VirtualBox 1.6.2 released

[Pedro]

Changelog:
{QUOTE-> VirtualBox 1.6.2 (released 2008-06-06)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

* GUI: fixed a bug which prevented to add more than one SATA drive from the GUI
* GUI: fixed a regression introduced in 1.6.0: the fullscreen mode was left on every guest video mode switch
* GUI: fixed several minor issues
* Networking: fixed a host interface networking regression introduced in 1.6.0
* VMM: fixed starting of VMs with AMD-V enabled
* VMM: massive performance enhancements for AMD-V
* VMM: stability improvements for AMD-V on Windows hosts
* VMM: correctly detect AMD CPUs with erratum 170 (AMD-V)
* VMM: detect inconsistent timestamp counters on certain AMD Phenom CPUs (Windows host only)
* VMM: fixed KVM check (Linux hosts only) XPCOM: fixed several races
* VMM: fixed a regression introduced in 1.6.0: Windows stuck during installation
* 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 informatiton (see chapter 9.13, Con'guring the BIOS DMI information, page 125)
* RTC: fixed UIP emulation to prevent jumping of time in Solaris guests
* Windows host: VirtualBox installation directory corrected for 64 bits Windows
* Windows host: fixed VBoxVRDP.exe symlink
* Windows host: solved locking problems in raw partition VMDK support
* Windows host: fixed stability during high system load (page fault in KeQueryActiveProcessors)
* MacOS 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 vboxadd guest kernel module <-QUOTE}
Download (https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=innotek-1.6-G-F@CDS-CDS_SMI)

[EASTER]

Thanks Pedro for the heads up.

VB is always been my favorite. Keeps getting better & better.

EASTER

[Huupi]

Shall look into these,maybe a decent free alternative to the paid VM.

BTW are there any using both ? What are the advantages of VM ?

[lodore]

i will try this hopefully this time it will work will my network card.

[huangker]

{QUOTE-> i will try this hopefully this time it will work will my network card. <-QUOTE}

I don't understand, Virtual Box does not need to work with your network card does it? It just creates a network with your computer as a gateway doesn't it?

[farmerlee]

{QUOTE-> Shall look into these,maybe a decent free alternative to the paid VM.

BTW are there any using both ? What are the advantages of VM ? <-QUOTE}
Yeh i use both mainly because i find certain distros of linux work better with VB than they do with VMWARE. I'm no linux guru so i'll use whichever one is the easiest lol.
For basic virtualisation needs VB is just as good as VMWARE imo. However for advanced needs VMWARE is currently far better.

[farmerlee]

{QUOTE-> I don't understand, Virtual Box does not need to work with your network card does it? It just creates a network with your computer as a gateway doesn't it? <-QUOTE}
It needs to be able to work with the host network card in order to have network access inside the guest. How it works depends on how you set it up. However i've used VB on a number of systems and never had any network problems. Perhaps lodore has his system setup in a unique way?

[huangker]

{QUOTE-> It needs to be able to work with the host network card in order to have network access inside the guest. How it works depends on how you set it up. However i've used VB on a number of systems and never had any network problems. Perhaps lodore has his system setup in a unique way? <-QUOTE}

It never uses the host network card right? The host operating system controls that.

{QUOTE-> Yeh i use both mainly because i find certain distros of linux work better with VB than they do with VMWARE. I'm no linux guru so i'll use whichever one is the easiest lol.
For basic virtualisation needs VB is just as good as VMWARE imo. However for advanced needs VMWARE is currently far better. <-QUOTE}

Are you referring to some of the enterprise features?

[lodore]

{QUOTE-> I don't understand, Virtual Box does not need to work with your network card does it? It just creates a network with your computer as a gateway doesn't it? <-QUOTE}
well when i right clicked on the properties of the virtual machine it didnt allow me to select any network card. hence my virtual machine had no internet access.

[farmerlee]

{QUOTE-> It never uses the host network card right? The host operating system controls that.



Are you referring to some of the enterprise features? <-QUOTE}
Well naturally it has to use the host network card in order to have network access. How VB uses it depends on how you have the VM setup.

I was referring to the workstation features, its has more advanced features than the current release of VB. To quote another wilders member, vmware workstation is like the rolls royce of virtualisation.

[Pedro]

Forgot to post.

VirtualBox 1.6.4
{QUOTE-> 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
* RDP: fixed enabling the RDP server during runtime
* RDP: properly detect the rdesktop 1.6.0 RDP client
* RDP: fixed RDP crash (bug #1521)
* RDP: updated modified rdesktop client to version 1.6.0
* GUI: NLS improvements
* BIOS: added SMBIOS header to make Solaris and Vista recognize the DMI data
* ACPI: properly hide a disabled floppy controller
* VMM: small fixes to protected mode without paging
* VMDK: fixed handling of .vmdk images without UUIDs
* Windows hosts: fixed driver parameter validation issue in VBoxDrv.sys that could allow an attacker on the host to crash the system
* Windows hosts: installer now contains web service examples mentioned in the manual
* Linux hosts: properly deregister the Linux kernel module before uninstalling a Linux deb/rpm package
* Linux hosts: kernel module works now with Linux 2.6.27
* Linux hosts: fixed a typo in the vboxnet setup script for host network interfaces (bug #1714)
* Linux hosts: fixed usage of tar in installer (bug #1767)
* Linux hosts: fixed long guest shutdown time when serial port is enabled
* Solaris hosts: refuse to install in Sun xVM hypervisor dom0
* Solaris hosts: accept Solaris raw disks when for raw disk access
* Windows additions: made installation of shared folders more robust
* Windows additions: improved installation
* Linux additions: accept every user-defined guest video mode in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
* Linux additions: fixed startup order for recent Linux distributions (e.g. openSUSE 11) <-QUOTE}
Download (https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=innotek-1.6-G-F@CDS-CDS_SMI)

[Pedro]

VirtualBox 1.6.6 (released 2008-08-26)

Changelog:
{QUOTE-> This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

* VMM: fixed excessive logging (bug #1901)
* VMM: AMD-V stability fixes (bug #1685)
* GUI: added support for Ctrl+Caps reversed keyboards (bug #1891)
* SATA: fixed BSODs of Windows guests on a SATA disk (bug #1941)
* SATA: fixed hard disk detection on Solaris 10 U5 (bug #1789)
* VBoxHeadless: don’t start the clipboard service (bug #1743)
* VBoxHeadless: added -vrdp parameter which allows to start the VM session without VRDP (bug #1960)
* VBoxManage: fixes to creating raw disk/partition VMDK files, now accepts removable media on Windows (bug #1869)
* VRDP: fixed communication with MS Remote Resktop Connection on MacOS 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)
* MacOS X hosts: shared folders unicode fix
* Solaris hosts: fixed link issue (bug #1840)
* Windows additions: allow to downgrade the package
* Windows additions: fixed corrupted installer icon on Windows 2000 (bug #1486)
* Windows additions: fixed bug when creating intermediate directories (bug #1870)
* Windows additions: implemented /xres=, /yres= and /depth= switches for the installer (bug #1990)
* Linux additions: properly unregister the misc device when unloading the kernel module
* Linux additions: fixed startup order for recent Linux distributions again (e.g. openSUSE 11)
* Linux additions: attempt to fix the autostart issue of !VBoxClient with Mandriva guests (bug #1699)
* Linux additions: fixed detection of patched Linux 2.6.18 kernels of RHEL5 / FC6 / CentOS 5.2 (bugs #1899, #1973)
* 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) <-QUOTE}
Changelog page (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog)

Download (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
I wish they had auto-install over older versions - or at least a removal script prior to a new installation, similar to VMware Server.
Mrk

[KookyMan]

Last time I updated, 1.6.2 to 1.6.4, it caused all sorts of havoc with my audio subsystems on my guests.

I went from having sounds to having "Clicks"

[Pedro]

Did you try to update the guest additions? It may have something to do with that.

Mrk,
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade , or aptitude, or click click
::) ;D

[huangker]

Appears to be version 2 now.

[Pedro]

Indeed, thank you huangker.

Changelog:
{QUOTE-> VirtualBox 2.0.0 (released 2008-09-04)

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

* 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only)
* New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
* The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements
* New-version notifier
* Guest property information interface
* Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
* New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts
* Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)
* 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/SATA: 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) <-QUOTE}
Changelog (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog)
Press release (http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-09/sunflash.20080904.1.xml)
Downloads (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

Perhaps it would be better for a new thread to get the attention? It's a major update after all.

[huangker]

Anyone if or when VB will extend their host support to beyond Windows, Linux and Mac? I'm dying to try the BSDs.

[lodore]

VirtualBox 2.0.2 (released 2008-09-12)
changelog:
{QUOTE-> This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:
VMM: fixed inability to run more than one VM in parallel (AMD-V on CPUs with erratum 170 only; bug #2167)
VMM: VT-x stability fixes (bug #2179 and others)
VMM: fixed Linux 2.6.26+ kernel crashes (used by Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha, Fedora 10 Alpha; bug #1875)
VMM: fixed 64 bits Linux 2.6.26 kernel crashes (Debian)
VMM: fixed Vista (32 bits) guest crash during boot when PAE and NX are enabled (applied to 64 bits hosts with VT-x enabled only)
VMM: fixed OS/2 guest crashes during boot (AMD-V; bug #2132)
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 (bug #2055)
API: fixed number of installed CPUs (Solaris hosts only)
VRDP: allow a client to reconnect to an existing session on the VRDP server by dropping the existing connection (configurable and disabled by default; only relevant when multiconnection mode is disabled)
VRDP: fixed an image repaint problem
Linux hosts: fixed bug in vboxdrv.ko that could corrupt kernel memory and panic the kernel (bug #2078)
Linux hosts: compile fixes for kernel module on Linux 2.6.27
Mac OS X hosts: added Python support
Additions: fixed a possible hang in HGCM communication after a VM reboot
Windows additions: added support for Windows XP 64 bits (bug #2117)
Linux additions: deactivate dynamic resizing on Linux guests with buggy X servers
Linux additions: support Ubuntu 8.10 guests and Fedora 9 guests (dynamic resizing disabled for the latter) (bug #1854)
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 <-QUOTE}
changelog (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog)
download (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

[lodore]

VirtualBox 2.0.4 (released 2008-10-24)
{QUOTE-> This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:
VMM: better error reporting for VT-x failures
VMM: don’t overflow the release log with PATM messages (bug #1775)
VMM: fixed save state restore in real mode (software virtualization only)
GUI: work around a Qt bug on Mac OS X (bug #2321)
GUI: properly install the Qt4 accessible plugin (bug #629)
SATA: error message when starting a VM with a VMDK connected to a SATA port (bug #2182)
SATA: fixed Guru mediation when booting OpenSolaris/64; most likely applies to other guests as well (bug #2292)
Network: don’t crash when changing the adapter link state if no host driver is attached (bug #2333)
VHD: fixed bug which prevents booting from VHD images bigger than 4GB (bug #2085)
VRDP: fixed a repaint problem when the guest resolution was not equal to the client resolution
Clipboard: don’t crash when host service initialization takes longer than expected (Linux hosts only; bug #2001)
Windows hosts: VBoxSVC.exe crash (bug #2212)
Windows hosts: VBoxSVC.exe memory leak due to a Windows WMI memory leak (Vista only) (bug #2242)
Windows hosts: VBoxSVC.exe delays GUI startup
Linux hosts: handle jiffies counter overflow (VM stuck after 300 seconds of host uptime; bug #2247)
Solaris hosts: fixed host or guest side networking going stale while using host interface networking (bug #2474)
Solaris hosts: added support for using unplumbed network interfaces and Crossbow Virtual Network Interfaces (VNICs) with host interface networking
Solaris hosts: reworked threading model improves performance for host interface networking
Windows additions: fixed crash when accessing deep directory structures in a shared folder
Windows additions: improved shared folder name resolving (bug #1728)
Windows additions: fixed Windows 2000 shutdown crash (bug #2254)
Windows additions: fixed error code for MoveFile() if the target exists (bug #2350)
Linux additions: fixed seek() for files bigger than 2GB (bug #2379)
Linux additions: support Ubuntu 8.10
Linux additions: clipboard fixes (bug #2015)
Web services: improved documentation and fixed example (bug #1642) <-QUOTE}
three of the problems i was having have been fixed. windows 2000 guest shutdown issue,memory leak of virtualbox on vista and gui startup delay.

[Pedro]

{QUOTE-> Linux additions: support Ubuntu 8.10 <-QUOTE}
Aha!

Thank you lodore.

[Pedro]

VirtualBox 2.0.6 (released 2008-11-21)
{QUOTE-> This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

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