Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.2.0 (32-bit & 64-bit)

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VirtualBox -- professional, flexible, open

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

Some of the features of VirtualBox are:


Modularity.

VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

Virtual machine descriptions in XML.

The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

Guest Additions for Windows and Linux.

VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).

Shared folders.

Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.

A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only:


Virtual USB Controllers.

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.

Remote Desktop Protocol.

Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.

USB over RDP.

With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.


Changelog:


This version is a major update.
The following major new features were added:


* OVF (Open Virtualization Format) appliance import and export

* Host-only networking mode

* 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)

* Shared folders for Solaris and OpenSolaris guests

* OpenGL 3D acceleration for Linux and Solaris guests

* Added C API in addition to C++, Java, Python and Web Services


In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:


* VMM: FreeBSD guest related fix for V86 flags (bug #2342)

* VMM: fixed guru meditation when booting an AsteriskNow Linux VM (bug #2342)

* VMM: fixed PGMPOOLKIND_FREE guru meditation (bugs #3356, #3431)

* VMM: fixed Windows XP boot hang (guest PAE + nested paging only)

* 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 supported

* USB: fixed BSOD on the host with certain USB devices (Windows hosts only; bug #1654)


* E1000: properly handle cable disconnects (bug #3421)


* VRDP: fixed hangs when VRDP server is enabled or disabled in runtime


* 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 pointing device (bug #1324)

* Windows hosts: fixed BSOD when starting a VM with enabled host interface (bug #3414)


* 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 additions don’t support statistics information (bug #3457)

* VBoxManage: big command line processing cleanup, the legacy single-dash options are deprecated and will be removed in the next major release, so switch to the new options now


* Hard disks: improved immutable disk support to auto-reset diff file at VM startup (related to bug #2772)


* GUI: enable the audio adapter by default for new VMs

* GUI: warn if VT-x/AMD-V is not operational when starting a 64-bit guest

* GUI: deactivate 64-bit guest support when the host CPU does not support 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 regression; bug #2065)


* 3D support: added OpenGL select/feedback support (bug #2920)

* 3D support: close OpenGL subsystem for terminated guest applications (bug #3243)

* 3D support: fixed VM hangs when starting guests with 3D acceleration enabled (bug #3437)

* PXE: fixed boot hangs when hardware virtualization is used (bug #2536)

* LsiLogic: fixed problems with Solaris guests

* Main API: close machine settings XML file when unregistering machine (bug #3548)