VirtualBox 2.0.2

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 (see the "Editions" page for details):

• 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 :

• 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