy <filename>  
[--type normal|immutable|writethrough] (disk only)  
VBoxManage closemedium  
VBoxManage storageattach  
disk|dvd|floppy <uuid>|<filename>  
<uuid|vmname>  
--storagectl <name>  
--port <number>  
--device <number>  
[--type <dvddrive|hdd|fdd>  
--medium <none|emptydrive|uuid|filename|host:<drive>>]  
[--passthrough <on|off>]  
[--forceunmount]  
VBoxManage storagectl  
<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]  
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VBoxManage showhdinfo  
VBoxManage createhd  
<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 modifyhd  
VBoxManage clonehd  
<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]  
VBoxManage convertfromraw  
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 addiscsidisk  
--server <name>|<ip>  
--target <target>  
[--port <port>]  
[--lun <lun>]  
[--encodedlun <lun>]  
[--username <username>]  
[--password <password>]  
[--type normal|writethrough|immutable]  
[--comment <comment>]  
[--intnet]  
VBoxManage getextradata  
VBoxManage setextradata  
global|<uuid>|<name>  
<key>|enumerate  
global|<uuid>|<name>  
<key>  
[<value>] (no value deletes key)  
VBoxManage setproperty  
VBoxManage usbfilter  
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>  
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--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 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>]  
VBoxManage usbfilter  
remove <index,0-N>  
--target <uuid>|<name>|global  
VBoxManage sharedfolder  
add <vmname>|<uuid>  
--name <name> --hostpath <hostpath>  
[--transient] [--readonly]  
VBoxManage sharedfolder  
VBoxManage vmstatistics  
VBoxManage metrics  
remove <vmname>|<uuid>  
--name <name> [--transient]  
<vmname>|<uuid> [--reset]  
[--pattern <pattern>] [--descriptions]  
list [ |host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]  
*
(comma-separated)  
VBoxManage metrics  
setup  
[--period <seconds>]  
[--samples <count>]  
[--list]  
[ |host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]  
*
VBoxManage metrics  
VBoxManage metrics  
query [ |host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]  
*
collect  
[--period <seconds>]  
[--samples <count>]  
[--list]  
[--detach]  
[ |host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]  
*
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VBoxManage dhcpserver  
VBoxManage dhcpserver  
add|modify --netname <network_name> |  
[--ip <ip_address>  
--netmask <network_mask>  
--lowerip <lower_ip>  
--upperip <upper_ip>]  
[--enable | --disable]  
remove --netname <network_name> |  
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 sin-  
gle call. The following sections provide detailed reference information on the different  
commands.  
8.1 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 identi-  
fiers (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 iden-  
tifiers (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.  
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• systemproperties displays some global VirtualBox settings, such as mini-  
mum 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.  
8.2 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:  
Memory size:  
VRAM size:  
Number of CPUs:  
Synthetic Cpu:  
/home/username/.VirtualBox/Machines/Windows XP/Windows XP.xml  
512MB  
12MB  
2
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:  
PAE:  
on  
on  
Time offset:  
0 ms  
Hardw. virt.ext: on  
Hardw. virt.ext exclusive: on  
Nested Paging:  
VT-x VPID:  
State:  
on  
off  
powered off (since 2009-10-20T14:52:19.000000000)  
1
Monitor count:  
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  
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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:  
NIC 2:  
NIC 3:  
NIC 4:  
NIC 5:  
NIC 6:  
NIC 7:  
NIC 8:  
UART 1:  
UART 2:  
Audio:  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled  
disabled (Driver: Unknown)  
Clipboard Mode: Bidirectional  
VRDP:  
USB:  
disabled  
disabled  
USB Device Filters:  
<none>  
Shared folders:  
<none>  
Statistics update: disabled  
8.3 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.  
8.4 VBoxManage createvm  
This command creates a new XML virtual machine definition file.  
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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 set-  
tings 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.  
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.  
8.5 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 ad-  
vanced settings, however, are only available through the VBoxManage interface.  
8.5.1 General settings  
The following general settings are available through VBoxManage modifyvm:  
• --name <name>: This changes the VM’s name and possibly renames the inter-  
nal 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 vir-  
tual 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, “Moth-  
erboard” 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).  
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• --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 sys-  
tem; see chapter 3.4.3, “Acceleration” tab: hardware vs. software virtualization,  
page 49.  
• --hwvirtexexcl on|off: This specifies whether VirtualBox will make exclu-  
sive 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 addi-  
tional 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) fea-  
ture 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, Hard-  
ware 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.  
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• --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.  
8.5.2 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 net-  
working 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 network-  
ing (intnet) or host-only networking (hostonly). These options correspond  
to the modes which are described in detail in chapter 6.2, Introduction to net-  
working modes, page 89.  
• --nictype<1-N> Am79C970A|Am79C973|82540EM: 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 88.  
• --cableconnected<1-N> on|off: This allows you to temporarily discon-  
nect 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 compo-  
nents 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 par-  
ticular 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 92.  
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• --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 94.  
• --intnet<1-N> network: If internal networking has been enabled for a vir-  
tual 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 93).  
• --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 as-  
signed a random address by VirtualBox at VM creation.  
8.5.3 Serial port, audio, clipboard, VRDP and USB settings  
The following other 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 intro-  
duction.  
• --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 con-  
nected 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.  
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• --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.  
• --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 7.4.2, VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server, page 101), 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 be-  
tween 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 7.4.5, RDP  
authentication, page 104 for details.  
• --vrdpmulticon on|off: This enables multiple VRDP connections to the  
same VRDP server; see chapter 7.4.7, VRDP multiple connections, page 105.  
• --monitorcount <count>: This enables multi-monitor support for VRDP;  
see chapter 9.7, Multiple monitors for the guest, page 143.  
• --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.  
8.6 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.  
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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")  
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 indi-  
cates 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  
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8.7 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 prod-  
uct information to the appliance file. Use --product, --producturl, --vendor,  
--vendorurl and --version to specify this additional information. For legal rea-  
sons 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.  
8.8 VBoxManage startvm  
This command starts a virtual machine that is currently in the “Powered off” or “Saved”  
states.  
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 7.4.2, VBoxHeadless, the  
VRDP-only server, page 101 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 7.4.2, VBoxHeadless, the  
VRDP-only server, page 101 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.  
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headless Starts a VM without a window for remote RDP display only.  
8.9 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 com-  
mand. (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 ma-  
chine 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 “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 8.8, VBoxManage startvm, page 120.  
• 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 8.8, VBoxManage startvm, page 120.  
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.  
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• 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 89.  
• usbattach and usbdettach make host USB devices visible to the virtual ma-  
chine 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  
8.5.3, Serial port, audio, clipboard, VRDP and USB settings, page 117.  
• 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.  
• The setcredentials operation is used for remote logons in Windows guests.  
For details, please refer to chapter 9.2, Automated Windows guest logons, page  
137.  
8.10 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.  
8.11 VBoxManage snapshot  
This command is used to control snapshots from the command line. A snapshot con-  
sists 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.  
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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 snap-  
shot. 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 in-  
serted 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.  
8.12 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 Disk Manager; see chapter 5.3, The  
Virtual Media Manager, page 80 for more information.  
Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “registerim-  
age” and “unregisterimage” commands are also supported and mapped inter-  
nally to the “openmedium” and “closemedium” commands, respectively.  
Note however that when you unregister a hard disk image using VBoxManage, it  
will not be deleted from the host computer’s hard drive.  
8.13 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 8.2, VBoxManage showvminfo, page 112.  
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8.13.1 VBoxManage storagectl  
This command attaches/modifies/removes a storage controller. The syntax is as fol-  
lows:  
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 con-  
nected.  
controller Allows to choose the type of chipset being emulated for the given storage  
controller.  
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.  
8.13.2 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.  
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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 (emp-  
tydrive). 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 5.7, Writing CDs and DVDs using the host drive, page 85).  
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.  
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.  
8.14 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” com-  
mand.  
8.15 VBoxManage createhd  
This command creates a new virtual hard disk image. The syntax is as follows:  
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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 comma-  
separated 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.  
Note: For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the “createvdi”  
command is also supported and mapped internally to the “createhd” com-  
mand.  
8.16 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” com-  
mand.  
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”.  
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In addition, the modifyhd --compact command can be used to compact disk im-  
ages, 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. Com-  
paction works both for base images and for diff images created as part of a snapshot.  
8.17 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 Disk 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.  
variant Allow to choose a file format variant for the output file. It is a comma-  
separated 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” com-  
mand.  
8.18 VBoxManage convertfromraw  
This command converts a raw disk image to a VirtualBox Disk Image (VDI) file. The  
syntax is as follows:  
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VBoxManage convertfromraw  
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]  
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 comma-  
separated 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.  
8.19 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).  
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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 con-  
figuration which is described in chapter 5.8.1, Access iSCSI targets via Internal  
Networking, page 86.  
8.20 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 ma-  
chine 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  
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8.21 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 135 for details.  
vrdpauthlibrary This specifies which library to use when “external” VRDP authenti-  
cation has been selected for a particular virtual machine; see chapter 7.4.5, RDP  
authentication, page 104 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 154).  
hwvirtexenabled This selects whether or not hardware virtualization support is en-  
abled by default.  
8.22 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 be-  
fore 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.  
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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.  
8.23 VBoxManage sharedfolder add/remove  
This command allows you to share folders on the host computer with guest operat-  
ing 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.  
8.24 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.  
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.  
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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 sub-  
commands 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 met-  
rics. 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.  
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.  
8.25 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):  
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• enumerate <vm> [-patterns <pattern>]: This lists all the guest prop-  
erties 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 property is deleted. With --flags you can optionally specify ad-  
ditional 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 particu-  
lar value described by “pattern” to change or to be deleted or created. The  
pattern rules are the same as for the “enumerate” subcommand above.  
8.26 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:  
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• If you use internal networking for a virtual network adapter of a virtual ma-  
chine, 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 ma-  
chine, 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 net-  
works if you know the host-only network’s name; you can see the names with  
VBoxManage list hostonlyifs (see chapter 8.1, VBoxManage list, page  
111 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.  
• 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. Op-  
tionally, you can supply an alternate configuration directory by setting the  
VBOX_USER_HOME environment variable. You can globally change some of the lo-  
cations 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 doc-  
uments. 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 configura-  
tion data through its the VBoxManage command line tool (see chapter 8, VBoxManage  
reference, page 106) and its API (see chapter 10, VirtualBox programming interfaces,  
page 154).  
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  
1As 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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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 Disk 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 sub-  
directory 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 ma-  
chine. As a result, your virtual machine names must conform to the con-  
ventions 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 8.4, VBoxManage createvm, page 113.  
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 co-  
ordinated and automated logons of guest operating systems using credentials from a  
master logon system. (With “credentials”, we are referring to logon information con-  
sisting 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 lo-  
gons.  
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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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 sup-  
port 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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• /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 sub-  
service:  
• 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 follow-  
ing:  
• 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 7.4.5, RDP authentication, page 104, VirtualBox supports arbi-  
trary external modules to perform authentication with its VRDP servers. When the au-  
thentication method is set to “external” for a particular VM, VirtualBox calls the library  
that was specified with VBoxManage setproperty vrdpauthlibrary. This li-  
brary will be loaded by the VM process on demand, i.e. when the first RDP connection  
is made by an external client.  
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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  
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  
szUser  
szPassword  
szDomain  
Result of the guest authentication.  
User name passed in by the client (UTF8).  
Password passed in by the client (UTF8).  
Domain passed in by the client (UTF8).  
Return code:  
VRDPAuthAccessDenied  
VRDPAuthAccessGranted  
Client access has been denied.  
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  
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• reverse the order of byte 6 and 7.  
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 / de-  
nied 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 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  
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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:  
vga = 0x200 | 0x117 + 0x30  
vga = 839  
The reason for duplicating the standard modes instead of only supplying the ad-  
justed 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.)  
9.6 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.  
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9.7 Multiple monitors for the guest  
VirtualBox allows the guest to use multiple virtual monitors. Up to sixty-four virtual  
monitors are supported.  
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 7.4.7, VRDP mul-  
tiple connections, page 105) 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, VBox-  
Headless 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.  
9.8 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  
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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  
9.9 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>  
9.10 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 config-  
uring 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
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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  
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.  
9.11 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 im-  
ages 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 cur-  
rently 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 imple-  
mented 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 ex-  
ample, you can use the Virtual Disk Manager (chapter 5.3, The Virtual Media Manager,  
page 80) or VBoxManage to assign the image to a virtual machine.  
9.11.1 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  
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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  
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 speci-  
fication 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 cre-  
ated 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.  
9.11.2 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  
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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.  
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 speci-  
fication 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.  
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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.  
9.12 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 oper-  
ating systems may show strange behavior when using saved state or snapshots, espe-  
cially if a previously mounted medium is no longer available when the virtual machine  
is resumed.  
9.13 Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine  
9.13.1 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"  
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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.  
9.13.2 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 remote-  
booting scenarios. However, it is possible to change the boot server IP and the location  
of the boot image with the following commands:  
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  
9.13.3 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.  
9.13.4 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:  
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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 assign-  
ment.  
Also, if you have configured port forwarding for the NAT engine as described in  
chapter 6.3.1, Configuring port forwarding with NAT, page 90, you can bind this con-  
figuration only to a particular interface as well. Assuming that you have configured  
port forwarding for a “guestssh” service, you would use the following additional com-  
mand:  
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.  
9.13.5 Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode  
For resolving network names the DHCP server of the NAT engine offers a list of regis-  
tered 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  
9.13.6 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 regis-  
tered 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 in-  
tercept 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  
9.14 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  
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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.  
9.15 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  
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dmidecode -t0  
and the DMI system information can be obtained with  
dmidecode -t1  
9.16 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:  
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.  
9.17 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"  
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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 alphanu-  
meric 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 so-  
called “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 informa-  
tion, 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 “Program-  
ming 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 informa-  
tion 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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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-ROM 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 155. 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  
Often, customers encounter Windows startup failures (the infamous “blue screen”)  
after performing configuration changes to a virtual machine which are not allowed  
for an already installed Windows operating system. Depending on the presence of  
several hardware features, the Windows installation program chooses special kernel  
and device driver versions and will fail to startup should these hardware features be  
removed.  
Most importantly, never disable ACPI and the I/O APIC if they were enabled at  
installation time. 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.  
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.  
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.  
1See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955076.  
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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 in-  
terrupt 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 environ-  
ment, 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 inter-  
rupts. 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, Win-  
dows 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.  
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.  
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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 2.6.24-  
rc6 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  
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  
2See  
html for details about the kernel fix.  
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg30813.  
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11 Troubleshooting  
VBoxClient --clipboard  
VBoxClient --display  
VBoxClient --seamless  
when your X11 user session is started if you are using a common desktop environ-  
ment (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 inter- and  
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.  
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  
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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 Ini-  
tiator) 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 sepa-  
rate message window. The guest is blocked during that period and may show error  
messages or become unstable.  
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.  
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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 in-  
serting 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 configu-  
ration) 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.  
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.  
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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 applica-  
tion 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 can-  
not 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.  
11.5.6 VBoxSVC IPC issues  
On Linux, VirtualBox makes use of a custom version of Mozilla XPCOM (cross plat-  
form component object model) for inter- and intra-process communication (IPC). The  
process VBoxSVC serves as a communication hub between different VirtualBox pro-  
cesses 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. Com-  
munication between the various VirtualBox components and VBoxSVC is performed  
through a local domain socket residing in /tmp/.vbox-<username>-ipc. In case  
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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 mem-  
ber 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 filesys-  
tem 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)  
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  
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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 di-  
rectory.  
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  
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.  
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11 Troubleshooting  
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 Beta 2 (2009-11-19)  
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:  
• Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one machine  
to another  
• 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 over-  
lay stretching and colour conversion (see chapter 4.10, Hardware 2D video accel-  
eration 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)  
• Support for Parallels version 2 disk image (HDD) files; see chapter 5.2, Disk  
image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD), page 79  
• The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running  
• 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)  
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12 Change log  
• Improved network performance for Linux guests by providing a virtio network  
device  
In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:  
• VMM: guest SMP fixes for certain rare cases  
• GUI: allow to disable USB filters (bug #5426)  
• 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 Tourna-  
ment, 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)  
• 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)  
• VHD: fixed incompatibility with Hyper-V  
• OVF: create manifest files on export and verify the content of an optional mani-  
fest file on import  
• 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)  
• 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 (bug #4842)  
• 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)  
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• Solaris Additions: fixed as_pagelock() failed errors affecting guest properties  
(bug #5337)  
• Windows Additions: added automatic logon support for Windows Vista and Win-  
dows 7  
• Windows Additions: fixed crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)  
• Linux Additions: added support for uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions (bug  
#4039)  
• SDK: added object-oriented web service bindings for PHP5  
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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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  
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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• Linux Additions: fixed incorrect disk usage value (non-Windows hosts only)  
• Linux installer: register the module sources at DKMS even if the package pro-  
vides 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: fixed CapsLock handling on French keyboards (bug  
#2025)  
• 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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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 privi-  
leges  
• 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)  
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12 Change log  
• VRDP: start VM even if configured VRDP port is in use  
• Networking: the PCnet network device stopped receiving under rare conditions  
(bug #4870)  
• 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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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  
• 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 negotia-  
tion of parameters, fix command resend when the connection was dropped, fix  
processing SCSI status for targets which do not use phase collapse  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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)  
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12 Change log  
• SUSE 11 guests: fixed Guest Additions installation (bug #4506)  
• Guest Additions: support Fedora 12 Alpha guests (bugs #4731, #4733 and  
#4734)  
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 ap-  
plications (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  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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  
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12 Change log  
• VMM: fixed hangs and poor performance with Kaspersky Internet Security (VT-  
x/AMD-V only; bug #1778)  
• VMM: fixed crashes when executing certain Linux guests (software virtualization  
only; bugs #2696 & #3868)  
• 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 synchro-  
nization 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  
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12 Change log  
• 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 accelera-  
tion to be enabled for virtual machines that had no explicit configuration in the  
XML.  
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 cer-  
tain 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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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  
• 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. OVF im-  
port/export)  
• 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 com-  
pression 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  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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 automati-  
cally (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.  
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12 Change log  
• Web service: object-oriented bindings for JAX-WS did not exhibit interface inher-  
itance correctly, fixed  
• Web service: added support for IDisplay and IGuest interfaces, which were pre-  
viously unavailable  
• Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now  
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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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 re-  
boot after installing the Additions on X.Org server 1.5 and later  
• Guest Additions: properly report process identity number of running services  
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12 Change log  
• 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  
• 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 virtual-  
ization 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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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  
• CBindings: fixed possible memory leak while releasing the IVirtualBox and ISes-  
sion 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 94)  
• 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:  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• VMM: allow mixing of VT-x/AMD-V and software virtualization  
• VMM: fixed extremely slow safe mode booting in e.g. Windows 2008 (VT-  
x/AMD-V only)  
• VMM: significant speedup of certain GRUB boot loaders (e.g. Solaris) (VT-  
x/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/usb-  
ohci/0/Config/FrameRate” CFG key is no longer necessary and no longer sup-  
ported  
• USB: fixed BSOD on the host with certain USB devices (Windows hosts only; bug  
#1654)  
• E1000: properly handle cable disconnects (bug #3421)  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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 point-  
ing 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 op-  
tions 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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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 VT-  
x/AMD-V  
• GUI: removed floppy icon from the status bar  
• 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 re-  
gression; 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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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  
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12 Change log  
• 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 syn-  
chronization (bug #3253)  
• LsiLogic: make FreeBSD guests work (bug #3174)  
• 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  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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)  
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12 Change log  
• IDE: fixed ATAPI passthrough support (Linux hosts only; bug #2795)  
• Networking: fixed kernel panics due to NULL pointer dereference in Linux ker-  
nels < 2.6.20 (Linux hosts only; bug #2827)  
• Networking: fixed intermittent BSODs when using the new host interface (Win-  
dows hosts only; bugs #2832, #2937, #2929)  
• Networking: fixed several issues with displaying hostif NICs in the GUI (Win-  
dows hosts only; bugs 2814, #2842)  
• Networking: fixed the issue with displaying hostif NICs without assigned IP ad-  
dresses (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 de-  
fault 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 parame-  
ters/exception)  
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12 Change log  
• 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 pack-  
age  
• 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 re-  
gression)  
• Mac OS X hosts: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host ma-  
chine’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 Win-  
dows 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 distri-  
bution (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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
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 accel-  
eration (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 Win-  
dows)  
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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• VMM: fixed guru meditation for PAE guests on non-PAE hosts (VT-x)  
• VMM: disallow mixing of software and hardware virtualization execution in gen-  
eral (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 (Win-  
dows & Mac OS X hosts)  
• GUI: resume previously paused VMs when the host machine resumes after sus-  
pend (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  
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12 Change log  
• 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 in-  
terface networking  
• Mac OS X hosts: added ACPI host power status reporting  
• 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 run-  
ning Linux guests (bugs #1606, #2269, #2763)  
• XPCOM/Main: fixed synchronization bug caused by SYSV semaphore key colli-  
sions  
• 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  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
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  
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12 Change log  
• Solaris hosts: fixed incompatibility between IPSEC and host interface networking  
• Solaris hosts: fixed a rare race condition while powering off VMs with host in-  
terface networking  
• Solaris hosts: fixed VBoxSDL on Solaris 10 by shipping the required SDL library  
(bug #2475)  
• 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  
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12 Change log  
• Clipboard: don’t crash when host service initialization takes longer than ex-  
pected (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  
• 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 Cross-  
bow Virtual Network Interfaces (VNICs) with host interface networking  
• Solaris hosts: reworked threading model improves performance for host inter-  
face 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)  
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12 Change log  
• 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)  
• 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  
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12 Change log  
• 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  
• 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 non-  
global 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  
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• 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)  
• 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)  
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• 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 with-  
out VRDP (bug #1960)  
• VBoxManage: fixes to creating raw disk/partition VMDK files, now accepts re-  
movable 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  
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• 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)  
• 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  
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• 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  
• 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. open-  
SUSE 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  
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• 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)  
• VMM: detect inconsistent timestamp counters on certain AMD Phenom mother-  
boards (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 9.15, Configuring the  
BIOS DMI information, page 151)  
• 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  
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• Windows host: fixed stability during high system load (page fault in KeQueryAc-  
tiveProcessors)  
• 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  
• 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 vbox-  
add 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 154)  
• 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  
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• 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  
• 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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12.24 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 circum-  
stances  
• 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  
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• 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 emu-  
lation  
• 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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12.25 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  
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• 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)  
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• 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 distri-  
butions)  
• 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  
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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/AMD-  
V
• 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  
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• 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  
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• 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 (pos-  
sibly much more)  
• VMM: fixed crashes if memory allocation failed (Linux)  
• VMM: fixed enabling of Local APIC on AMD hosts (fixed Ubuntu Feisty installa-  
tion 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  
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• VMM: fixed out-of-memory errors under certain environments with enough ap-  
propriate 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 perfor-  
mance (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  
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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  
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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 times-  
tamp 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 (Win-  
dows 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 any-  
more  
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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+ compati-  
bility  
• 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  
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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  
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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 Network-  
ing  
• 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  
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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 at-  
tach 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)  
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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 unin-  
stall)  
• 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  
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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)  
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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 An-  
tivirus  
• 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  
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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 (Win-  
dows 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  
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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 VBox-  
Manage)  
• 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, ex-  
ecute “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 re-  
mote 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 dif-  
ferent 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 execut-  
ing 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 Set-  
tings\<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 Execu-  
tion 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 Net-  
working adapters  
• VDI: updated virtual disk image format (for newly created images; old images  
continue to work) with enhanced write performance and support for the upcom-  
ing snapshot feature  
• Network: performance improvements  
• Graphics: added hardware acceleration to virtual graphics adapter and corre-  
sponding 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 ac-  
celeration architecture  
• USB: restructured USB subsystem; added support for filters to autocapture de-  
vices 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 Set-  
tings\<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 spe-  
cific 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 re-  
moved 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 Set-  
tings\<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 detec-  
tion 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 inacces-  
sible 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_BETA2. 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.  
• Shrinking 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 virtu-  
alization, nested paging and other VM properties.  
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13 Known limitations  
– OVF localization (multiple languages in one OVF file) is not yet supported.  
– Some OVF sections like StartupSection, DeploymentOptionSection and In-  
stallSection are ignored.  
– OVF environment documents, including their property sections and appli-  
ance 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 man-  
agers 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 win-  
dow 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 prob-  
ably 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. There-  
fore 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 chap-  
ter 14.2.5, X Consortium License (X11), page 262 and chapter 14.2.2, GNU Lesser  
General Public License (LGPL), page 247 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 262 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 247  
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 247  
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 262 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 262 and  
Copyright (C) 1995-1998 Eric Young ([email protected]). This product in-  
cludes 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 254 and  
Copyright (C) The Authors.  
• VirtualBox contains Slirp which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.8,  
Slirp license, page 263 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 264 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 242 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 242 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 242 with the exception that ag-  
gregating Etherboot with another work does not require the other work to be re-  
leased 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 247 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 265 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 265 and  
Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Daniel Veillard.  
• VirtualBox contains libxslt which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.13,  
libxslt licenses, page 266 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 267 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 242 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 273 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 276 and  
Copyright (C) 1996-2009, Daniel Stenberg.  
• VirtualBox contains dnsproxy which is governed by the license in chapter 14.2.4,  
MIT License, page 261 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 261 and  
Copyright (c) 2000-2008 by Nicolas Devillard.  
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 docu-  
ment, 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  
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.  
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14 Third-party licenses  
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, DIS-  
TRIBUTION 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.  
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.  
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14 Third-party licenses  
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 distribu-  
tion 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,  
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,  
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14 Third-party licenses  
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute cor-  
responding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribu-  
tion 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 mod-  
ifications 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 ex-  
pressly 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  
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.  
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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 contri-  
butions 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 conse-  
quence of the rest of this License.  
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries ei-  
ther by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places  
the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limi-  
tation 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 WAR-  
RANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EX-  
CEPT 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  
PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU AS-  
SUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.  
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14 Third-party licenses  
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 LI-  
ABLE 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 ver-  
batim 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 au-  
thors 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,  
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  
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14 Third-party licenses  
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 Gen-  
eral Public License. This license, the GNU Lesser General Public License, applies to  
certain designated libraries, and is quite different from the ordinary General Public Li-  
cense. 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,  
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In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-free programs enables a  
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Although the Lesser General Public License is Less protective of the users’ freedom, it  
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Pay close attention to the difference between a “work based on the library” and a “work  
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GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPY-  
ING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION  
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WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MOD-  
IFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE LIBRARY AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO  
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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 Mod-  
ifications used by a Contributor, and the Modifications made by that particular Con-  
tributor.  
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 Devel-  
oper 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.  
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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 struc-  
ture 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 de-  
scribed 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 ac-  
quired, 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 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.  
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(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 combina-  
tion 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 un-  
modified 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 Con-  
tributor 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 Elec-  
tronic Distribution Mechanism to anyone to whom you made an Executable version  
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  
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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 Ini-  
tial 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 mak-  
ing the claim in sufficient detail that a recipient will know whom to contact. If Contrib-  
utor 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 Contribu-  
tor 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 program-  
ming 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 Exe-  
cutable form only if the requirements of Section 3.1-3.5 have been met for that Cov-  
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  
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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 pub-  
lish 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 partic-  
ular 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 subse-  
quent 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 gov-  
erned 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 Li-  
cense) 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  
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.  
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COVERED CODE IS PROVIDED UNDER THIS LICENSE ON AN “AS IS” BASIS, WITH-  
OUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING,  
WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES THAT THE COVERED CODE IS FREE OF DE-  
FECTS, 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 LI-  
CENSE. 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 “Partici-  
pant”) 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 re-  
spect 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 in-  
fringement litigation, then the reasonable value of the licenses granted by such Partic-  
ipant under Sections 2.1 or 2.2 shall be taken into account in determining the amount  
or value of any payment or license.  
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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 LE-  
GAL THEORY, WHETHER TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), CONTRACT, OR OTH-  
ERWISE, SHALL YOU, THE INITIAL DEVELOPER, ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR, OR  
ANY DISTRIBUTOR OF COVERED CODE, OR ANY SUPPLIER OF ANY OF SUCH PAR-  
TIES, BE LIABLE TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR  
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY CHARACTER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITA-  
TION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAIL-  
URE 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 LIA-  
BILITY FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY RESULTING FROM SUCH PARTY’S NEG-  
LIGENCE 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 com-  
puter 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 reg-  
istered 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 Dis-  
trict 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 reg-  
ulation 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 Contribu-  
tors, 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 Devel-  
oper and Contributors to distribute such responsibility on an equitable basis. Nothing  
herein is intended or shall be deemed to constitute any admission of liability.  
13. MULTIPLE-LICENSED CODE. Initial Developer may designate portions of the  
Covered Code as “Multiple-Licensed”. “Multiple-Licensed” means that the Initial De-  
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veloper 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 per-  
sons 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, EX-  
PRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MER-  
CHANTABILITY, 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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14.2.5 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 per-  
sons 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, EX-  
PRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MER-  
CHANTABILITY, 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 com-  
mercial 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 acknowledg-  
ment 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 misrep-  
resented 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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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 condi-  
tions 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 writ-  
ten 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 WAR-  
RANTIES 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 CONSEQUEN-  
TIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTI-  
TUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS IN-  
TERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER  
IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTH-  
ERWISE) 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 WAR-  
RANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MER-  
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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 INTERRUP-  
TION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CON-  
TRACT, 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 WAR-  
RANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE  
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, IN-  
DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (IN-  
CLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SER-  
VICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOW-  
EVER 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, spe-  
cial, 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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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 WAR-  
RANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE  
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, IN-  
DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (IN-  
CLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SER-  
VICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOW-  
EVER 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 per-  
sons 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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THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EX-  
PRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MER-  
CHANTABILITY, 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 OTHER-  
WISE, 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 per-  
sons 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, EX-  
PRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MER-  
CHANTABILITY, 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 OTHER-  
WISE, 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 per-  
sons 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, EX-  
PRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MER-  
CHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  
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IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR  
OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHER-  
WISE, 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 Mod-  
ifications used by a Contributor, and the Modifications made by that particular Con-  
tributor.  
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 Devel-  
oper 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 struc-  
ture 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 Modifica-  
tions.  
1.10. “Original Code” means Source Code of computer software code which is de-  
scribed 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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1.10.1. “Patent Claims” means any patent claim(s), now owned or hereafter ac-  
quired, 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, Modifi-  
cations, 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 un-  
modified 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 por-  
tions 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 Modifica-  
tions.  
You must cause all Covered Code to which You contribute to contain a file document-  
ing 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 indi-  
rectly, 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 mak-  
ing the claim in sufficient detail that a recipient will know whom to contact. If Contrib-  
utor 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 Contribu-  
tor 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 program-  
ming 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 Con-  
tributor’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 Exe-  
cutable form only if the requirements of Section 3.1-3.5 have been met for that Cov-  
ered 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 dis-  
tribute 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, propri-  
etary 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 dis-  
tributions 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, WITH-  
OUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, IN-  
CLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABIL-  
ITY, 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 PRO-  
VIDED “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. UN-  
DER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, IN-  
DIRECT, 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 FAIL-  
URE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY EXCLUSIVE REMEDY PROVIDED. SUCH LIM-  
ITATION 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 SOFT-  
WARE IS NOT DESIGNED FOR USE IN ON-LINE EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS EN-  
VIRONMENTS SUCH AS OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGA-  
TION 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 LIABIL-  
ITY IN RESPECT OF ANY ACTIONS OR CLAIMS BASED ON THE USE OF THE SOFT-  
WARE IN ANY SUCH ON-LINE EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS BY  
YOU. FOR PURPOSES OF THIS PARAGRAPH, THE TERM “LIFE-CRITICAL APPLICA-  
TION” MEANS AN APPLICATION IN WHICH THE FUNCTIONING OR MALFUNCTION-  
ING OF THE SOFTWARE MAY RESULT DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN PHYSICAL IN-  
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JURY OR LOSS OF HUMAN LIFE. THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY CONSTITUTES  
AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THIS LICENSE. NO USE OF ANY COVERED CODE IS AU-  
THORIZED 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 Partic-  
ipant’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 infringe-  
ment 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 INI-  
TIAL DEVELOPER, ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR, OR ANY DISTRIBUTOR OF COV-  
ERED CODE, OR ANY SUPPLIER OF ANY OF SUCH PARTIES, BE LIABLE TO ANY  
PERSON FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAM-  
AGES 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 EX-  
TENT APPLICABLE LAW PROHIBITS SUCH LIMITATION. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO  
NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUEN-  
TIAL 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 dis-  
tribute 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 Li-  
cense.  
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 soap-  
doc2.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 cre-  
ated 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 CON-  
SEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF  
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSI-  
NESS 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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• 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 CONTRIBU-  
TORS “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 COPY-  
RIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCI-  
DENTAL, 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 CONTRIBU-  
TORS “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 CON-  
TRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EX-  
EMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,  
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PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR  
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THE-  
ORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (IN-  
CLUDING 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. De-  
partment 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, ap-  
paratus, 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 per-  
mit 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 para-  
graph) shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.  
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EX-  
PRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MER-  
CHANTABILITY, 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, EX-  
PRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MER-  
CHANTABILITY, 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.  
276  
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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 pro-  
cess.  
§ 1 virtualbox.org. The “virtualbox.org” website, as any other website, logs anony-  
mous 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 Microsys-  
tems 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 manage-  
ment. 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 on-  
chip 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 inter-  
faces (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.  
279  
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Glossary  
C
COM Microsoft Component Object Model, a programming infrastructure for modular  
software. COM allows applications to provide application programming inter-  
faces 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 ad-  
dresses. 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 88.  
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.  
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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 5.8, iSCSI servers, page 86.  
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 fire-  
walls 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 90.  
O
OVF Open Virtualization Format, a cross-platform industry standard to exchange vir-  
tual 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.  
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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 sys-  
tem can be controlled from a remote location using a network connection over  
which data is transferred in both directions. Typically graphics updates and au-  
dio 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 7.4, Remote virtual machines  
(VRDP support), page 99 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 be-  
tween 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 pro-  
cessor.  
U
UUID A Universally Unique Identifier – often also called GUID (Globally Unique Iden-  
tifier) – 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 iden-  
tify 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.  
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Glossary  
X
XML The eXtensible Markup Language, a metastandard for all kinds of textual infor-  
mation. 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 infrastruc-  
ture 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 com-  
prehensive API to third-party developers.  
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