Sun Microsystems 3.0.0 - Manuals

Contents 8.14 VBoxManage createhd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 8.15 VBoxManage modifyhd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 8.16 VBoxManage clonehd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 8.17 VBoxManage convertfromraw . . . . ...

Contents 11 Troubleshooting 144 11.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 11.1.1 Collecting debugging information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 11.1.2 Guest shows IDE errors for VDI on slow host file system . . . . . 144 11.1.3 Responding to gue...

Contents 12.10Version 2.0.4 (2008-10-24) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 12.11Version 2.0.2 (2008-09-12) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 12.12Version 2.0.0 (2008-09-04) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 12.13Version 1.6.6 (2008-08-26) ....

Contents 14.2.7 Slirp license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 14.2.8 liblzf license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 14.2.9 libpng license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 14.2.10 lwIP license . . . . . . . . . . ....

1 Introduction Sun VirtualBox is a collection of powerful virtual machine tools, targeting desktopcomputers, enterprise servers and embedded systems. With VirtualBox, you can virtu-alize 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems on machines with Intel and AMD processors,either by using hardware virtualiza...

1 Introduction ground, however, VirtualBox intercepts certain operations that the guest performs tomake sure that the guest does not interfere with other programs on the host. The techniques and features that VirtualBox provides are useful for several scenar- ios: • Operating system support. With Vi...

1 Introduction 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 proc...

1 Introduction Warning: Do not run other hypervisors (open-source or commercial virtu- alization products) together with VirtualBox! While several hypervisors cannormally be installed in parallel, do not attempt to run several virtual ma- chines from competing hypervisors at the same time. VirtualBo...

1 Introduction • Clean architecture; unprecedented modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a cleanseparation of client and server code. This makes it easy to control it from severalinterfaces at once: for example, you can start a V...

1 Introduction – Full ACPI support. The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is fully supported by VirtualBox. This eases cloning of PC imagesfrom real machines or third-party virtual machines into VirtualBox. With itsunique ACPI power status support, VirtualBox can even report to ACPI-...

1 Introduction 1.4 Supported host operating systems Currently, VirtualBox is available for 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-bit 2 ). – Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) ...

1 Introduction 1.5 Supported guest operating systems Since VirtualBox is designed to provide a generic virtualization environment for x86systems, it may run operating systems of any kind, even those that are not officiallysupported by Sun Microsystems. However, our focus is to optimize the product’s...

1 Introduction 1.6 64-bit guests Starting with Version 2.0, VirtualBox also supports 64-bit guest operating systems.Starting with Version 2.1, you can even run 64-bit guests on a 32-bit host operatingsystem, so long as you have sufficient hardware. In particular, 64-bit guests are supported under th...

2 Installation 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, Linuxand Solaris, respectively. 2.1 Installing on Windows hosts 2.1.1 Prerequisites For the various versions of Windows ...

2 Installation Networking This package contains extra networking drivers for your Windows host that VirtualBox needs to support Host Interface Networking (to make your VM’svirtual network cards accessible from other machines on your physical network). Depending on your Windows configuration, you may...

2 Installation 2.2.2 Uninstallation To uninstall VirtualBox, open the disk image (dmg) file again and double-click on theuninstall icon contained therein. 2.2.3 Unattended installation To perform a non-interactive installation of VirtualBox you can use the command lineversion of the installer applic...

2 Installation 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 –, general...

2 Installation 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 torun...

2 Installation 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 dep...

2 Installation 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 inreverse order. 2.3.4.5 ...

2 Installation 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 de...

2 Installation 2.4.4 Unattended installation To perform a non-interactive installation of VirtualBox we have provided a responsefile 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 installatio...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox As already mentioned in chapter 1.1 , Virtualization basics , page 9 , VirtualBox allows you to run each of your guest operating systems on its own virtual computer system,which is called a “virtual machine” (VM). The guest system will run in its VM as if itwere instal...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox group of your “Applications” menu. Alternatively, you can type VirtualBox in a terminal. A window like the following should come up: On the left, you can see a pane that lists all the virtual machines you have created sofar (quite a few in the example above). A row of ...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox On the following pages, the wizard will ask you for the bare minimum of informationthat 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...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 specifymore than you can spare. For example, if your host machine has 1 GB ofRAM and you enter 512 MB as the amount of RAM for a ...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox The wizard allows you to create an image file or use an existing one. Note alsothat the disk images can be separated from a particular VM, so even if you deletea VM, you can keep the image, or copy it to another host and create a new VMfor it there. In the wizard, you ...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox much more space, a fixed-size file incurs less overhead and is thereforeslightly faster than a dynamically expanding file. For details about the differences, please refer to chapter 5.2 , Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD) , page 77 . To prevent your physical hard disk ...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox • If you have downloaded installation media from the Internet in the form of anISO image file (most probably in the case of a Linux distribution), you wouldnormally burn this file to an empty CD or DVD and proceed as just described.With VirtualBox however, you can skip...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox in the window, as can be seen with the image in chapter 1.1 , Virtualization basics , page 9 . 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. 3.4.1 Keyboard and mouse support i...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox To release keyboard ownership, press the Host key (as explained above, typicallythe right Control key). Note that while the VM owns the keyboard, some key sequences (like Alt-Tab forexample) will no longer be seen by the host, but will go to the guest instead.After you...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 theVM (by again clicking the “Start” button...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox Once you have set up the machine the way you want it, simply take a snapshot, and should anything happen to the installation, you can simply revert to its snapshot state. To take a snapshot of your VM, perform the following steps: 1. If your VM is currently in either t...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox The Disk Image Manager shows you all images that are currently registered withVirtualBox, conveniently grouped in three tabs for the three possible formats. Theseformats are: • Hard disk images, either in VirtualBox’s own Virtual Disk Image (VDI) format orin the widely...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox • 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 yo...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox 3.7.1.3 “Description” tab Here you can enter any description for your virtual machine, if you want. This has noeffect of the functionality of the machine, but you may find this space useful to notedown things like the configuration of a virtual machine and the software...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox Enable ACPI VirtualBox can present the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) to the guest operating system for configuring the virtual hardware. Inaddition, via ACPI, VirtualBox can present the host’s power status information tothe guest. ACPI is the curren...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 “PhysicalAddress Extension”. Normally, if enabled and supported by the operating system, theneven a 32-bit x...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox comes with Microsoft Windows (typically found under “Accessories” -> “Com-munication” -> “Remote Desktop Connection”) or, on Linux systems, the stan-dard open-source rdesktop program. These features are described in detail in chapter 7.4 , Remote virtual machines...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox lifetime. You may, however, freely remove, add and exchange virtual hard drives afterthe machine has been set up. For example, if you wish to copy some files from anothervirtual disk that you created, you can connect that disk as a second hard disk. To connect an addit...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 thatis currently mounted on the host, when the guest is activated, it will bedisconnected from the host without a proper sh...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 fil...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 avirtualizer such as VirtualBox. As opposed to other virtualization products, VirtualBoxnow supports OVF with...

3 Starting out with VirtualBox This presents the virtual machines described in the OVF file and allows you to changethe virtual machine settings by double-clicking on the description items. Once youclick on “Import” , VirtualBox will copy the disk images and create local virtual ma- chines with the ...

4 Guest Additions The previous chapter covered getting started with VirtualBox and installing operatingsystems in a virtual machine. For any serious and interactive use, the VirtualBox GuestAdditions will make your life much easier by providing closer integration between hostand guest and improving ...

4 Guest Additions For Linux and Solaris guests, the Xorg server version 1.3 or later is required forautomatic resizing (the feature has been disabled on Fedora 9 guests due to abug in the X server they supply). The server version can be checked with Xorg -version . Finally, if the Guest Additions ar...

4 Guest Additions • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows Vista (all editions) • Microsoft Windows 7 Beta Generally, it is strongly recommend to install the Windows Guest Additions. 4.2.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions After mounting the Guest Additions ISO fil...

4 Guest Additions 4.2.1.2 Running the installer Unless you have the Autostart feature disabled in your Windows guest, Win-dows will now autostart the VirtualBox Guest Additions installation programfrom the Additions ISO. If the Autostart feature has been turned off, choose VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe f...

4 Guest Additions 4.2.4 Manual file extraction If you would like to install the files and drivers manually, you can extract the files fromthe Windows Guest Additions setup by typing: VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /extract To explicitly extract the Windows Guest Additions for another platform than the cur...

4 Guest Additions • 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...

4 Guest Additions 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. 4.3.2 Video acceleration and high resolution graphic...

4 Guest Additions 4.4 Solaris Guest Additions Like the Windows Guest Additions, the VirtualBox Guest Additions for Solaris take theform of a set of device drivers and system applications which may be installed in theguest operating system. The following Solaris distributions are officially supported...

4 Guest Additions 4.4.3 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 Additionswithout removing the existing ones is not possible. 4.5 OS/2 Guest Additio...

4 Guest Additions $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: iocha...

4 Guest Additions 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’sdisplay to the size of your host screen and mask out the guest operating system’s back-ground. To go back to th...

4 Guest Additions • OpenGL on Linux requires kernel 2.6.27 and higher as well as X.org serverversion 1.5 and higher. Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 have been tested andconfirmed as working. • OpenGL on Solaris guests requires X.org server version 1.5 and higher. 2. The Guest Additions must be installed. ...

4 Guest Additions Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxSF.sys, value: 3.0.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279893056000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxVideo.sys, value: 3.0.0r40720, timestamp: 1229098279895767000, flags: Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsers, value: 1, times...

5 Virtual storage As the virtual machine will most probably expect to see a hard disk built into its virtualcomputer, VirtualBox must be able to present “real” storage to the guest as a virtualhard disk. There are presently three methods in which to achieve this: 1. Most commonly, VirtualBox will us...

5 Virtual storage CD-ROM/DVD drive, this leaves you with up to three virtual hard disks that youcan attach to a virtual machine’s IDE controller. 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 ...

5 Virtual storage • Finally, VirtualBox also fully supports the VHD format used by Microsoft. Irrespective of the disk format, as briefly mentioned in chapter 3.2 , Creating a virtual machine , page 32 , there are two options of how to create a disk image: fixed-size or dynamically expanding. • If y...

5 Virtual storage which VirtualBox creates automatically when the VM starts. The next time theVM is started, the differencing image is reset so that every time the VM starts, itsimmutable images have exactly the same content. 4 If the automatic discarding of the differencing image on VM startup does...

5 Virtual storage 5.4 Cloning disk images You can duplicate hard disk image files on the same host to quickly produce a secondvirtual 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 8.16...

6 Virtual networking As briefly mentioned in chapter 3.7.7 , Network settings , page 52 , 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...

6 Virtual networking 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 NATmode or with the AMD networkin...

6 Virtual networking 6.3 “Not attached” mode When a virtual network card’s mode is set to “Not attached”, VirtualBox reports to theguest that a network card is present, but that there is no connection – as if no Ethernetcable was plugged into the card. This way it is possible to “pull” the virtual E...

6 Virtual networking 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 thatthis also means that you cannot run the same service on the same ports on the host).However, you still gai...

6 Virtual networking 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....

6 Virtual networking 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...

6 Virtual networking 6.6 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 VMswhich connect to the same internal network. Even though technically, everything that ...

7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines 7.1 Introduction As briefly mentioned in chapter 1.3 , Features overview , page 13 , VirtualBox has a very flexible internal design that allows you to use different front-ends to control the samevirtual machines. To illustrate, you can, for example, ...

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 itto create and operate virtual machines. In essence, VBoxManage supports everything that our graphical user interface ...

7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines $ VBoxManage createvm --name "SUSE 10.2" --register VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.0.0 (C) 2005-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Virtual machine ’SUSE 10.2’ is created. UUID: c89fc351-8ec6-4f02-a048-57f...

7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines Note that when you use VBoxHeadless to start a VM, the built-in VRDP server will always be enabled, regardless of whether you have enabled the VRDP server in theVM’s settings. If this is undesirable (for example because you want to access the VMvia s...

7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines 7.4.6 VRDP multiple connections The VirtualBox built-in RDP server supports simultaneous connections to the samerunning VM from different clients. All connected clients see the same screen outputand share a mouse pointer and keyboard focus. This is s...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 beslightly different depending on the host platform; when in doubt, check the output of VBoxManage for the commands availabl...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 defau...

8 VBoxManage reference 8.4 VBoxManage createvm This command creates a new XML virtual machine definition file. The --name <name> parameter is required and must specify the name of the machine. Since this name is used by default as the file name of the set- tings file (with the extension .xml )...

8 VBoxManage reference should be shared with the host; see chapter 3.7.1 , 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 ...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 Professio...

8 VBoxManage reference VMDK. See chapter 3.8 , Importing and exporting virtual machines , page 56 for an in- troduction 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 anad...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 g...

8 VBoxManage reference • dvdattach inserts a DVD image into the virtual machine or connects it to the host DVD drive. With this command (as opposed to VBoxManage modifyvm ), the image file does not first have to be registered with VirtualBox. You can use VBoxManage list hostdvds to display all the d...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 usi...

8 VBoxManage reference 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. 8.15 VBoxManage modifyhd With the modifyhd...

8 VBoxManage reference 8.18 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 asthough it were a standard write-through virtual disk image. This command has the following...

8 VBoxManage reference 8.19 VBoxManage getextradata/setextradata These commands let you attach and retrieve string data to a virtual machine or to aVirtualBox configuration (by specifying global instead of a virtual machine name). You must specify a key (as a text string) to associate the data with,...

8 VBoxManage reference 8.21 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 devi...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 close...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 sam...

8 VBoxManage reference 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 change...

9 Advanced topics 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 Setting...

9 Advanced topics 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" setc...

9 Advanced topics • reverse the order of byte 6 and 7. Using this conversion you will get identical results when converting the binary UUIDto the string representation. The second arguments contains information about the guest authentication status. For the first call, it is always set to VRDPAuthGu...

9 Advanced topics Additions automatically provide the reduced video modes. Additionally, the VESABIOS 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 o...

9 Advanced topics 9.6 Multiple monitors for the guest VirtualBox allows the guest to use multiple virtual monitors. Up to sixty-four virtualmonitors are supported. Note: 1. Multiple monitors currently work only with Windows XP guests, and Guest Additions must be installed, as the implementation resi...

9 Advanced topics 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 followingsequence can be used to make sure the VM is not saved with stuck modifiers: kill -usr1 <pid> VBoxManage cont...

9 Advanced topics This sets up a serial port in the guest with the default settings for COM1 (IRQ 4, I/Oaddress 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 thaton Windows hosts a named pipe mus...

9 Advanced topics arbitrary ways without having to recreate the image file that gives access to the rawdisk. 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 Linuxhost, use the command VBox...

9 Advanced topics 9.11 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 defaultprints an error message and refuses to start the virtual machine. In some situationsthis behavior is not desirab...

9 Advanced topics 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 9.12.3 Tuning TCP/IP buffers...

9 Advanced topics 9.12.5 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 serverlist, thereby forcing the VirtualBox NAT engine to react to changes in the ...

9 Advanced topics "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 VBoxMa...

9 Advanced topics 9.16 Configuring the hard disk vendor product data (VPD) VirtualBox reports vendor product data for its virtual hard disks which consist of harddisk serial number, firmware revision and model number. These can be changed usingthe following commands: VBoxManage setextradata "My ...

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 virtualizationengine. It is completely documented and available to anyone who wishes to controlVirtualBox programm...

11 Troubleshooting This chapter provides answers to commonly asked questions. In order to improve youruser experience with VirtualBox, it is recommended to read this section to learn moreabout common pitfalls and get recommendations on how to use the product. 11.1 General 11.1.1 Collecting debugging...

11 Troubleshooting after a certain amount of data has been written. This interval is normally infinite, butcan be configured individually for each disk of a VM using the following command: VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/LUN#[x]/Config/FlushInterval" [b] The v...

11 Troubleshooting 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 allowedfor an already installed Windows operatin...

11 Troubleshooting 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, ...

11 Troubleshooting 11.3.2 AMD Barcelona CPUs Most Linux-based guests will fail with AMD Phenoms or Barcelona-level Opterons dueto a bug in the Linux kernel. Enable the I/O-APIC to work around the problem (seechapter 3.7.1.2 , “Advanced” tab , page 46 ). 11.3.3 Buggy Linux 2.6 kernel versions The fol...

11 Troubleshooting the COM server might experience an internal error and subsequently other processesfail to initialize it. In these situations, it is recommended to use the Windows taskmanager to kill the process VBoxSVC.exe . 11.4.2 CD/DVD changes not recognized In case you have assigned a physica...

11 Troubleshooting 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 targetrunning in a guest virtual machine with an iSCSI initiator (e.g. Microsoft iSCSI Ini-tiator) that is running on the host. This is caused b...

11 Troubleshooting 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, VirtualBoxmay be unable to find it. On older Linux hosts, VirtualBox performs the following stepsto locate your CD/DVD drives: 1. VirtualBox exa...

11 Troubleshooting 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 toUSB by changing “664” to “666”. The various distributions are very creative from which script the usbfs files...

11 Troubleshooting a weird error message such as “failed to mount the root partition”), then you haveprobably run into a memory conflict of your kernel and initial RAM disk. This can besolved by adding the following parameter to your GRUB configuration: uppermem 524288 11.6 Solaris hosts 11.6.1 Cann...

12 Change log 12.3 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 guestsrunning the X window system • Guest Additions: make sure the virtual mouse autodetection works on f...

12 Change log • NAT: fixed occasional crashes when the guest is doing traceroute (non-Windowshosts; 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 f...

13 Known limitations The following section describes some issues that are known not to work in VirtualBox3.0.0. Unless marked otherwise these issues are planned to be fixed in later releases. • The following Guest SMP (multiprocessor) limitations exist: – Bad performance with 32-bit guests on AMD CP...

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 Sourcelicenses. This document reproduces these licenses and provides a list of the materialsused and their respectiv...

14 Third-party licenses 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution. Jean-loup Gailly Mark Adler [email protected] [email protected] 14.2.6 OpenSSL license This package is an SSL implementation written by Eric Young ([email protected]).The implementation was writte...

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 we...

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 insta...

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 anddoes not prescribe how to semantically organize content. XPCOM Mozilla Cross Platform Component Object Model, a programming infr...