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innotek VirtualBox1(R) User Manual

1. 6 5 Host interface networking on Linux hosts 6 5 1 Permanent host interfaces and bridging 6 5 2 Creating interfaces dynamically on VM startup 6 6 Iuremaluenworkiie 2252229 e ia RUE RUE oe os Alternative front ends remote virtual machines Tl JOH A Gy e ye RR RR RARO ww EG ee 7 2 Using VBoxManage to control virtual machines 7 3 VBoxSDL the simplified VM displayer 7 4 Remote Desktop Support VRDP o oo oo ooo eee 7 4 1 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP server 7 4 2 Step by step creating a virtual machine on a headless server PALO Remote USB os da aai oe eR Ge eee ae e es 7 4 4 RDP authentication o eee eee 5445 RDPevDHOS 222222 9 a ER EUR RO mm VBoxManage reference Bl WVBoxManas lsU 2 2 22 o moy y o a RR 8 2 VBoxManageshowvminfo leeren 8 3 VBoxManage registervm unregistervm llle 84 VBoxManape CESE se ee oro Re SG ee a RS ED WBorManase modi uus oe RR XR UR ER Re o e gs Contents 8 6 WVWBoxManase Stari e eoo ok Ro A os dd 85 8 7 VBoxManagecontrolum oo ee e eee 85 8 8 VBoxManage discardstate o e e a 86 8 9 VBoxManagesnapshot o o e e ee 87 8 10 VBoxManage registerimage unregisterimage 87 8 11 VBoxManage showvdiinfo o oo e eee 87 6 12 YBoxManage createvdi anar a Rr RR RUE es
2. For this example to work you will also need to change the configuration for the network interface ethO to a static IP address of 0 0 0 0 as openSUSE does not do this automatically when the interface is added to the bridge You can do this using the graphical interface or by changing the following settings in the file etc sysconfig network ifcfg eth xx xx xx xx xx xx Where the last part should be replaced with the hardware address of the network card 61 6 Virtual networking BOOTPROTO static IPADDR 0 0 0 0 You can activate the bridge immediately after creating it with the command sudo sbin ifdown eth0 sudo sbin ifup bro The bridge will be activated automatically from now on when the host is restarted Now to create a permanent host interface called vbox0 all host interfaces created in this way must be called vbox followed by a number and add it to the network bridge created above use the following command sudo VBoxAddIF vbox0 vboxuser br0 Replace vboxuser with the name of the user who is supposed to be able to use the new interface To tell VirtualBox to use this interface vbox0 for a virtual machine select the VM in the main window configure one of its network adaptors to use Host Interface Networking using Settings Network Attached to and enter vbox0 into the Interface name field Alternatively you can use the VBoxManage command line tool in this example we are attaching
3. VMM support guests with a full GDT VMM fixed boot hangs for some Linux kernels 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 RDP allow binding the RDP server to a specific interface RDP added support for clipboard synchronization RDP fixed problems with OS X RDP client RDP added support for multiple simultaneous connections to one VM RDP added support for MS RDP6 clients Vista 112 12 ChangeLog 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
4. button To keep the user interface simple those of the following settings which are not as commonly used are not shown in that settings window They are however avail able through VBoxManage and will be described in chapter 8 VBoxManage reference page 76 later 3 7 1 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 7 1 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 OS Type 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 3 2 Creating a virtual machine page 23 above Memory size RAM The amount of RAM that is allocated and given to the VM when it is running The specified amount of memory
5. 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 12 9 Version 1 1 10 2006 07 28 IDE added workaround for Acronis Truelmage 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 10 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 120 12 ChangeLog VMM introduce release logging for better servicability VMM significant performance improvements especially for Linux 2 6 guests VRDP several issues have been fixed VRDP fix
6. 11 1 3 Responding to guest IDE flush requests 103 11 2 Windows guess loeo ORDERS ERED OGRE SS 103 11 2 1 Windows boot failures bluescreens after changing VM config HAGON ECC Gara oe ok ee oa we Ra a 104 11 2 2 Windows 2000 installation failures 104 11 2 3 How to record bluescreen information from Windows guests 104 11 2 4 No networking in Windows Vista guests 105 1129 Windows Mosis cesse a Ru MUERE GG Ron ex RR S 105 11 3 1 VBoxSVC out of process COM server issues 105 11 3 2 CD DVD changes mot recognized o soon ems 105 Contents 11 3 3 Sluggish response when using Microsoft RDP client 11 3 4 Running an iSCSI initiator and target on a single system UE Line GG PD TT 11 4 1 Linux kernel module refuses to load 11 4 2 Linux host s CD DVD drivenotfound 11 4 3 Linux host s floppy not found rns 11 4 4 Strange guest IDE error messages when writing to CD DVD 11 45 VBoxSVG IPC ISSUES uus ooo xo bo b E n 11 46 USB not Working uuu os ooo ge RR mx E ox os 11 4 7 PAX preec kernels ociosos Rf n t 12 ChangeLog 12 1 Version 1 4 0 2007 06 06 12 2 Version 1 3 8 2007403147 se s oce use REG a E EG 12 3 Version 1 3 6 2007 02 20 12 4 Version 1 3 4 2007 02 12 12 5 Version 1 3 2 2007 01 15 00 20 arado aaa E 12 6 Version 1 2 4
7. By default this is the right Control key on your keyboard but 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 Recycle Bin In detail all this translates into the following e 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 30 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 reenable 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 int
8. DA BRASH ss os e A a we Da RR e 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager 2 22222 2 RR RR 3 6 Deleting virtual machines 4 22e RR RR REED 3 7 Virtual machine settings 22s 44464044444 3 7 1 General settings usd oo ee ORO UA ew A e wu dl Xoyog BS 3 7 3 CD DVD ROM and floppy settings 3 7 4 Audio settings 2 erce oo ceeace ee ee 3 75 Wetwork setings os unco re 5 0 USB SUpDOFE coo oom AAA Contents The VirtualBox Guest Additions AL Introduction 64 404 6444444044645 xe RO OS AA 4 2 Windows Guest Additions llle 4 2 1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions 4 2 2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions 4 2 3 Unattended Installation llle 4 2 4 Windows Vista networking lr 4 3 Linux Guest Additions e 4 3 1 Installing the Linux Guest Additions 4 3 2 Video acceleration and high resolution graphics modes 4 3 3 Updating the Linux Guest Additions B Tolder sharing o o cease he em EU RUM aA US RON es Virtual storage 5 1 Virtual Disk Image VDD files o ee eee eee 5 2 VMDK image les ek omm a RR a ds SCSI SEVES uer cuu teta da Virtual networking 6 1 Notatached mode 4 22 2 sra neder hetas 6 2 Network Address Translation NAT 6 3 Introduction to host interface networking 6 4 Host interface networking on Windows hosts
9. This can be in the form of a 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 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 acknowledgement This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young eay cryptsoft com The word cryptographic can be left out if the rouines 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 tjh cryptsoft com THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY ERIC YOUNG 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 AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT INDIRECT INCIDENTAL SPECI
10. 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 Network fixed IRQ conflict causing occassional 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
11. driver is installed in the Windows or Linux guest that communicates with the real mouse driver on your host and moves the guest mouse pointer accordingly 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 Better video support While the virtual graphics card the 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 guests when the Guest Additions are installed you can resize the virtual machine s window and the video resolution in the Windows guest will be automatically adjusted as if you had manually entered an arbitrary resolution in the guest s display settings Time synchronization With the Guest Additions installed VirtualBox can much bet ter ensure that the guest s system time is better synchronized The problem is that an operating system expects to have 100 of a computer s time for itself without interference which is no longer the case when your VM runs together 44 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions 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 syncronize the time regul
12. e Great hardware support Among others VirtualBox supports Full ACPI support The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface ACPD 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 I O APIC support VirtualBox virtualizes an Input Output Advanced Pro grammable Interrupt Controller I O APIC which is found in many mod 10 1 Introduction ern PC systems This eases cloning of PC images from real machines or 3rd party virtual machines into VirtualBox USB device support VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines with out having to install device specific drivers on the host USB support is not limited to certain device categories For details see chapter 3 7 6 1 USB settings page 41 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 dire
13. host vrdpauthtype null external guest vrdpmulticon on off usb on off snapshotfolder default lt path gt VBoxManage startvm uuid name type guilvrdp VBoxManage controlvm uuid name pause resume reset poweroff savestate acpipowerbutton setlinkstate lt 1 4 gt on off usbattach lt uuid gt lt address gt usbdetach lt uuid gt lt address gt dvdattach none lt uuid gt lt filename gt host lt drive gt floppyattach none lt uuid gt lt filename gt host lt drive gt setvideomodehint xres lt yres gt lt bpp gt setcredentials lt username gt lt password gt lt domain gt allowlocallogon lt yes no gt VBoxManage discardstate lt uuid gt lt name gt VBoxManage snapshot lt uuid gt lt name gt take lt name gt desc lt desc gt discard lt uuid gt lt name gt discardcurrent state all edit lt uuid gt lt name gt current newname lt name gt newdesc lt desc gt showvminfo lt uuid gt lt name gt VBoxManage registerimage disk dvd floppy filename type normal immutable writethrough disk only VBoxManage unregisterimage disk dvd floppy lt uuid gt lt filename gt 77 VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage VBoxManage showvdiinfo createvdi modifyvdi clonevdi convertdd convertdd addisc
14. then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program 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 contributions 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 consequence of the rest of this License 8 If the distribution and or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded In such case this Li
15. 1 Introduction innotek VirtualBox is a family of virtual machine products targeting desktop com puters enterprise servers and embedded systems Due to its modular architecture VirtualBox can be deployed in any environment where x86 systems are to be virtual ized on x86 systems With x86 we are referring to 32 bit CPUs from AMD and Intel as well as compatible CPUs from other vendors plus 64 bit CPUs in 32 bit mode 1 1 Virtualization basics With VirtualBox you can run unmodified operating systems including all of the software that is installed on them directly on top of your existing operating system in a special environment that is called a virtual machine Your physical computer is then usually called the host while the virtual machine is often called a guest The following image shows you how VirtualBox on a Linux host is running Win dows Vista as guest operating system in a virtual machine displayed in a window on the host Windows XP E Saved DE Eom H contro 4 VirtualBox allows the guest code to run unmodified directly on the host computer and the guest operating system thinks it s running on real machine In the back ground however VirtualBox intercepts certain operations that the guest performs to make sure that the guest does not interfere with other programs on the host 1 Introduction The techniques and features that VirtualBox provides are useful
16. 34 RDP fixed sporadic disconnects with MS RDP clients RDP fixed race condition during resolution resize leading to rare crashes 117 12 ChangeLog 12 5 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 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 6 Version 1 2 4 2006 11 16 Several bug fixes that accidentially didn t make it into 1 2 2 12 7 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 Re
17. Audio fixed problem with ALSA on Linux before 2 6 18 causing system reboots RDP added support for MS RDP 6 0 clients RDP fixed issue with PAM authentication on certain distributions RDP fixed sporadic disconnects with MS RDP clients iSCSI improved behavior when pausing a VM with iSCSI connections iSCSI improved read timeout handling 12 4 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 1 116 12 ChangeLog 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
18. 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 LICENSE 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 declatory judgment actions against Initial Developer or a Contributor the Initial Developer or Contributor against whom You file such action is referred to as Participant alleging that a such Participant s Contributor Version directly or indirectly 150 8 3 13 3rd party licenses 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 wr
19. 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 verbatim 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 authors 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
20. NECESSARY SERVICING REPAIR OR CORRECTION 16 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 LIBRARY AS PERMITTED ABOVE E LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES INCLUDING ANY GENERAL SPECIAL INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE LIBRARY 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 LIBRARY TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER SOFTWARE EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES w END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS 13 2 3 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 commercial 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 acknowledgment 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 misrepresented as being th
21. See chapter 6 4 Host interface networking on Windows hosts page 57 for details 8 17 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 1 4 0 C 2005 2007 innotek GmbH All rights reserved Value 2006 01 01 8 18 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 vdifolder This specifies the default folder that is used to keep Virtual Disk Image VDD files machinefolder This specifies the default folder in which virtual machine definitions are kept see chapter 9 1 VirtualBox configuration data page 91 for details vrdpauthlibra
22. Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead You can apply it to your programs too 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 154 13 3rd party licenses 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 modi
23. 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 29 3 Starting out with VirtualBox in the window as can be seen with the image in chapter 1 1 Virtualization basics page T 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 in virtual machines 3 4 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
24. a particular 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 subsequent 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 governed 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 License 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 COVERED CODE IS PROVIDED UNDER THIS LICENSE ON AN AS IS BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES THAT THE COVERED CODE IS FREE OF DEFECTS MERCHANTABLE FIT FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON INFRINGING THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE
25. a response from the host or other machines outside of the private network Browsing Windows shares requires the guest to receive incoming TCP and UDP connections on ports 135 137 and 139 so you can enable this by forwarding those ports to the guest but this will then prevent the host from using them to browse shares And the ping utility uses ICMP network packages which can only be sent by an application with administrator privileges Since VirtualBox runs as a user application it can not proxy these in NAT mode 6 3 Introduction to host interface networking With Host Interface Networking VirtualBox creates a new networking interface in software on the host computer When you connect a guest to it the host can see the guest through the new network interface as though the interface were connected to the guest s network card with a network cable As a result the guest then behaves like a real computer connected to the network 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 host and the guest You can create several VirtualBox host interfaces on the host system see the follow ing subsections for instructions on how to do so but each of them can only be con nected to a single virtual network card in a single guest at one time In other words for each virtual network card that is supposed to use Host Interface Networking you will need to set u
26. 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 7 6 1 USB settings page 41 All you have to do is specify Remote or Any when setting up these rules 7 4 4 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 81 for a general introduction Three methods of authentication are available e 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 e The external method provides external authentication through a special au thentication library VirtualBox comes with two default libraries for external authentication OnLinux hosts VRDPAuth so authenticates users against the host s PAM system On Windows hosts VRDPAuth d11 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 However you can replace the default external authentication modul
27. avoid guest warnings default IDE Linux 2 6 14 and OpenBSD now operate the controller in UDMA mode by e VMM fixed hang when rebooting Windows 2000 guests with enabled audio adapter e VMM fixed random user mode crashes with OpenBSD guests e VMM increased timing accuracy PIT RTC reduced PIT query overhead ing real mode guest code such as bootloaders VMM significant performance enhancements for OpenBSD guests e VMM several performance enhancements guest RAM expense of state file sizes guest host Linux hosts ACPI enabled by default for newly created VMs APIC added optional I O APIC 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 123 VMM tamed execution thread to make GUI more responsive esp when execut VMM improved memory layout on Windows hosts to allow for large amounts of VMM significantly improved VM execution state saving and restoring at the ACPI fixed Windows bluescreen when assigning more than 512MB RAM to a ACPI correctly report battery state when multiple batteries are present on the Graphics fixed distortion when changing guest color depth without changing 12 ChangeLog Floppy fixed no disk in drive reporting Floppy fixed writing to floppy images VBoxManage restructured USB device filter syntax to make
28. bridge Sbin brctl addif br0 interface If this script is saved as home vbox setuptap sh and made executable it can be used to create a TAP interface when a virtual machine is started by con figuring one of the machines network adapters to use Host Interface Networking without specifying a device in the Interface Name field and entering gtksudo home vbox setuptap sh into the Setup Application field replace gtksudo by kdesu or whatever is appropriate for your system Alternatively you can use the the VBoxManage command line tool in the following example for a machine called Linux VM VBoxManage modifyvm Linux VM tapsetupl gtksudo home vbox setuptap sh 65 6 Virtual networking An example of a matching script to remove the interface from the bridge and shut it down would be bin bash Remove the interface from the bridge The second script parameter is the interface name sbin brctl delif brO 2 And use VBoxTunctl to remove the interface VBoxTunctl d 2 If this is saved as home vbox cleanuptap sh and made executable the virtual machine can be told to execute it when it shuts down by entering gtksudo home vbox cleanuptap sh into the Termination Application field in VirtualBox s network configuration settings or by using VBoxManage VBoxManage modifyvm Linux VM tapterminatel gtksudo home vbox cleanuptap sh Note The VBoxSDL front end to VirtualBox see chapter 7 3 VBo
29. can use the Virtual Disk Manager chapter 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 or VBoxManage to assign the image to a virtual machine 97 9 Advanced Topics 9 8 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 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 PhysicalDriveo 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 automatic
30. copyright notice for the Library among them as well as a reference directing the user to the copy of this License Also you must do one of these things a Accompany the work with the complete corresponding machine readable source code for the Library including whatever changes were used in the work which must be distributed under Sections 1 and 2 above and if the work is an executable linked with the Library with the complete machine readable work that uses the Library as object code and or source code so that the user can modify the Library and then relink to produce a modified executable containing the modified Library It is understood that the user who changes the contents of definitions files in the Library will not necessarily be able to recompile the application to use the modified definitions b Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library A suitable mechanism is one that 1 uses at run time a copy of the library already present on the user s computer system rather than copying library functions into the executable and 2 will operate properly with a modified version of the library if the user installs one as long as the modified version is interface compatible with the version that the work was made with C Accompany the work with a written offer valid for at least three years to give the same user the materials Specified in Subsection 6a above for a charge no more than the cost of p
31. 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 Electronic 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 147 13 3rd party licenses has been made available to such recipients You are responsible for ensuring that the 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 st
32. guest operating systems presently known to VirtualBox along with the identifiers used to refer to them with the modi fyvm command e 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 79 8 VBoxManage reference e 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 e 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 e 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 8 2 VBoxManage showvminfo The showvminfo command shows information about a particular virtual machine This is the same information as VBoxManage list vms would show for all virtual machines You will get information similar to the following VBoxManage showvminfo Windows XP VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1 4 0 C 2005 2007 innotek GmbH All rights reserved Name Windows XP Guest OvS Other Unknown UUID 1bf3464d 57c6 4d49 92a9 a5cc3816b 7e7 Config file home username VirtualBox Machines Windows XP Windows XP xml Memo
33. installation time 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 sperate 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 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 54 160 Glossary G GUI Graphical User Interface Commonly used as an antonym to a command line interface in the context of VirtualBox we sometimes refer to t
34. 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 Library In addition mere aggregation of another work not based on the Library with the Library or with a work based on the Library on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License 3 You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library To do this you must alter all the notices that refer to this License so that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License version 2 135 13 3rd party licenses instead of to this License If a newer version than version 2 of the ordinary GNU General Public License has appeared then you can specify that version instead if you wish Do not make any other change in these notices Once this change is made in a given copy it is irreversible for hat copy so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all subsequent copies and derivative works made from that copy ct This option is useful when you wish to copy part of the code of he Library into a program that is not a library ct 4 You may copy and distribute the Library or a portion or derivative of it under Section 2 in object code or execu
35. lt name gt details VBoxManage registervm filename VBoxManage unregistervm lt uuid gt lt name gt delete VBoxManage createvm name name register basefolder path settingsfile lt path gt VBoxManage modifyvm uuid name name lt name gt ostype lt ostype gt memory lt memorysize gt vram vramsize acpi onloff ioapic onloff hwvirtex on off default bioslogofadein on off bioslogofadeout onloff bioslogodisplaytime lt msec gt bioslogoimagepath lt imagepath gt biosbootmenu disabled menuonly messageandmenu biossystemtimeoffset lt msec gt boot 1 4 none floppyldvd disk net 76 8 VBoxManage reference hd a b d none lt uuid gt lt filename gt dvd none lt uuid gt lt filename gt host lt drive gt dvdpassthrough on off floppy disabled lempt y lt uuid gt lt filename gt host lt drive gt nic 1 N none null nat hostif intnet nictype 1 N Am79C970A Am79C973 cableconnected lt 1 N gt on off nictrace 1 N on off nictracefile 1 N lt filename gt hostifdev 1 N none lt devicename gt intnet 1 N network macaddress 1 N auto lt mac gt tapsetup 1 N none lt application gt tapterminate 1 N none lt application gt audio none null winmm dsound oss alsa clipboard disabled hosttoguest guesttohost bidirectional vrdp onloff vrdpport default lt port gt vrdpaddress
36. managed by or on behalf of the Licensor for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by the copyright owner as Not a Contribution tond ct Contributor shall mean Licensor and any individual or Legal Entity on behalf of whom a Contribution has been received by Licensor and subsequently incorporated within the Work 141 13 3rd party licenses Grant of Copyright License Subject to the terms and conditions of this License each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual worldwide non exclusive no charge royalty free irrevocable copyright license to reproduce prepare Derivative Works of publicly display publicly perform sublicense and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form Grant of Patent License Subject to the terms and conditions of this License each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual worldwide non exclusive no charge royalty free irrevocable except as stated in this section patent license to make have made use offer to sell sell import and otherwise transfer the Work where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution s alone or by combination of their Contribution s with the Work to which such Contribution s was submitted If You institute patent litigation against any e
37. 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 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 113 12 ChangeLog Shared Folders allow non admin users to map folders Additions added clipboard synchronization Windows Additions fixed dynamic resolution changes after save restore Windows Addition
38. normally only done by the networking scripts and as such may interfere with your network setup First of all you will need to install the bridge utilities usually named bridge utils or similar Once installed as root follow these instructions to create and configure a bridge 1 Create a new bridge with this command brctl addbr br 2 If you are not using DHCP run ifconfig and note down the network config uration of your existing network interface e g eth0 which we will need to copy to the bridge in a minute 3 Switch your physical network adapter to promiscuous mode so that it will ac cept Ethernet frames for MAC addresses other than its own 63 6 Virtual networking ifconfig eth0 0 0 0 0 promisc Warning You will lose network connectivity on eth0 at this point 4 Add your network adapter to the bridge brctl addif br0 eth0 5 Transfer the network configuration previously used with your physical ethernet adapter to the new bridge If you are using DHCP this should work dhclient brO Otherwise run ifconfig br0 x x x x netmask x x x x and use the values that you noted down previously 6 To create a permanent host interface called vbox0 all host interfaces created in this way must be called vbox followed by a number and add it to the network bridge created above use the following command VBoxAddIF vbox0 vboxuser bro Replace vboxuser with the name of the user who is supposed to be able to u
39. old modules boolean true With the first setting the user accepts the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License The second line allows compilation of the vboxdrv kernel module if no module was found for the current kernel The third 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 2 4 Starting VirtualBox on Linux To start the VirtualBox graphical user interface simply start the VirtualBox program To start the command line management interface for virtual machines start VBox Manage To start a single virtual machine from the command line start VBoxSDL The following chapters explain how to use these applications 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 l
40. 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 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 109 11 Troubleshooting 11 4 7 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 110 12 ChangeLog This section summarizes the changes between VirtualBox versions Note that this is not a detailed changelog and not all changes are listed VirtualBox version numbers consist of three nu
41. 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 128 12 ChangeLog 12 21 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 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 22 Version 1 0 37 2005 04 12 Initial build with changelog 129 13 3rd 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 mater
42. providing network services for machines in a local intranet In particular if all you want is to browse the Web download files and view e mail inside the guest then the default configuration of the NAT network 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 For advanced networking needs such as network simulations host interface network ing can be used to set up an additional software based network interface on the host to which the virtual machine is connected Finally VirtualBox internal networking can be used to create a virtual network which is visible to selected virtual machines but not to applications running on the host or to the outside world The following sections describe the available network modes in more detail 6 1 Not attached mode When a virtual network card s mode is set to Not attached 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 54 6 Virtual networking 6 2 Network Address Translation NAT Network Address Translation is th
43. register which creates an image referring to individual partitions and registers it when the image is successfully created 100 10 VirtualBox Application Programming Interfaces These are not yet documented 101 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 1og and resides in the VM log file folder Typically this will be a directory like this SHOME 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
44. 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 Library does not specify a license version number you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation 14 If you wish to incorporate parts of the Library into other free programs whose distribution conditions are incompatible with these 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 15 BECAUSE THE LIBRARY IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE LIBRARY TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW 139 13 3rd party licenses EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE LIBRARY 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 LIBRARY IS WITH YOU SHOULD THE LIBRARY PROVE DEFECTIVE YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL
45. 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 Note that 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 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 38 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 Snapshot folder By default VirtualBox saves snapshot data together with your other VirtualBox configuration data see chapter 9 1 VirtualBox configuration data page 91 With this setting you can specify any other folder for each VM BIOS logo customization By default when the virtual machine starts up VirtualBox displays the innotek company logo With VBoxManage you can change this logo to one of your choice This setting can only be customized via VBoxManage s
46. terminal connection to that host over which you can access a command line e g via telnet or ssh an RDP viewer on the remote client on a Linux client you could use rdesktop to connect from a Windows machine you could use the RDP viewer that comes with Windows usually found in Accessories gt Communication gt Remote Desktop Connection Note 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 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 bootl dvd nicl nat Create a virtual hard disk for the VM in this case 10GB in size and register it with VirtualBox VBoxManage createvdi filename WinXP vdi size 10000 register Set this newly created VDI file as the first virtual hard disk of the new VM VBoxManage modifyvm Windows XP hda WinXP vdi Register the ISO file that contains the operating system installation that you want to install later VBoxManage registerimage dvd full path to iso iso Attach this ISO to the virtual machine so it can boot from it VBoxManage modifyvm Wi
47. 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 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 Developer 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 152 13 3rd party licenses 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
48. the old one You can also 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 14 VBoxManage clonevdi page 88 This is because VirtualBox assigns a unique identity number UUID to each disk image which is also stored inside the image and 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 Details about the different container formats supported by VirtualBox are described in chapter 5 Virtual storage page 51 3 6 Deleting virtual machines The Delete button in the main VirtualBox window lets you remove a virtual machine which you no longer need All settings for that machine will be lost However any hard disk images attached to the machine will be kept you can delete those separately using the Disk Image Manager described just above You cannot delete a machine which has snapshots or is in a saved state so you must discard these first 3 7 Virtual machine settings Most of the settings described below are available in the settings window after select ing a virtual machine in the VirtualBox main window and clicking on the Settings 36 3 Starting out with VirtualBox
49. the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy distribute link with or modify the Library 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 with this License 11 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 Library at all For example if a patent license would not permit royalty free redistribution of the Library by 138 13 3rd party licenses 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 Library 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 infri
50. to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License d If a facility in the modified Library refers to a function or a table of data to be supplied by an application program that uses the facility other than as an argument passed when the facility is invoked then you must make a good faith effort to ensure that in the event an application does not supply such function or table the facility still operates and performs whatever part of its purpose remains meaningful For example a function in a library to compute square roots has a purpose that is entirely well defined independent of the application Therefore Subsection 2d requires that any application supplied function or table used by this function must be optional if the application does not supply it the square root function must still compute square roots These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Library 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 Library 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
51. with the library in order to run GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0 This License Agreement applies to any software library or other program which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder or other authorized party saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Lesser General Public License also called this License Each licensee is addressed as you A library means a collection of software functions and or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked with application programs which use some of those functions and data to form executables The Library below refers to any such software library or work which has been distributed under these terms A work based on the Library means either the Library or any derivative work under copyright law that is to say a work containing the Library or a portion of it either verbatim or with modifications and or translated straightforwardly into another language Hereinafter translation is included without limitation in the term modification Source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it For a library 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 library Activities other than copying distribution and modif
52. 13 2 9 GNU General Public License GPL page 154 with the exception that aggregating Ether boot with another work does not require the other work to be released under the same license see http etherboot sourceforge net clinks html Etherboot is Copyright c Etherboot team 13 2 Licenses 13 2 1 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 persons 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 EXPRESS OR 131 13 3rd party licenses IMPLIED INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY 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 13 2 2 GNU Lesser General Public License LGPL GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC
53. 15 VBoxManage addiscsidisk page 88 The target will show up in the list of disk images as described in chapter 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 and can thus be attached to one of the VM s three hard disk slots the usual way Note As opposed to the VDI files described previously the type of iSCSI targets cannot be normal or immutable but will always be set to write through This means that their state is not saved or reverted with snapshots 1SCSI in turn is the Small Computer System Interface and is an established industry standard for data transfer between devices notably storage devices Established as early as 1986 SCSI is still used for connecting hard disks and tape devices even today Especially in the PC market however it competed with other data transfer standards such as IDE It is still in common use in workstations and servers 53 6 Virtual networking As briefly mentioned in chapter 3 7 5 Network settings page 41 VirtualBox provides up to four virtual PCI Ethernet cards for each virtual machine Each of these adapters can be separately configured in one of the following four modes e Not attached e Network Address Translation NAT e Host Interface Networking e Internal Networking By default virtual network cards are set up to use network address translation which is well suited to standard networking needs accessing the Internet from programs running in the guest and
54. 18 2 Installation In case you do not have sudo switch the user account to root and perform 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 th
55. 2006 11 16 12 7 Version 1 2 2 2006 11 14 cs sesa spere OS ee HESS SES 12 8 Version 1 1 12 2006 11 14 s o aaco s ceee nea kekeak 12 9 Version TL 10 2006 07 25 00000000 a a V uo be eS 12 10Version 1 1 8 2006 07 17 12 1TVersion 1 1 6 2006 04 18 12 1Wersion 1 1 4 2006 03 09 12 1Nersion 1 1 2 2006 02 03 oo due a aw we ee 12 1 version 1 0 50 2005 12 16 579 xor Rx GG 12 15Version 1 0 48 2005 11 23 12 18 e 905 1 0 46 2005 11 04 ces o m ek ok EEO y yes 12 1Wersion 1 0 44 2005 10 25 12 18Version 1 0 42 2005 08 30 12 19Version 1 0 40 2005 06 17 12 20 ersion 1 0 39 2005 05 05 ooo sse o RR RE 12 2Wersion 1 0 38 2005 04 27 12 22Vers810n 1 0 37 2005 04 12 eue a a om 13 3rd party licenses 131 Matera aora AA AA T1077 To 2 Lenses 105 10 Ge Re ok ox Gr Se UE SA noB Ecl E OY We ay s 13 2 1 X Consortium License X11 sos or R3 13 2 2 GNU Lesser General Public License LGPL 1323 wb CASE 2492s mox oto m Roscoe pow ERR 13 2 4 Apache License uero X eddar 44 09 15 2 5 OpenSSL Dess Lo 2 0x a X X RS 13 2 6 Mozilla Public License MPL cens is a Luo AN 13 2 8 liblzf license Contents 13 2 9 GNU General Public License GPL Glossary
56. 3 Custom external VRDP authentication page 93 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 3 Remote USB page 74 for details e Folder sharing VirtualBox folder sharing lets you access files from the host system inside guests Shared folders can be set up for all virtual machines or for 11 1 Introduction a single VM Temporary shared folders may also be set up while a VM is running Shared folders are described in chapter 4 4 Folder sharing page 49 1 3 Operating system support 1 3 1 Supported host operating systems Currently VirtualBox is available for the following Windows 32 bit operating systems e Windows 2000 service pack 3 and higher e Windows XP all service packs e Windows Server 2003 and for the following Linux 32 bit systems e Debian GNU Linux 3 1 sarge and 4 0 etch e Fedora Core 4 to 7 e Gentoo Linux e Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 4 and 5 e SUSE Linux 9 and 10 e Ubuntu 5 10 Breezy Badger 6 06 Dapper Drake 6 10 Edgy Eft 7 04 Feisty Fawn Starting with VirtualBox 1 4 the following hosts are also supported e 64 bit Linux e Apple Mac OS X It should be possible to use VirtualBox on most systems based on Linux kernel 2 4 or 2 6 using either the VirtualBox installer or by doing a manual inst
57. 87 8 13 VBoxManage modifyvdi o e ee 87 8 14 VBoxManage clonevdl 2 oa coe eae RR s 88 8 15 VBoxManage addiscsidisk o ooo eee 88 8 16 VBoxManage createhostif removehostif 89 8 17 VBoxManage getextradata setextradata 89 9 18 VBoxManage setpropenty ou ba he Ro hx bx RRR XS RR oni 89 8 19 VBoxManage usbfilter add modify remove 90 8 20 VBoxManage sharedfolder add remove o o o ooo ooo 90 8 21 VBoxManage tipdatesettings coo te n rms 90 9 Advanced Topics 91 9 1 VirtualBox configuration data o eee 91 9 2 Automated Windows guest logons VBoxGINA 92 9 3 Custom external VRDP authentication 93 9 4 Secure labeling with VBoxXSDL o oo 94 9 5 Custom VESA resolutions oo om m Roe em a SES 95 9 6 Releasing modifiers with VBoxSDL on Linux 96 57 Usingserial ports o ey ad raa ee A ew RS oS ree 96 9 8 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest 97 9 8 1 Access to entire physical hard disk 98 9 8 2 Access to individual physical hard disk partitions 98 10 VirtualBox Application Programming Interfaces 101 11 Troubleshooting 102 11 1 General A eee ee ed bE GR SSR beh deve RASA 102 11 1 1 Collecting debugging information 102 11 1 2 Guest shows IDE errors for VDI on slow host file system 102
58. AL 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 DAMAG PI The licence and distribution terms for any publically 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 144 13 3rd party licenses 13 2 6 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 Modifications used by a Contributor and the Modifications made by that particular Contributor 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 e
59. AMD PCnet 79C970A cards or as 100Mbps 79C973 cards This is in fact purely cosmetic as both virtual cards run at full speed e cableconnected 1 N on off This allows you to temporarily disconnect 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 components in the VM e With the nictrace options you can optionally trace network traffic for debug ging purposes With nictrace lt 1 N gt on off you can enable network tracing for a particular virtual network card 83 8 VBoxManage reference If enabled you must specify with nictracefile 1 N filename what file the trace should be logged to hostifdev 1 N none devicename If host interface 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 Windows hosts this should be the name of a VirtualBox host interface which you have created using the createhostif command For Linux hosts this should be the name of an existing static interface or none if you wish to al locate an interface dynamically In the latter case you should also specify the creation and termination scripts for the interface with tapsetup 1 4 and tapterminate lt 1 4 gt For details please see chapter 6 3 Introduction to host int
60. BoxInternal Devices piix3ide 0 LUN x Config IgnoreFlush 0 The value x that selects the disk is O 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 Only disks support this configuration option It must not be set for CD ROM drives Note that this doesn t affect the flushes performed according to the configuration described in chapter 11 1 2 Guest shows IDE errors for VDI on slow host file system page 102 Restoring the default of ignoring flush commands is possible by setting the value to 1 or by removing the key 11 2 Windows guests 103 11 Troubleshooting 11 2 1 Windows boot failures 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 Windo
61. BoxSDL 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 this problem a feature called Y offset has been implemented This takes the height of the secure label and pro vides custom video modes to the guest that are reduced by the height of the label so that guest height label height results in a valid native display resolution For Win dows guests the VirtualBox Guest Additions automatically provide the reduced video modes In addition to that 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 0x200 0x117 0x30 839 vga vga 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 fag vga2rgb calc html 9 5 Custom VESA resolutions Ap
62. For Operating System Type select the operating system that you want to install later While this setting presently has no lasting effect VirtualBox will use this setting to display an operating system accordingly and also make certain recom mendations later based on your selection such as the amount of memory and hard disk space to allocate and future VirtualBox versions may offer certain system specific virtualization features 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 24 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 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
63. Manage controlvm see chapter 8 7 VBoxManage controlvm page 85 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 at innotek 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 70 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 vm vm where vm is as usual with VirtualBox command line parameters the name or UUID of an existing virtual machine 7 4 Remote Desktop Support VRDP 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 it was running on the remote machine VRDP is a backwards compatible extension to Micros
64. 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 256 512 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 Next you must specify a virtual hard disk for your VM There are several ways in which VirtualBox can provide hard disk space to a VM 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 presents to you the following window 25 3 Starting out with VirtualBox Virtual Hard Disk Select a hard disk image to be used as a boot hard disk of the virtual machine You can either select an image from the drop down list create a new hard disk using the New button or invoke the Virtual Disk Manager dialog for more complex actions using the
65. S FOR A PART TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE YOU ASSUME TH PROVIDE THE PROGRAM AS I OR IMPLIED PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE REPAIR OR CORRECTION 12 IN NO EVENT UNLESS WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER INCLUDING ANY GENERAL SP TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA B YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A 13 3rd party licenses ECIAL REQUIRED BY A OR ANY OTHE REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE EING RENDERED FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER FREE OF CHARGE THERE IS NO WARRANTY ED BY APPLICABLE LAW EXCEPT WHEN GHT HOLDERS AND OR OTHER PARTIES RRANTY OF ANY KIND EITHER EXPRESSED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ICULAR PURPOSE THE ENTIRE RISK AS PROGRAM IS WITH YOU SHOULD THE E COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING PPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING R PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND OR PROGRAM INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY PROGRAMS EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAG END OF TERMS AND CON ES DITIONS 159 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
66. TWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AS IS AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MER CHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT INDIRECT INCIDENTAL SPE CIAL 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 OTH ERWISE ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE 13 2 9 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 document 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
67. The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 8 15 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 lt name gt lt ip gt target target port lt port gt lun lt lun gt username lt username gt password lt password gt comment lt comment gt 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 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 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 88 8 VBoxManage reference 8 16 VBoxManage createhostif removehostif These two commands add and remove respectively virtual network interfaces on Win dows hosts
68. The setcredentials operation is used for remote logons in Windows guests For details please refer to chapter 9 2 Automated Windows guest logons VBoxGINA page 92 8 8 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 86 8 VBoxManage reference 8 9 VBoxManage snapshot This command is used for taking snapshots of a virtual machine and for manipulating and discarding snapshots The take operation takes a snapshot of a virtual machine You must supply a name for the snapshot and can optionally supply a description The discard operation discards a snapshot specified by name or by identifier UUID The discardcurrent operation will either revert the current state to the most recent snapshot if you specify the state option or discard the last snapshot and revert to the last but one with the a11 option 8 10 VBoxManage registerimage unregisterimage 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 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 for more information Note however that when you unregister a hard disk image using VBoxManage it will not be deleted from the host comp
69. VDM button If you need a more complicated hard disk setup you can also skip this step and attach hard disks later using the VM Settings dialog The recommended size of the boot hard disk is 2000 MB JA Boot Hard Disk Primary Master lt Back l Next gt Cancel 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 e 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 e Otherwise to create a new virtual hard disk press the New button e 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 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 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 e A dynamically expanding file will only grow in size when the guest actu ally stores data on its virtual hard disk It will
70. a Source form including but not limited to compiled object code generated documentation and conversions to other media types Work shall mean the work of authorship whether in Source or Object form made available under the License as indicated by a copyright notice that is included in or attached to the work an example is provided in the Appendix below Derivative Works shall mean any work whether in Source or Object form that is based on or derived from the Work and for which the editorial revisions annotations elaborations or other modifications represent as a whole an original work of authorship For the purposes of this License Derivative Works shall not include works that remain separable from or merely link or bind by name to the interfaces of the Work and Derivative Works thereof Contribution shall mean any work of authorship including he original version of the Work and any modifications or additions o that Work or Derivative Works thereof that is intentionally ubmitted to Licensor for inclusion in the Work by the copyright owner r by an individual or Legal Entity authorized to submit on behalf of he copyright owner For the purposes of this definition submitted means any form of electronic verbal or written communication sent to the Licensor or its representatives including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists source code control systems and issue tracking systems that are
71. a 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 You can globally change some of the locations where VirtualBox keeps extra config uration 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 e Virtual machine settings and files are by default saved as XML files in a subdi rectory of the VirtualBox Machines directory 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 If you would like more control over the file names used you can create the machine using 91 9 Advanced Topics VBoxManage createvm with the settingsfile option see chapter 8 4 VBoxManage createvm page 81 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 mach
72. again with an updated CD ROM image This will replace the drivers with updated versions You should reboot after updating the Guest Additions 4 4 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 a networking setup Sharing is accomplished using a special ser vice 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 Currently Shared Folders are limited to Windows XP Windows 2000 and Linux 2 4 and 2 6 guests To declare a folder as shared to VirtualBox you specify a certain path on the host which will become the shared folder and give it a share name that only VirtualBox will use Using this share name which the VirtualBox Shared Folders service will provide to the guest a drive letter mapping can be performed in the guest There are several ways in which shared folders can be configure e In the graphical user interface of a running virtual machine you can select Shared folders from the Devices menu or click on the little folder icon in the bottom right corner If a virtual machine is not currently running you can configure shared folders in each virtual machine s Settings dialog e From the command line you can create shared folders using
73. alBox Host Networking are members of this group In most cases this device will belong to the vboxusers group On Linux hosts you have a choice of creating permanent networking interfaces which guests can attach to when they are created or having VirtualBox create a dy namic interface for a guest when the guest is started and remove it when the guest is stopped Permanent interfaces are more suitable for hosts which run a known set of guests which does not change often such as some server setups and they are easier to set up Having VirtualBox create the interfaces dynamically when a virtual machine is started provides more flexibility but will normally require you to enter an administrator password when the interfaces are created and removed Since not all popular Linux distributions provide their own methods of creating permanent TAP interfaces we provide utilities which will do this on most distributions If your distribution does provide its own method we recommend that you use that instead we provide instructions below for doing this on current Debian and Ubuntu systems We also provide instructions for setting up a network bridge on Debian Ubuntu openSUSE Fedora and Redhat hosts If you use a different distribution please consult the documentation provided with it to find out how to do this 6 5 1 Permanent host interfaces and bridging On Linux hosts setting up a permanent host interface typically consists of three steps 1 I
74. allation see chapter 2 2 Installing on Linux hosts page 15 1 3 2 Supported guest operating systems While VirtualBox is designed to provide a generic virtualization environment for x86 systems our focus is to optimize the product s performance for a select list of guest systems The following table provides an overview of current support 12 1 Introduction Operating Support status system Windows NT All versions editions and service packs are fully 4 0 supported but see remark 1 below Guest Additions are available with a limited feature set Windows 2000 All versions editions and service packs are fully XP Server supported Guest Additions are available 2003 Vista DOS Windows Limited testing has been performed Use beyond 3 x 95 98 legacy installation mechanisms not recommended No ME Guest Additions available Linux 2 4 Limited support Linux 2 6 All versions editions and service packs are fully supported but see remark 2 below Guest Additions are available FreeBSD Limited support Guest Additions are not available yet OpenBSD Versions 3 7 and 3 8 are supported Guest Additions are not available yet Remarks 1 With Windows NT 4 0 there are some issues with older service packs We recommend to install service pack 6a 2 For Linux 2 6 we strongly recommend using version 2 6 13 or higher for better performance However version 2 6 18 and some 2 6 17 vers
75. ally 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 8 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 98 9 Advanced Topics 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 mus
76. antially in their networking configu ration The exact steps how to do this therefore vary depending on the distribution of your host Below we will describe the setup procedures for Debian Ubuntu Fe dora Red Hat and openSUSE in addition we offer some generic instructions for ad vanced users Some distributions such as Debian and Ubuntu have build in tools to create host interfaces we recommend those built in tools on those distributions For use with other distributions VirtualBox ships with two utilities VBoxAddIF and VBoxDeleteIF which are explained in chapter 6 5 1 5 The VBoxAddIF and VBoxDeleteIF utilities page 64 These tools allow you to create and delete host in terfaces and optionally add them to an existing bridge Note While we have made any attempt to ensure that the below distribution specific instructions work we strongly recommend that you look up your dis tribution s own documentation about how to set up briding in addition to the below instructions 6 5 1 1 Debian and Ubuntu hosts To set up a permanent host interface on a Debian or Ubuntu host follow these steps 1 On modern Debian and Ubuntu based hosts you must first install the User Mode Linux utilities package uml utilities which contains tools to create TAP inter faces as well as the bridge utilities bridge utils package You can do this from the command line using TA useful introduction to bridging can be found h
77. arly Shared folders These provide an easy way to exchange files between the host and the guest Much similar to ordinary Windows network shares you can tell VirtualBox to treat a certain folder 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 4 Folder sharing page 49 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 7 1 General settings page 37 Automated Windows logons credentials passing Windows guests only For details please see chapter 9 2 Automated Windows guest logons VBoxGINA page 92 4 2 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 e Microsoft Windows NT 4 0 any service pack e Microsoft Windows 2000 any service pack e Microsoft Windows XP any service pack e Microsoft Windows Server 2003 any service pack e Microsoft Windows Vista all editions Generally it is strongly recommend to install the Windows Guest Additions 4 2 1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions The VirtualBox Guest Additions are provided as a CD ROM image file which is called VBoxGuestAdditions iso An easy to use installation program will guide you through
78. art 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 Windows XP CustomVideoModel 1400x1050x16 95 9 Advanced Topics 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 9 6 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 li
79. assword passed in by the client UTF8 szDomain Domain passed in by the client UTF8 Return code 93 9 Advanced Topics VRDPAuthAccessDenied Client access has been denied VRDPAuthAccessGranted 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 x VRDPAuthResult VRDPAUTHCALL VRDPAuth PVRDPAUTHUUID pUuid VRDPAuthGuestJudgement guestJudgement const char xszUser const char szPassword const char szDomain process request against your authentication source of choice x return VRDPAuthAccessGranted 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 4 Secure labeling with VBoxSDL When running guest operating systems in fullscreen mode the guest operating system us
80. ate the daemons and remove the local domain socket directory 108 11 Troubleshooting 11 4 6 USB not working If USB is not working on your Linux host make sure that the current user has permis sion to access the USB filesystem usbfs which VirtualBox relies on to retrieve valid information about your host s USB devices 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 et c 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
81. atement that the Modification is derived directly or indirectly 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 making the claim in sufficient detail that a recipient will know whom to contact If Contributor 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 Contributor 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 programming 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 Rep
82. ation will be performed see chapter 7 4 4 RDP authentication page 74 for details usb on off This option enables or disables the VM s virtual USB controller see chapter 3 7 6 1 USB settings page 41 for details 84 8 VBoxManage reference e snapshotfolder default lt path gt This allows you to specify the folder in which snapshots will be kept for a virtual machine 8 6 VBoxManage startvm This command starts a virtual machine that is currently in the Powered off or Saved states This is provided for backwards compatibility only 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 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP server see chapter 7 4 1 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP server page 72 for more information Note We recommend to start virtual machines directly by running the re spective front end as you might otherwise miss important error and state information that VirtualBox may display on the console This is especially im portant for front ends other than VirtualBox our graphical user interface because those cannot display error messages in a popup window See chapter 7 4 1 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP server page 72 for more information 8 7 VBoxManage controlvm The cont rolvm subcommand allows you to change the state of a virtual machine that is currently running The following can be specifie
83. cense 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 0 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 158 NO WARRANTY 11 BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FOR THE PROGRAM TO THE EXTENT PERMITT OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRI S WITHOUT WA INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNES
84. chapter 3 7 Virtual machine settings page 36 Even more parameters are available with the command line interface see chapter 8 VBoxManage reference page 76 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 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 e 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 28 3 Starting out with VirtualBox sl JD File VM Help Y s d SNI m 38 Details 3 Snapshots New Settings Delete Start Discard General a Ubuntu 6 10 liado e gt asia mu Powered Off amp General CD DVD ROM Windows Vista 2 Hard Disks Saved Floppy Mount CD DVD Drive A Windows XP B Powered or Host CD DVD Drive dew cdrom v a Audio Network jy USB ISO Image File ubuntu 6 10 desktop i386 iso media INNO USB FA isos ubuntu v N
85. create a fixed size image of e g 10 GB a VDI file of roughly the same size will be created immediately on your host system 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 For either of the above two image types that is irrespective of whether an image is fixed size or dynamically expanding you can also specify whether write operations affect the image directly 51 5 Virtual storage 1 With normal images the default setting there are no restrictions on how guests can read from and write to the disk Because of this a normal hard disk can only be attached to a single virtual machine at any given time although you can detach them from a VM and attach them to another When you take a snapshot of your virtual machine as described in chapter 3 4 4 Snapshots page 33 the state of such a normal hard disk will be recorded together with the snapshot and when reverting
86. ct includes software developed by Danny Gasparovski NCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED IN NO EVENT SHALL DANNY GASPAROVSKI OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT INDIRECT NCIDENTAL 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 13 2 8 liblzf license THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES Redistribution and use in source and binary forms with or without modifica tion are permitted provided that the following conditions are met 153 13 3rd party licenses 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 SOF
87. ctly 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 3 iSCSI servers page 53 PXE Network boot The integrated virtual network cards of VirtualBox fully support remote booting via the Preboot Execution Environment PXE e Multigeneration snapshots VirtualBox can save successive snapshots of the state of the virtual machine You can revert the virtual machine to the state of any of the snapshots For details see chapter 3 4 4 Snapshots page 33 e VRDP remote access You can run any virtual machine in a special VirtualBox program that acts as a server for the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol VRDP With this unique feature VirtualBox provides high performance remote access to any virtual machine A custom RDP server has been built directly into the virtualization layer and offers unprecedented performance and feature rich ness VRDP support is described in detail in chapter 7 4 Remote Desktop Support VRDP page 71 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
88. cure and should generally not be used 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 75 8 VBoxManage reference When running VBoxManage without parameters or when supplying an invalid com mand line the syntax diagram will be shown The Linux and Windows versions are slightly different to reflect differences between these operating systems When in doubt check the output of VBoxManage for the commands available on a particular host system The following diagram shows a superset of all commands understood by VBoxManage VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1 3 99 C 2005 2007 innotek GmbH All rights reserved Usage VBoxManage list vms ostypes hostdvds hostfloppies hostifs hdds dvds floppies usbhost usbfilters systemproperties VBoxManage showvminfo lt uuid gt
89. d e 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 VM menu of the GUI e UseVBoxManage controlvm vm resume to undo a previous pause com mand This is equivalent to selecting the Resume item in the VM menu of the GUI e 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 VM menu of the GUI e 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 85 8 VBoxManage reference selecting the Close item in the VM 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 6 VBoxManage startvm page 85 e VBoxManage controlvm lt vm gt savestate will save the c
90. d Hat distributions Linux Additions enhanced display performance solved several issues Linux Additions added color pointer support 118 12 ChangeLog 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 VMM experimental support for IBM OS 2 Warp requires VI 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 8 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 119 12 ChangeLog VRDP added mouse wheel support
91. d along with the Derivative Works or within a display generated by the Derivative Works if and wherever such third party notices normally appear The contents of the NOTICE file are for informational purposes only and do not modify the License You may add Your own attribution notices within Derivative Works that You distribute alongside or as an addendum to the NOTICE text from the Work provided that such additional attribution notices cannot be construed as modifying the License 142 13 3rd party licenses You may add Your own copyright statement to Your modifications and may provide additional or different license terms and conditions for use reproduction or distribution of Your modifications or for any such Derivative Works as a whole provided Your use reproduction and distribution of the Work otherwise complies with the conditions stated in this License 5 Submission of Contributions Unless You explicitly state otherwise any Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work by You to the Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of this License without any additional terms or conditions Notwithstanding the above nothing herein shall supersede or modify the terms of any separate license agreement you may have executed with Licensor regarding such Contributions 6 Trademarks This License does not grant permission to use the trade names trademarks service marks or product names of the Licensor exc
92. d once however the next time the host is restarted the inter face and the bridge should be activated automatically Another entry must be added to the file etc network interfaces to de scribe the bridge The following sample entry creates a bridge called bro adds to it all ethernet interfaces on the host as well as the TAP interface created above and tells it to obtain an IP address using DHCP so that the host remains able to access the network auto brO iface br0 inet dhcp bridge ports all tap0 Again you will probably want to change this to suit your own networking needs In particular you may want to assign a static IP address to the bridge or if you are using TAP interfaces created by VirtualBox these are described later you will want to remove tap0 from the last line On the host you will find more documentation in the files 60 6 Virtual networking a usr share doc bridge utilities README Debian gz and b usr share doc ifupdown examples network interfaces gz 5 To tell VirtualBox to use the interface select the virtual machine which is to use it in the main window of the VirtualBox application configure one of its network adaptors to use Host Interface Networking using Settings Network Attached to and enter tapO into the Interface name field Alternatively you can use the VBoxManage command line tool in this example we are attaching the interface to the first n
93. d to Also VirtualBox can only proxy to virtual ma chines USB devices which are not claimed by a Linux host USB driver Please refer to the driver entry in proc bus usb devices to see which devices are claimed 43 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions The previous chapter covered getting started with VirtualBox and installing operating systems 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 4 1 Introduction As said in chapter 1 1 Virtualization basics page 7 the Guest Additions are designed to be installed inside a virtual machine They consist of device drivers and system applications for the guest operating system that optimize the guest for better perfor mance and usability To install these additions you simply provide a special ISO file that comes with VirtualBox as a virtual CD ROM to your guest operating system and install from there VirtualBox presently provides Guest Additions for Windows and Linux guests if you need support for other operating systems please contact innotek Our Guest Additions offer the following features Mouse pointer integration To overcome the limitations for mouse support that were described in chapter 3 4 1 1 Capturing and releasing keyboard and mouse page 30 this provides you with seamless mouse support Essentially a special mouse
94. ded that you do these two things a Accompany the combined library with a copy of the same work based on the Library uncombined with any other library facilities This must be distributed under the terms of the Sections above b Give prominent notice with the combined library of the fact that part of it is a work based on the Library and explaining where to find the accompanying uncombined form of the same work 8 You may not copy modify sublicense link with or distribute the Library except as expressly provided under this License Any attempt otherwise to copy modify sublicense link with or distribute the Library 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 9 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 Library or its derivative works These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License Therefore by modifying or distributing the Library or any work based on the Library you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so and all its terms and conditions for copying distributing or modifying the Library or works based on it 10 Each time you redistribute the Library or any work based on the Library
95. dows guests we recommend installation of the VirtualBox Guest Addi tions for Linux 47 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions 4 3 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 sys tem for building external kernel modules This is exactly the same process as described in chapter 2 2 2 Support for external kernel modules page 16 except that this step must now be performed in your Linux guest instead of on a Linux host system as described there 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 2 1 1 Mounting the Additions ISO file page 46 3 Change to the directory where your CD ROM drive is mounted and execute as root sh VBoxLinuxAdditions run 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 grap
96. e 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 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 where VirtualBox is running Also the host operating system determines which version of VirtualBox is required VirtualBox for Windows VirtualBox for Linux or VirtualBox for Mac see chapter 1 3 1 Supported host operating systems page 12 for further information Note Even though the various VirtualBox versions are usually discussed to gether in this document there may be platform specific differences which we will point out where appropriate 1 Introduction 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 sy
97. e 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 2 2 3 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 19 2 Installation sudo VirtualBox run uninstall or as root VirtualBox run uninstall To manually uninstall VirtualBox simply undo the steps in the manual installation in reverse order 2 2 3 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 vvoxconf can contain the following debconf settings debconf virtualbox accepted virtualbox puel 1 2 boolean true debconf virtualbox module compilation allowed boolean true debconf virtualbox delete
98. e original software 3 This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution Jean loup Gailly Mark Adler jloup8gzip org madler alumni caltech edu 13 2 4 Apache License Apache License Version 2 0 January 2004 http www apache org licenses TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE REPRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION 1 Definitions License shall mean the terms and conditions for use reproduction 140 13 3rd party licenses and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document Licensor shall mean the copyright owner or entity authorized by the copyright owner that is granting the License Legal Entity shall mean the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control are controlled by or are under common control with that entity For the purposes of this definition control means i the power direct or indirect to cause the direction or management of such entity whether by contract or otherwise or ii ownership of fifty percent 50 or more of the outstanding shares or iii beneficial ownership of such entity You or Your shall mean an individual or Legal Entity exercising permissions granted by this License Source form shall mean the preferred form for making modifications including but not limited to software source code documentation source and configuration files Object form shall mean any form resulting from mechanical transformation or translation of
99. e simplest way of accessing an external network 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 networking enabled acts much like a real computer that connects to the Internet through a router The router in this case is the VirtualBox networking 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 that is integrated into VirtualBox The address which the virtual machine receives is usually on a completely different network to the host As more than one card of a virtual machine can be set up to use NAT networking 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 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 Virt
100. e version of the gcc used to compile the module Make sure that you use the same compiler as used to build the kernel 11 4 2 Linux host s 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 cor responding Linux device file usually dev cdrom or similar On most distributions the user must be added to a corresponding group usually called cdrom or cdrw Also if your CD DVD device has a different name VirtualBox may be unable to find it On 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 cdroml 11 4 3 Linux host s floppy not found The previous instructions for CD DVD drives apply accordingly to floppy disks ex cept that VirtualBox tests for dev fdx devices by default This can be overridden with the VBOX FLOPPY enviro
101. e virtual network cards Floppy added a virtual floppy drive to the VM and support for attaching floppy images and capturing host floppy drives 126 12 ChangeLog 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 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 19 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 lt username gt 1 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 gu
102. e with any other module For this VirtualBox provides a well defined interface that allows 74 7 Alternative front ends remote virtual machines you to write your own authentication module see chapter 9 3 Custom external VRDP authentication page 93 for details e 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 7 4 5 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 where the RDP client does not per form any checks in order to verify the identity of the server it connects to Using a man in the middle MITM attack the user s credentials could be obtained Therefore 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 must possess the corre sponding private key However this hardcoded private key became public some years ago and therefore RDP5 1 authentication must be considered to be inse
103. e 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 distribution 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 156 13 3rd party licenses 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 C Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution 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 modification
104. ed 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 VBoxManage made VRDP authentication configurable VDI added workaround against possible Windows host deadlocks caused by a sychronisation flaw in Windows ACPI improved host power status reporting 12 11 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 121 12 ChangeLog 12 12 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 No
105. ee chapter 8 5 VBoxManage modifyvm page 81 3 7 2 Hard disks In the VM Settings window the Hard Disks section allows you to connect up to three virtual hard disk images to your virtual machine As with a real PC VirtualBox s IDE support offers you two IDE controllers each with a master and a slave connection With one of these four connectors being reserved to the CD ROM DVD drive see below that leaves you with three possible hard disks each represented by one disk image file The settings of the first disk Primary Master are initially set by the Create VM wizard Normally you will stick with this setting for the rest of a VM s lifetime You may however freely remove add and exchange virtual hard drives after the machine has been set up 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 To connect an additional disk select the corresponding checkbox and click on the folder icon on the right to bring up the Virtual Disk Image Manager To remove a virtual disk simply uncheck the appropriate checkbox To replace a hard drive with a different one click on the folder icon for that drive and select or create a new one using the Virtual Disk Manager For more information please see chapter 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 and chapter 5 1 Virtual Disk Image VDI files page 51 3 7 3 CD DVD ROM and floppy setti
106. empt to load that module If this fails please see chapter 11 4 1 Linux kernel module refuses to load page 107 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 2 4 Starting VirtualBox on Linux page 20 2 2 3 2 Using the alternative installer The alternative installer performs the following steps e It unpacks the application files to a target directory of choice By default the following directory will be used opt VirtualBox 1 4 0 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 e It creates symbolic links to VirtualBox VBoxSDL 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 17 2 Installation e 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 licence agreement for example for performing unattended installations you can add the parameter license_accepted_unconditionally Finally if you want to use a director
107. 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 o Hra GOG wH O D Q DER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AND UNDER NO LEGAL THEORY WHETHER TORT INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE CONTRACT OR OTHERWISE SHALL YOU THE INITIAL EVELOPER ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR OR ANY DISTRIBUTOR OF COVERED CODE ANY SUPPLIER OF ANY OF SUCH PARTIES BE LIABLE TO ANY PERSON FOR Y INDIRECT SPECIAL INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY ARACTER INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL ORK STOPPAGE COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OR ANY AND ALL OTHER OMMERCIAL DAMAGES OR LOSSES EVEN IF SUCH PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN FORMED 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 EXTENT APPLICAB PROHIBITS SUCH LIMITATION SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW TH EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGE E LAW MN AC 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 computer 151 13 3rd party licenses software and commercial computer software documentatio
108. ept as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file 7 Disclaimer of Warranty Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing Licensor provides the Work and each Contributor provides its Contributions on an AS IS BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND either express or implied including without limitation any warranties or conditions of TITLE NON INFRINGEMENT MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License 8 Limitation of Liability In no event and under no legal theory whether in tort including negligence contract or otherwise unless required by applicable law such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts or agreed to in writing shall any Contributor be liable to You for damages including any direct indirect special incidental or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the Work including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill work stoppage computer failure or malfunction or any and all other commercial damages or losses even if such Contributor has been advised of the possibility of such damages 9 Accepting Warranty or Additional Liabilit
109. er 2003 as well as on all major Linux distributions from Red Hat Novell and others With VirtualBox 1 4 support for 64 bit Linux and Mac OS X hosts was added In addition a special version for use on embedded kernel systems is available separately Guest Additions for Windows and Linux The VirtualBox Guest Additions are packages which can be installed in Windows or Linux guest systems to improve their performance and to provide additional integration and communication with the host system The Guest Additions are described in detail in chapter 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions page 44 In brief among others they offer the following features Arbitrary screen resolutions host controlled In guest systems that sup port it currently Windows guests you can change the guest resolution simply by resizing the virtual machine window in the host system Arbitrary screen resolutions guest controlled The VirtualBox Guest Additions can handle arbitrary screen resolutions Even for guest operating systems for which no Additions have been written yet VirtualBox will offer custom VESA resolutions e XML configuration store VirtualBox stores all its configuration in XML files one XML document for global settings and a XML file per virtual machine This allows you to transport VM definitions between the different frontends and even across host computers For details please refer to chapter 9 1 VirtualBox configuration data page 91
110. ere http gentoo wiki com HOWTO setup a gentoo bridge While this is targeted at a Gentoo system it contains some general introductions 59 6 Virtual networking sudo apt get install uml utilities sudo apt get install bridge utils In order for VirtualBox to be able to access the interface the user who will be running the virtual machine must be added to the group um1 net for example with the following command replace vboxuser with your user name sudo gpasswd a vboxuser uml net You may have to log out and log in again for the change to take effect To describe the TAP interface to your Debian or Ubuntu system add an entry to the file etc network interfaces This names the the interface and must also specify the user who will be running the virtual machine using the interface The following sample entry creates the interface tapO for the user vboxuser again replace with your user name auto tap0 iface tap0 inet manual up ifconfig SIFACE 0 0 0 0 up down ifconfig IFACE down tunctl user vboxuser You will probably want to change the entry based on your networking needs On the host you will find more documentation in these files a usr share doc uml utilities README Debian and b usr share doc ifupdown examples network interfaces gz The first time it is used activate the new interface and the bridge with these two commands sudo sbin ifup tap0 sudo sbin ifup brO This is only neede
111. erface networking page 56 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 6 Internal networking page 66 macaddress 1 N auto lt mac gt With this option you can set the MAC ad dress of the virtual network card Per default each virtual network card is as signed a random address by VirtualBox at VM creation audio none null oss With this option you can set whether the VM should have audio support clipboard clipboard disabled hosttoguest guesttohost bidirectional With this setting you can select whether the guest oper ating system s clipboard should be shared with the host see chapter 3 7 1 General settings page 37 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 VBoxVRDP our headless server described in chapter 7 4 1 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP server page 72 VRDP output is always enabled vrdpport default port This lets you specify which port should be used default or 0 means port 3389 the standard port for RDP Only one machine can use a given port at a time vrdpauthtype null external guest This allows you to choose whether and how authoriz
112. erforming this distribution d If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy from a designated place offer equivalent access to copy the above Specified materials from the same place e Verify that the user has already received a copy of these materials or that you have already sent this user a copy For an executable the required form of the work that uses the Library must include any data and utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from it However as a special exception the materials to be 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 137 13 3rd party licenses It may happen that this requirement contradicts the license restrictions of other proprietary libraries that do not normally accompany the operating system Such a contradiction means you Cannot use both them and the Library together in an executable that you distribute 7 You may place library facilities that are a work based on the Library side by side in a single library together with other library facilities not covered by this License and distribute such a combined library provided that the separate distribution of the work based on the Library and of the other library facilities is otherwise permitted and provi
113. es assume that you are installing to an Ubuntu Edgy system Use dpkg to install the Debian package 16 2 Installation sudo dpkg i VirtualBox 1 4 0 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 Also note that adding an active user to that group may require a restart of the session of that user 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 2 2 Support for external kernel modules page 16 After correcting any problems do 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 att
114. es 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 96 9 Advanced Topics NN NpipeNvboxCOMI VBoxManage setextradata YourVM VBoxInternal Devices serial 0 LUN 0 AttachedDriver Config IsServer 1 This example 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 NN NpipeN 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 On Linux there are various tools which can connect to a local domain socket or cre ate one in server mode The most flexible tool is socat and is available as part of many distributions For Windows there is a helper program called VMWare Serial Line Gate way available for download at http www l4ka org tools vmwaregateway php This
115. est 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 127 12 ChangeLog 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 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 20 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
116. etwork card of the virtual machine My VM VBoxManage modifyvm My VM hostifdevl tap0 6 5 1 2 Bridging on openSUSE hosts On openSUSE hosts we recommend to use the VBoxAddIF utility shipped with VirtualBox see chapter 6 5 1 5 The VBoxAddIF and VBoxDeleteIF utilities page 64 to create a TAP interface and add it to a bridge That leaves open the question how to create bridge on openSUSE for this please follow the below instructions Note that bridging on openSUSE hosts may not work properly if you are using NetworkManager to manage your network connections To create a bridge on a recent openSUSE host you must first install the bridge utilities oridge utils package If you are working from the command line this can be done as follows sudo sbin yast i bridge utils Then you must create a text file describing the bridge to be created The name of the file must correspond to the name of the bridge you wish to create To create the bridge br0 you should call the file etc sysconfig network ifcfg br0 Below we have given an example of a file which creates a bridge including the network device eth0 obtains an IP address by DHCP through the network device and is started automatically when openSUSE starts You will probably want to adjust this to match your networking requirements BOOTPROTO dhcp NETMASK 255 255 255 0 STARTMODE auto USERCONTROL no DHCLIENT TIMEOUT 30 BRIDGE yes BRIDGE PORTS etnh0
117. fied 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 DISTRIBUTION 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 ac
118. for several scenar ios e Operating system support With VirtualBox one can run software written for one operating system on another for example Windows software on Linux without having to reboot to use it You can even install in a virtual machine an old operating system such as DOS or OS 2 if your real computer s hardware is no longer supported e Infrastructure consolidation Virtualization can significantly reduce hardware and electricity costs The full performance provided by today s powerful hard ware is only rarely really needed and typical servers have an average load of only a fraction of their theoretical power So instead of running many such physical computers that are only partially used one can pack many virtual ma chines 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 will only have to be able to display VRDP data any more e Testing and disaster recovery Once installed a virtual box and its virtual hard disk 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 stat
119. g out with VirtualBox Actions New Add Remove f Refresh Z Hard Disks 5 CD DVD Images B Eloppy Images Name Virtual Size Actual Size target 0 00 B 0 00 B Ubuntu 6 10 7 81 GB 2 55 GB Windows Vista 2 vdi 653879a5 2e94 49ab 86c0 616108ce097f vdi media inno usb reiser projects virtualBox vdis Ubuntu 6 10 Disk type Normal Storage type Virtual Disk Image 6e47ae2b1 f7e2 4ccc 848e 32755ffdf5dc vdi Attached to Ubuntu 6 10 Location media inno usb reiser projects virtualBox vdis Windows XP vdi Disk Type Normal Storage Type Virtual Disk Image Attachedto Windows XP Snapshot Snapshot 1 Help The Disk Image Manager shows you all images that are currently registered with VirtualBox conveniently grouped in three tabs for the three possible formats These formats are e Hard disk images either in VirtualBox s own Virtual Disk Image VDD format or in the widely supported VMDK format e CD DVD images in standard ISO format e floppy images in standard RAW format Starting with version 1 4 VirtualBox also supports the widely supported VMDK for mat This means that if you have created virtual hard disks with another virtualization product that uses the VMDK format you will not have to recreate these images with VirtualBox but can continue to use them See chapter 5 2 VMDK image files page 53 for details As you can see in the screenshot above for each image the Vir
120. h 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 The VirtualBox Guest Additions page 44 1 2 Features overview Here s a brief outline of VirtualBox s main features e 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 68 for details 1 Introduction Due to its modular architecture VirtualBox can also expose its full function ality and configurability through a comprehensive software development kit SDK Based on the standard technology COM XPCOM on Linux this Ap plication Programming Interface API offers a comfortable way of integrating VirtualBox with other software systems Internally VirtualBox uses its own pub lic API which guarantees that every aspect of the product is accessible to external customers as well and that all interfaces are well tested Easy portability VirtualBox runs on Windows 2000 Windows XP and Windows Serv
121. he Autostart feature disabled in your Windows guest Windows will now autostart the VirtualBox Guest Additions installation program from the Additions ISO If the Autostart feature has been turned off choose setup 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 2 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 46 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions 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 4 2 3 Unattended Installation In order to allow for completely unattended guest installations of Windows 2000 and XP the Guest Additions driver files have been put separately on the Addition
122. he guest system starts using a USB device it will appear as unavailable on the host Note 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 dis connected from the host without a proper shutdown This may cause data loss 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 3 Remote USB page 74 In the Settings dialog you can first configure whether USB is available in the guest at all Ifso 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 41 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 dev
123. he main graphical VirtualBox program as the GUI to differentiate it from the VBoxManage interface GUID See UUID l O APIC See APIC SCSI Internet SCSI see chapter 5 3 iSCSI servers page 53 MAC Media Access Control a part of an Ethernet network card A MAC address NAT is a 6 byte number which identifies a network card It is typically written in hexadecimal notation where the bytes are separated as colons such as 00 17 3A 5E CB 08 N Network Address Translation A technique to share networking interfaces by which an interface modifies the source and or target IP addresses of networking packages 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 Virtual networking page 54 P PIC See APIC PXE Preboot Execution Environment an industry standard for booting PC systems from remote network locations It includes DHCP for IP configuraiton and TFTP for file transfer Using UNDI a hardware independent driver stack for accessing the network card from bootstrap code is available 161 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
124. heir settings including their respective names and UUIDs Some typical examples of how to control VirtualBox from the command line are listed below e To create a new virtual machine from the command line and immediately reg ister it with VirtualBox use VBoxManage createvm with the register op tion like this 1For details see chapter 8 4 VBoxManage createvm page 81 69 7 Alternative front ends remote virtual machines VBoxManage createvm name SUSE 10 2 register VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1 4 0 C 2005 2007 innotek GmbH 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 e To show the configuration of a particular VM use VBoxManage showvminfo see chapter 8 2 VBoxManage showvminfo page 80 for details and an example e 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 81 e To control VM operation use one of the following To start a VM that is currently powered off use VBoxManage startvm see chapter 8 6 VBoxManage startvm page 85 for details To pause or save a VM that is currently running use VBox
125. hic drivers Type in the command sh VBoxAdditions run help for more information 4 3 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 using whatever graphics modes were set up before the installation 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 7 1 General set tings page 37 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 48 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions Section Screen Identifier Default Screen Device VirtualBox graphics card Monitor Generic Monitor DefaultDepth 24 SubSection Display Depth 24 Modes 2048x800 800x600 640x480 EndSubSection EndSection 4 3 3 Updating the Linux Guest Additions The Guest Additions can simply be updated by going through the installation proce dure
126. hines 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 14 2 Installation 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 as follows msiexec i VirtualBox msi ALLUSERS 2 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 Linux hosts 2 2 1 Prerequisites For the various versions of Linux that we support as host operating systems please refer to chapter 1 3 1 Supported host operating systems page 12 In any case the following packages must be i
127. ials used Section 2 reproduces the applicable Open Source licenses For each material a reference to its license is provided 13 1 Materials VirtualBox contains portions of QEMU which is governed by licenses chapter 13 2 1 X Consortium License X11 page 131 and chapter 13 2 2 GNU Lesser General Public License LGPL page 132 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 license chapter 13 2 1 X Consor tium License X11 page 131 and Copyright 2004 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology VirtualBox contains code of the BOCHS VGA BIOS which is governed by license chapter 13 2 2 GNU Lesser General Public License LGPL page 132 and Copyright C 2001 2002 the LGPL VGABios developers Team VirtualBox contains code of the BOCHS ROM BIOS which is governed by license chapter 13 2 2 GNU Lesser General Public License LGPL page 132 and Copyright C 2002 MandrakeSoft S A Copyright C 2004 Fabrice Bellard Copy right C 2005 Struan Bartlett VirtualBox contains the zlib library which is governed by license chapter 13 2 3 zlib license page 140 and Copyright C 1995 2003 Jean loup Gailly and Mark Adler VirtualBox contains Xerces which is governed by license chapter 13 2 4 Apache License page 140 and for which the following attributions apply This product includes
128. ically every time a virtual machine starts or stops This is normally done in order to create the TAP interfaces at VM startup time although you can also use this feature to con figure existing interfaces If you are not using permanent interfaces then the startup command should write the name of the interface which it has created typically some thing like tap0 or tap2 to its standard output the VBoxTunct1 b command does exactly this and the command executed when the machine stops should remove the interface again The commands and scripts used will depend on the networking configuration that you want to set up Both commands are given a file descriptor to the Linux TAP device as their first argument this is only valid if the virtual machine is using previously cre ated interfaces and the name of the interface if it is known as the second argument In most circumstances you will only want to use the second argument Here is an example of a set up script which creates a TAP interface and adds it to the network bridge bro bin bash Create an new TAP interface for the user vbox and remember its name interface VBoxTunctl b u vbox If for some reason the interface could not be created return 1 to tell this to VirtualBox if z Sinterface then exit 1 fi Write the name of the interface to the standard output echo interface Bring up the interface sbin ifconfig interface up And add it to the
129. ication are not covered by this License they are outside its scope The act of running a program using the Library is not restricted and output from Such a program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Library independent of the use of the Library in a tool for writing it Whether that is true depends on what the Library does and what the program that uses the Library does 1 You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Library s complete 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 distribute a copy of this License along with the Library You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy 134 13 3rd party licenses and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee 2 You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion of it thus forming a work based on the Library 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 The modified work must itself be a software library b You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change C You must cause the whole of the work
130. ices 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 76 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 1susb 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 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
131. ificant if the work can be linked without the Library or if the work is itself a library The threshold for this to be true is not precisely defined by law If such an object file uses only numerical parameters data structure layouts and accessors and small macros and small inline functions ten lines or less in length then the use of the object file is unrestricted regardless of whether it is legally a derivative work Executables containing this object code plus portions of the Library will still fall under Section 6 Otherwise if the work is a derivative of the Library you may distribute the object code for the work under the terms of Section 6 Any executables containing that work also fall under Section 6 whether or not they are linked directly with the Library itself 136 13 3rd party licenses 6 As an exception to the Sections above you may also combine or link a work that uses the Library with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library and distribute that work under terms of your choice provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer s own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License You must supply a copy of this License If the work during execution displays copyright notices you must include the
132. index 0 N gt target lt uuid gt lt name gt global name lt string gt action ignore hold global filters only active yes no vendorid XXXX productid XXXX revision lt IIFF gt manufacturer string product string remote yes no null VM filters only serialnumber string VBoxManage usbfilter remove index 0 N target lt uuid gt lt name gt global VBoxManage sharedfolder add lt vmname gt lt uuid gt name name hostpath hostpath transient VBoxManage sharedfolder remove lt vmname gt lt uuid gt name name transient VBoxManage updatesettings lt dir gt lt file gt apply nobackup skipinvalid 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 e vms hdds dvds and floppies all give you information about virtual ma chines and virtual disk images currently registered in VirtualBox including all their settings the unique identifiers UUIDs associated with them by VirtualBox and all files associated with them e ostypes lists all
133. ine even those that cannot yet be accessed from the GUI You will need to use the command line if you want to e use a different user interface than the main GUI for example VBoxSDL or the headless VBoxVRDP server e 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 vms or createvm or startvm All the subcommands that VBoxManage supports are described in detail in chapter 8 VBoxManage reference page 76 Second most of these subcommands require that you specify a particular virtual machine after the subcommand There are two ways you can do this e 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 e 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 t
134. ine us ing VBoxManage createvm with the basefolder option In this case the folder name will never change e 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 e VDI container files are by default created in the VirtualBox VDI directory 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 9 2 Automated Windows guest logons VBoxGINA 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 Win logon which can be customized and extended by means of so called GINA mod ules Graphical Identification and Authentication The VirtualBox Guest Additions for Windows come with such a GINA module and therefore allow Windo
135. innotek VirtualBox User Manual Version 1 4 0 innotek GmbH Werkstrasse 24 71384 Weinstadt Germany http www innotek de 2004 2007 innotek GmbH June 6 2007 Contents 1 Introduction 1 1 Virtualization basies iu soo 9o di ok 3L 1 2 Features OVEIVIEW oo a sono E Rows wOX Oe es og x E RS 1 3 Operating system support 222i Rxte6wR LRL 1 3 1 Supported host operating systems o 1 3 2 Supported guest operating systems 2 Installation 2 1 Installing on Windows hosts clle Zl Prerequisites ul x2 v ege wee WURU UR Ron x S RES 2 1 2 Performing the installation 213 LnstellatiH e ici cres sa c RR 2 1 4 Unattended installation 0 0 2 000000 eae 2 2 Installing on Linux hosts 2 22222 9 x xx RR RU y RR 22 1 Prerequisites 4 2929 or e eR RS S 2 2 4 Support for external kernel modules 2 cocus 2 2 3 Performing the installation 2 2 4 Starting VirtualBox on Linux 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 3 1 Starting the graphical user interface o 3 2 Creating a virtual machine 3 3 Basics of virtual machine configuration 3 4 Running a virtual machine 3 4 1 Keyboard and mouse support in virtual machines 3 4 2 Changing removable media 3 4 3 Saving the state ofthe machine
136. inux guest e 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 gt Global settings gt Input gt Auto capture keyboard 3 4 2 Changing removable media While a virtual machine is running you can change removable media from the De vices menu of the VM s window Here you can select in detail what VirtualBox presents to your VM as a CD DVD or floppy 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 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 3 3 Basics of virtual machine configuration page 27 3 4 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 y
137. ions 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 might not notice that the client is disconnected and stay active 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 3 2 CD DVD changes not recognized In case you have assigned a phyical 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 105 11 Troubleshooting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE System CurrentControlSet Services Cdrom Autorun Certain applications may disable this key against Microsoft s advice If it is set to 0 change it
138. ions introduced a race condition that can cause boot crashes in VirtualBox if you must use a kernel gt 2 6 17 we advise to use 2 6 19 or later 13 2 Installation As installation of VirtualBox varies depending on your host operating system we pro vide installation instructions in two separate chapters for Windows and Linux respec tively 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 3 1 Supported host operating systems page 12 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 Note Presently VirtualBox can only be run from user accounts with adminis trator rights This will be fixed in a future release 2 1 2 Performing the installation The VirtualBox installation can be started e either by double clicking on its Microsoft Installer archive MSI file e or by entering msiexec i VirtualBox msi on the command line 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 mac
139. irectly 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 In order to attach a VM s network card to an internal network set its networking mode to internal networking using VBoxManage modifyvm VM name nic x intnet and specify a network name with the command VBoxManage modifyvm VM name gt intnet x network name If you do not specify a network name the network card will be attached to the network intnet by default You will also have to manu ally assign an IP address to the network adaptors Guests which need to communicate with one another should use IP addresses on the same subnet e g 192 168 2 1 and 192 168 2 2 Please note that you may have to deactivate guest firewalls in order to allow guests to communicate with each other See also chapter 8 5 VBoxManage modifyvm page 81 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 As a security measure the Linux implementation of internal networking only allows VMs running under the same user ID to establi
140. 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 12 14 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 15 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 lt username gt 1 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 124 12 ChangeLog VMM performance improvements Graphics fixed y offset handling in dynamic resolution mode secure labeling suppo
141. iting 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 respect 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 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 infringement 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
142. k configuration from your physical network adapter to the network bridge as mentioned above be cause your physical network adapter will only function as a transport medium in your bridge setup When more than one connection is active on a bridge Windows will au tomatically put your physical Ethernet adapter into promiscuous mode so that it will receive network data for all bridged connections 57 6 Virtual networking 6 5 Host interface networking on Linux hosts Note There were some changes to the way dynamic host interface config uration is done in VirtualBox 1 4 0 due to changes in Linux kernel versions 2 6 18 and later Also this entire section of the manual was rewritten for Virtual 1 4 0 Please reread these sections if you used dynamic interfaces on earlier versions Since the Linux kernel has built in support for virtual network devices so called TAP interfaces VirtualBox on Linux makes use of these instead of providing custom host networking drivers The TAP interfaces behave like physical network interfaces on your host and will work with any networking tools installed on your host system From the point of view of the host it looks like the guest s network card is connected to the TAP interface with a network cable In order to use Host Interface Networking in VirtualBox you must have access to the device dev net tun Check which group this device belongs to and make sure that any users who need access to Virtu
143. 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 4 5 VBoxSVC IPC issues On Linux VirtualBox makes use of a custom version of Mozilla XPCOM cross platform component object model for inter and intra process communication The process VBoxSVC serves as a communication hub between different VirtualBox processes and maintains the global configuration i e the XML database When starting a VirtualBox component the processes VBoxSVC and VirtualBoxXPCOMIPCD are started automati cally They are only accessible from the user account they are running under VBoxSVC owns the VirtualBox configuration database which normally resides in VirtualBox and while it is running the configuration files are locked Communication between the various VirtualBox components and VBoxSVC is performed through a local do main socket residing in tmp vbox lt username gt ipc In case there are communi cation problems i e a VirtualBox application cannot communicate with VBoxSVC termin
144. l 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 Asa 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 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 99 9 Advanced Topics VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk filename path to file vmdk rawdisk dev sda partitions 1 5 relative
145. lBox comes with many advanced interfaces which will be described later in this manual e chapter 8 VBoxManage reference page 76 explains how to use create configure and control virtual machines completely from the command line e chapter 7 3 VBoxSDL the simplified VM displayer page 70 explains how to run a single VM at a time with a reduced graphical interface e chapter 7 4 1 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP server page 72 shows how to run virtual machines remotely The following introductory sections however describe VirtualBox the graphical user interface which is the simplest way to get started 3 1 Starting the graphical user interface After installing VirtualBox as described in chapter 2 Installation page 14 on Win dows you can find the graphical user interface in the Programs menu under the VirtualBox group on Linux you can type VirtualBox on the command line Then a window like the following should come up 22 3 Starting out with VirtualBox File VM Help y y Lp Pa amp Details 3 Snapshots New Settings Delete Start Discard E General Name Ubuntu 6 10 OS Type Linux 2 6 j Base Memory 512 MB Video Memory 8 MB Windows Vista Boot Order Floppy CD DVD ROM Hard E Saved Disk ACPI Enabled Windows XP 10 APIC Disabled Powered Off Hard Disks IDE 0 Master Ubuntu 6 10 Normal Floppy Not mounted CD DVD ROM Not mounted Audio Disabled Network Adapter Slo
146. lectronic transfer of data 1 5 Executable means Covered Code in any form other than Source Codes 1 6 Initial Developer means the individual or entity identified as the Initial Developer 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 structure 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 described in the Source Code notice required by Exhibit A as Original Code and which at the time of its release under this 145 13 3rd party licenses License is not already Covered Code governed by this License 1 10 1 Patent Claims means any patent claim s now owned or hereafter acquired including without limitation method process and ap
147. lename gt host lt drive gt This specifies what VirtualBox should provide to the VM as the virtual CD DVD drive specify either the UUID or the filename of an image file that you have registered with VBoxManage registerimage see chapter 8 10 VBoxManage registerimage unregisterimage page 87 Alternatively specify host with the drive specifi cation of your host s drive e dvdpassthrough on off With this you can enable DVD writing support currently experimental see chapter 3 7 3 CD DVD ROM and floppy settings page 39 e floppy disabled empty uuid filename host drive This is the floppy equivalent to the dvd option described above disabled com pletely disables the floppy controller whereas empt y keeps the floppy controller enabled but without a media inserted e nic 1 N none null nat hostif intnet With this you can set for each of the VM s virtual network cards what type of networking should be avail able They can be not present none not connected to the host null use network address translation nat a host interface hostif or communicate with other virtual machines using internal networking intnet These options corre spond to the modes which are described in detail in chapter 6 Virtual network ing page 54 e nictype 1 N Am79C970A Am79C973 This allows you for each of the VM s virtual network cards to specify whether the host will see the network adaptors as 10 Mbps
148. lled vbox followed by a number and add it to the network bridge created above use the following command sudo VBoxAddIF vbox0 vboxuser br0 Replace vboxuser with the name of the user who is supposed to be able to use the new interface To tell VirtualBox to use this interface vbox0 for a virtual machine select the VM in the main window configure one of its network adaptors to use Host Interface Networking using Settings Network Attached to and enter vbox0 into the Interface name field Alternatively you can use the VBoxManage command line tool in this example we are attaching the interface to the first network card of the virtual machine My VM VBoxManage modifyvm My VM hostifdevl vbox0 6 5 1 4 Bridging with other distributions Most modern Linux distributions provide their own way of setting up ethernet bridges We recommend that you follow the instructions provided by your distribution to create the bridge and the instructions in chapter 6 5 1 5 The VBoxAddIF and VBoxDeleteIF utilities page 64 to create the host interface if your distribution does not provide its own method For distributions which do not provide their own method of creating bridges we provide generic instructions below Please ensure that you thoroughly understand how your distribution s networking scripts work before following these instructions as they involve making changes to your host network configuration in ways
149. ly delivers VRDP data This headless server is called VBoxVRDP To start a virtual machine with VBoxVRDP you have two options e You can use VBoxManage startvm vmname type vrdp The extra type option causes the VirtualBox core to use VBoxVRDP as the front end to the internal virtualization engine e The recommended way however is to use VBoxVRDP directly as follows VBoxVRDP startvm lt uuid name gt This is the recommended way because when starting the headless interface through vBoxManage you will not be able to view or log messages that VBoxVRDP may have output on the console Especially in case of startup er rors such output might be desirable for problem diagnosis 7 4 2 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 Linux or Windows 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 72 3 4 7 Alternative front ends remote virtual machines a
150. mbers 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 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 111 12 ChangeLog 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
151. mitation of Linux In order to reset the modifier keys it is possible to send SIGUSR1 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 usrl pid VBoxManage controlvm Windows 2000 savestate 9 7 Using serial ports Starting with version 1 4 VirtualBox can provide several serial ports to the guest Up to 4 serial ports can be configured The guest sees a standard 16450 type serial port Both receiving and transmitting data is supported On a Windows host the data is sent and received through a named pipe on a Linux host a local domain socket is used instead You can configure whether VirtualBox acts as a server or as a client of such a named pipe or local domain socket Currently you can attach only a single host application to the named pipe or lo cal domain socket associated with a particular serial port The current configuration method is through the generic configuration facility of VBoxManage In the future this may be replaced with a more convenient mechanism To configure a serial port use 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 Devic
152. n 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 registered 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 District 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 regulation 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
153. n most cases you will want to create a bridge for one of your physical network interfaces e g eth0 This will allow for sharing the same physical interface between the real host and the virtual host interfaces that you will create for your virtual machines The bridging step is not strictly required you can create a host interface and make a virtual machine use it without having created a bridge and without 58 6 Virtual networking having added the host interface to the bridge first This may be useful for testing scenarios or if you have more complex networking setups where you would prefer routing to briding However in most cases you will want to allow a virtual machine to share your physical networking interface for which bridging is the most practical way which is why we describe bridging in the following sections Also keep in mind that briding is an Ethernet concept and therefore unrelated to TCP IP In physical networks bridging is typically used to reduce collisions between many Ethernet hosts A bridge thus connects two previously unrelated subnetworks For each guest network card that uses host interface networking you must create a new virtual host interface called tap0 or vbox0 or something similar and add this interface to the bridge Finally specify the new host interface in the settings for the virtual network card of a virtual machine Unfortunately Linux distributions differ subst
154. nd 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 Contributor 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
155. ndows 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 7 VBoxManage con trolvm page 85 for details Start the virtual machine using VBoxVRDP VBoxVRDP 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 On the client machine fire up the RDP viewer and try to connect to the server Assuming a Linux client try the following 73 7 Alternative front ends remote virtual machines rdesktop a 16 my host address With rdesktop the a 16 option requests a color depth of 16 bits per pixel which we recommend Also after installation you should set the color depth of your guest operating system to the same value You should now be seeing the installation routine of your guest operating system 7 4 3 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
156. nel 2 for the master device on the second channel or 3 for the master device on the second channel 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 O 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 flush requests If desired the virtual disk images VDD can be flushed when the guest issues the IDE FLUSH CACHE command Normally these requests are ignored for improved perfor mance To enable flushing issue the following command VBoxManage setextradata lt vmname gt V
157. nform 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 lt filename gt 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 7 Virtual machine settings page 36 Some of the more advanced settings however are only available through the VBoxManage interface The following settings are available through VBoxManage modifyvm 81 8 VBoxManage reference name name This changes the VM s name and possibly renames the internal virtual machine files as described with VBoxManage createvm above ostype lt ostype gt This specifies what guest operating system is suppo
158. nge 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 contributions 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 consequence of the rest of this License 12 If the distribution and or use of the Library is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces the original copyright holder who places the Library under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation 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 13 The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and or new versions of the Lesser 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 Library
159. ngs In the VM Settings window the settings in these two categories determine what VirtualBox provides as a floppy disk and as a CD DVD ROM drive to your VM s guest operating system For both the floppy and CD DVD ROM categories the following options are available e Not mounted The virtual device is presented as empty that is no floppy or no CD DVD ROM is present 39 3 Starting out with VirtualBox e Host drive 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 from the drop down list the drive letter or on the Linux host the device of your host drive Image file Quite similar to virtual hard disks this presents a file on your host as a device to the guest operating system To use an image file you must first import it into the Virtual Disk Manager see chapter 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 The image file format varies depending on the type of device For floppies the file must be in raw format For CD and DVD ROMs the file must be in 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 All these settings can be changed while the guest is
160. nment variable 107 11 Troubleshooting 11 4 4 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 scdO 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
161. not supported In detail with VMDK images e you presently cannot create snapshots e only write through images are supported immutable and normal hard disk are not These restrictions will be overcome in a future release Creating VMDKs giving raw disk or raw partition access is already implemented see chapter 9 8 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest page 97 5 3 SCSI servers iSCSI stands for Internet SCSI and is a standard that allows for using the SCSI protocol 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 is unique on the virtualization market in that it 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
162. nstalled on your Linux system e Qt 3 3 5 or higher e SDL 1 2 7 or higher this graphics library is typically called 1ibsd1 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 15 2 Installation 2 2 2 Support for external kernel modules 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 To be able to install this kernel module you will have to prepare your system for building external kernel modules As this process can vary from system to system we will only describe what to do for systems we have tested e 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 The version numbers of the header file packages must be the same as that of the kernel you are using In newer Debian and Ubuntu relea
163. nt bridging setups from working correctly 6 4 Host interface networking on Windows hosts When you install VirtualBox on the Windows host the setup program installs a special networking driver on your system This driver the VirtualBox Host Interface NDIS driver can be used to create additional host interfaces These must be created explic itly before they can be attached to a virtual machine Use the VBoxManage tool to create new host interfaces on your Windows system VBoxManage createhostif VM1 external Alternatively you can use the network configuration in the VirtualBox GUI to create and delete host interfaces Each new host interface thus created appears as an additional network card in your standard Network Connections properties After you have created your new host interface this way you can select Host Interface as the networking mode in a virtual machine s Settings window and select the new interface in the Interface name drop down list With the above example this drop down list would contain VM1 external If your host is running Windows XP or newer you can also use the built in bridging feature to connect your host interfaces to your physical network card After creating the desired host interfaces select your physical network adapter in the Network Con nections folder and the desired host interface adapters and select Bridge connections from the popup menu Note that you have to transfer your networ
164. ntity including a cross claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed Redistribution You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium with or without modifications and in Source or Object form provided that You meet the following conditions a You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License and b You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files and c You must retain in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute all copyright patent trademark and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works and d If the Work includes a NOTICE text file as part of its distribution then any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works in at least one of the following places within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the Derivative Works within the Source form or documentation if provide
165. o 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 The VirtualBox Guest Additions page 44 3 4 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 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 e 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 with Linux the key combination Ctrl Alt Backs
166. o 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 General Public License This license the GNU Lesser General Public License applies to certain designated libraries and is quite different from the ordinary General Public License 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 man
167. ocal 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 VBoxVRDP require the VirtualBox directory to be in the library path 20 2 Installation LD_LIBRARY_PATH VBoxManage showvminfo Windows XP 21 3 Starting out with VirtualBox As already mentioned in chapter 1 1 Virtualization basics page 7 VirtualBox allows you to run each of your guest operating systems on its own virtual computer system The guest system will run in its virtual machine VM as if it were installed on a real computer according to the parameters of the virtual system you have created for it All software running on the guest system does so as it would on a real machine 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 Virtua
168. 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 the library after making changes to the library and recompiling it And you must show them these terms so they know their rights 132 13 3rd party licenses 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 t
169. oft 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 With VirtualBox the graphical user interface the VRDP server is disabled by default but can easily be enabled on a per VM basis either with the VirtualBox GUI or with VBoxManage VBoxManage modifyvm vmname vrdp on 71 7 Alternative front ends remote virtual machines If you use VBoxVRDP described below VRDP support will be automatically en abled Additional settings for modi fyvm are vrdpport and vrdpauthtype see chap ter 8 5 VBoxManage modifyvm page 81 for details 7 4 1 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP 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 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 that produces no visible out put on the host at all but instead on
170. or 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 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 3 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 115 12 ChangeLog Network fixed incompatibility between Vista UAC and Host Interface Network ing Network fixed issues with Windows NT 4 0 guests
171. ote CD DVD Drive is always connected as the Secondary IDE1 Master device Select a settings category from the list on the left side and move the mouse over a settings item to get more information Help OK Cancel e 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 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 3 4 Running a virtual machine The Start button in the main window starts the virtual machine that is currently selected
172. ou whether you want to save or power off the VM 32 3 Starting out with VirtualBox Close Virtual Machine f 1 You want to Power off the machine Revert to the current shapshot Cancel The difference between these two options is crucial They mean e 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 similar to suspending a laptop com puter e g by closing its lid e Power off the machine With this option VirtualBox also stops running the virtual machine but without saving its state This is equivalent of 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 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
173. 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 Desktop Support VRDP page 71 for details S SCSI Small Computer System Interface An industry standard for data transfer be tween devices especially for storage See chapter 5 3 iSCSI servers page 53 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 used as a global handle to identify 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 1 Virtualization basics page 7 for details VRDP See RDP X 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 prehen
174. p a new interface on the host Warning Please be aware that setting up host interface networking always involves making changes to your host s network configuration which can cause the host to lose its network connection Do not change network set tings on remote or production systems unless you know what you are doing 56 6 Virtual networking As there are few limits on the number of setups which can be created using host networking we will only describe Ethernet bridging for the different host operating system that VirtualBox supports For more advanced networking needs we recom mend that you consult general documentation about networking on your host operat ing system Ethernet bridging is a way of connecting several network devices together in soft ware effectively splitting a network card into several With VirtualBox you will then use the same networking card for your host operating system and your virtual machines Other computers on your network will then see your guests as though they had their own physical network cards You will need Ethernet hardware for this as most current wireless network devices do not support bridging In some network environments often company networks measures are taken to prevent several MAC addresses being used on a single network interface by temporar ily blocking communication to that interface This is intended to prevent certain types of network attacks but will also preve
175. pace normally resets the X server to restart the entire graphical user interface in case it got stuck As the X server intercepts this combination pressing it will usually restart your host graphical userface and kill all running programs including VirtualBox in the process Third also with Linux the key combination Ctrl Alt Fx where Fx is one of the function keys from F1 to F12 normally allows to switch between virtual 31 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 VM menu of the virtual machine window There you will find Insert Ctrl Alt Delete and Ctrl Alt Backspace the latter will only have an effect with Linux 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 x Host key Del to send Ctrl Alt Del to reboot the guest x Host key Backspace to send Ctrl Alt Backspace to restart the graphical user interface of a Linux 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 L
176. paratus 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
177. 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 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 combination of the Original Code with other software or devices 2 2 Contributor Grant Subject to third party intellectual property claims each Contributor 146 13 3rd party licenses 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 unmodified basis with other Modifications as Covered Code and or as part of a Larger Work a
178. path 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 boot 1 4 none floppyldvd 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 hd a b d none lt uuid gt lt filename gt This specifies the settings for each of the three virtual hard disks that can be attached to a VM primary mas ter and slave and secondary slave the secondary master is always reserved for 82 8 VBoxManage reference the virtual CD DVD drive For each of these three specify either the UUID or a filename of a virtual disk that you have either registered with VBoxManage registerimage see chapter 8 10 VBoxManage registerimage unregisterimage page 87 or created using VBoxManage createvdi with the register option see chapter 8 12 VBoxManage createvdi page 87 alternatively specify the UUID of an iSCSI target that you have registered with VBoxManage addiscsidisk see chapter 8 15 VBoxManage ad discsidisk page 88 e dvd none lt uuid gt lt fi
179. r 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 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 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 Versions of the License 149 13 3rd party licenses 6 1 New Versions Netscape Communications Corporation Netscape 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
180. r as a result of warranty support indemnity or liability terms You offer 3 6 Distribution of Executable Versions You may distribute Covered Code in Executable form only if the requirements of Section 3 1 3 5 have been met for that Covered 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 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 offe
181. r 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 70 4 Finally VBoxVRDP 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 1 VBoxVRDP the headless VRDP server page 72 If the above front ends still do not satisfy your particular needs it is relatively pain less 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 COM XPCOM API 68 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 eng
182. r 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 157 13 3rd party licenses 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
183. r set used for the shared folder name utf8 by default 50 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 below 2 Alternatively if you have iSCSI storage servers you can attach such a server to VirtualBox as well this is described in chapter 5 3 iSCSI servers page 53 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 8 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest page 97 5 1 Virtual Disk Image VDI files By default VirtualBox uses its own container format for guest hard disks Virtual Disk Image VDD files The VDI files reside on the host system and are seen by the guest systems as hard disks of a certain geometry When creating an image its size has to be specified which determines this fixed geometry It is therefore not possible to change the size of the virtual hard disk later As briefly mentioned in chapter 3 2 Creating a virtual machine page 23 there are two options of how to create the image fixed size or dynamically expanding e If you
184. resentations Contributor represents that except as disclosed pursuant to Section 3 4 a above Contributor believes that Contributor s Modifications are Contributor 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 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 148 4 55 6 13 3rd party licenses 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 Contributo
185. rget 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 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 20 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 4 Folder sharing page 49 8 21 VBoxManage
186. rt 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 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 16 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 125 12 ChangeLog 12 17 Version 1 0 44 2005 10 25 Note Guest Additions have to be updated Installer greatly improved Windows in
187. running Since the Settings di alog is not available at that time you can also access these settings from the Devices menu of your virtual machine window Note The identification string of the drive provided to the guest which is displayed by some configuration tools such as the Windows Device Manager is always VBOX CD ROM irrespective of the current configuration of the virtual drive This is to prevent hardware detection from being triggered in the guest operating system every time the configuration is changed Using the host drive normally provides a read only drive to the guest As an ex perimental feature which currently works for data only audio is not supported it is possible to give the guest access to the CD DVD writing features of the host drive if available VBoxManage modifyvm vmname dvdpassthrough on See also chapter 8 5 VBoxManage modifyvm page 81 3 7 4 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 VirtualBox simulates an Intel AC 97 controller for the virtual machine In that case you can select what audio driver VirtualBox will use on the host On Linux hosts you can select between the OSS or the ALSA subsystem 40 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 3 7 5 Network settings The Net
188. ry This specifies which library to use when external VRDP authenti cation has been selected for a particular virtual machine see chapter 7 4 4 RDP authentication page 74 for details hwvirtexenabled This selects whether or not hardware virtualization support is en abled by default Note This feature may still be experimental at the time you read this 89 8 VBoxManage reference 8 19 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 thelist The ta
189. ry size 128MB VRAM size 8MB Boot menu mode message and menu ACPI on IOAPIC off Hardw virt ext off State powered off Floppy empty DVD empty NIC 1 disabled NIC 23 disabled NIG 3 disabled NIC 4 disabled Audio disabled Driver Unknown VRDP disabled USB disabled USB Device Filters none Shared folders none 80 8 VBoxManage reference 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 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 co
190. s 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 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 2 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 114 12 ChangeLog RDP fixed col
191. s ISO file Just like with other third party drivers the files have to be copied to the OEM directory of Windows Using the PCI hardware detection they will then be recognized and installed automatically 4 2 4 Windows Vista networking Windows Vista no longer ships a driver for the AMD PCnet Ethernet card which is what VirtualBox provides to the guest As a result after installation Vista guests initially have no networking With Windows Vista guests you will have to install a driver for this card manually For this reason VirtualBox ships with such a driver which for simplicity we have added to the Guest Additions ISO To install this driver mount the Guest Additions ISO as described above select Install guest additions from the Devices menu Then start the Windows Hardware Wizard and direct it to the Guest Additions CD where a driver for the PCnet card can be found in the directory AMD PCnet 4 3 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 e Fedora Core 4 and 5 e Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4 e SUSE Linux 9 and 10 e Ubuntu 5 10 and 6 06 Other distributions may work if they are based on comparable software releases If you require such support please contact innotek As with Win
192. s 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 expressly 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 o
193. same warnings apply 3 4 4 Snapshots With VirtualBox s 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 This is particularly useful for making sure that a guest installation is not damaged by accidental changes misbehaving software or viruses 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 33 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 1 If your VM is currently in either the saved or the powered off state as dis played next to the VM in the VirtualBox main window click on the Snapshots tab on the top right of the main window and then on the small camera icon for Take snapshot If your VM is currently running select Take snapshot from the VM pull down menu of the VM window 2 A window will pop up and ask you to name the snapshot 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 3 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
194. se the new interface 6 5 1 5 The VBoxAddlF and VBoxDeletelF utilities The VBoxAddIF and VBoxDeleteTF utilities used in the above instructions except for Debian and Ubuntu where we recommend to use the networking configuration that is native to those distributions are shipped with VirtualBox to make the creation of TAP interfaces easier VBoxAddIF creates a permanent TAP interface which does not go away when the host system is restarted and if a bridge parameter is specified adds the new inter face to the given bridge This command replaces the tunct1 sequences that were described in earlier versions of this manual To remove an interface which you have created with VBoxCreateIF previously vbox0 in the above examples you can use the following command sudo VBoxDeleteIF vbox0 As an alternative to VBoxAddIF and VBoxDeleteIF you can still use tunct1 if you want We now supply our own version of this command called VBoxTunct 1 To create a new interface use VBoxTunctl t tapl u vboxuser with vboxuser being the user name who will be using the interface You can then add this new interface to a bridge using brctl addif br0 tapi Don t forget to bring up the new interface with ifconfig tapl up 64 6 Virtual networking 6 5 2 Creating interfaces dynamically on VM startup As an alternative to the permanent interfaces described previously you can tell VirtualBox to execute commands usually scripts to set up your network dynam
195. sed to run in the VM As mentioned at chapter 3 2 Creating a virtual machine page 23 this setting is presently purely descriptive To learn about the various identifiers that can be used here use VBoxManage list ostypes memory lt memorysize gt This sets the amount of RAM in MB that the vir tual machine should allocate for itself from the host Again see the remarks in chapter 3 2 Creating a virtual machine page 23 for more information vram lt vramsize gt This sets the amount of RAM that the virtual graphics card should have See chapter 3 7 1 General settings page 37 for details acpi on off ioapic on off These two determine whether the VM should have ACPI and I O APIC support respectively again see chapter 3 7 1 General settings page 37 for details hwvirtex on off default This enables or disables the use of virtualiza tion extensions in the processor of your host system This feature may still be experimental at the time you read this and may not be enabled in your build of VirtualBox You can influence the BIOS logo that is displayed when a virtual machine starts up with a number of settings Per default an innotek 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 image
196. ses you must install the right version of the linux headers and if it exists the 1inux kbuild package Current Ubuntu releases should have the right packages installed by default In 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 e Alternatively if you built your own kernel usr src linux will point to your kernel sources and you have not removed the files created during the build process then your system will already be correctly set up 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 3 Introduction to host interface networking page 56 2 2 3 Performing the installation VirtualBox is available as a Debian package in fact there are packages for Ubuntu 6 10 Edgy Ubuntu 6 06 Dapper and Debian 4 0 Etch or as an alternative in staller run which should work on most Linux distributions 2 2 3 1 Installing VirtualBox from a Debian Ubuntu package First download the appropriate package for your distribution The following exampl
197. sh an internal network If you require more information on how to lift this restriction please contact innotek 67 7 Alternative front ends remote virtual machines 7 1 Introduction As briefly mentioned in chapter 1 2 Features overview page 9 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 Starting out with VirtualBox page 22 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 fo
198. side by setting empty values For Windows XP guests the logon subsystem has to be configured to use the classical logon dialog as the VirtualBox GINA does not support the XP style welcome dialog 9 3 Custom external VRDP authentication As described in chapter 7 4 4 RDP authentication page 74 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 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 Result of the guest authentication szUser User name passed in by the client UTF8 szPassword P
199. sidisk createhostif removehostif getextradata setextradata setproperty usbfilter 8 VBoxManage reference lt uuid gt lt filename gt filename filename size megabytes static comment lt comment gt register type normal writethrough default normal lt uuid gt lt filename gt compact lt uuid gt lt filename gt lt outputfile gt lt filename gt lt outputfile gt stdin lt outputfile gt lt bytes gt server lt name gt lt ip gt target target port lt port gt lun lt lun gt encodedlun lt lun gt username lt username gt password lt password gt comment lt comment gt lt name gt lt uuid gt lt name gt global lt uuid gt lt name gt lt key gt enumerate global lt uuid gt lt name gt lt key gt lt value gt no value deletes key vdifolder default lt folder gt machinefolder default lt folder gt vrdpauthlibrary default lt library gt hwvirtexenabled yes no add lt index 0 N gt target lt uuid gt lt name gt global name lt string gt action ignore hold global filters only active yes no yes vendorid XXXX null productid lt XXXX gt null revision lt IIFF gt null manufacturer lt string gt null product lt string gt null remote yes no null VM filters only serialnumber string null 78 8 VBoxManage reference VBoxManage usbfilter modify lt
200. sive API to third party developers 162
201. software developed by The Apache Software Foun dation http www apache org Portions of this software were originally based on the following software copyright c 1999 IBM Corporation http www ibm com 130 13 3rd party licenses VirtualBox contains Xalan which is governed by license chapter 13 2 4 Apache License page 140 and for which the following attributions apply This product includes software developed by The Apache Software Foun dation http www apache org Portions of this software were originally based on the following software copyright c 1999 IBM Corporation http www ibm com VirtualBox may contain OpenSSL which is governed by license chapter 13 2 5 OpenSSL license page 144 and Copyright C 1995 1998 Eric Young eay cryptsoft com This product in cludes software written by Tim Hudson tjh cryptsoft com VirtualBox may contain NSPR and XPCOM which is governed by license chapter 13 2 6 Mozilla Public License MPL page 145 and Copyright C The Authors VirtualBox contains Slirp which is governed by license chapter 13 2 7 Slirp li cense page 153 and was written by Danny Gasparovski Copyright c 1995 1996 All Rights Reserved VirtualBox contains liblzf which is governed by license chapter 13 2 8 liblzf li cense page 153 and Copyright c 2000 2005 Marc Alexander Lehmann lt schmorp schmorp de gt VirtualBox contains Etherboot which is governed by license chapter
202. staller 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 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 18 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 lt username gt N 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 th
203. stems 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 1 3 2 Supported guest operating systems page 12 for further infor mation 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 Remote Desktop Protocol RDP Sometimes we also use the term virtual machine in a more abstract way In ternally VirtualBox thinks of a VM as a set of parameters that determine its operation These settings are mirrored in the VirtualBox graphical user interface as well as the VBoxManage command line program see chapter 8 VBoxMan age reference page 76 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 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 wit
204. t 0 USB Controller Disabled On the left you can see a pane that lists all the virtual machines you have created so far three in the example above A row of buttons above it allows you to create new VMs and work on existing VMs The pane on the right displays the properties of the virtual machine currently selected if any When you start VirtualBox for the first time as there is no virtual machine yet everything will be empty 3 2 Creating a virtual machine Clicking on the New button in the user interface will guide you through setting up a new virtual machine VM A wizard will show up 23 3 Starting out with VirtualBox This wizard will guide you through the steps that are necessary to create a new virtual machine for VirtualBox Use the Next button to go the next page of the wizard and the Back button to return to the previous page Cancel 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 Aname 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
205. t 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 W WPhysicalDrive0 Partition numbers are the same on Linux and Windows 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 virtua
206. t it to O 11 2 3 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 104 11 Troubleshooting 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 lt vmname gt VBoxInternal PDM HaltOnReset 1 11 2 4 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 2 4 Windows Vista networking page 47 11 3 Windows hosts 11 3 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 opt
207. t not always you will want to 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 a ssh server on the guest requires the following three commands VBoxManage setextradata Linux Guest VBoxInternal Devices pcnet 0 LUN 0 Config guestssh Protocol TCP 55 6 Virtual networking 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 name guestssh is an arbitrary one chosen for this particular forwarding config uration 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 Two limitations of NAT networking are that finding Windows shares by browsing is not possible in the default configuration although they can still be accessed if you know the name or the IP address of the machine that is sharing them and that the ping utility will not get
208. t 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 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 155 13 3rd party licenses 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
209. table form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you 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 If distribution of 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 satisfies the requirement to distribute the source code even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code 5 A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library but is designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it is called a work that uses the Library Such a work in isolation is not a derivative work of the Library and therefore falls outside the scope of this License However linking a work that uses the Library with the Library creates an executable that is a derivative of the Library because it contains portions of the Library rather than a work that uses the library The executable is therefore covered by this License Section 6 states terms for distribution of such executables When a work that uses the Library uses material from a header file that is part of the Library the object code for the work may be a derivative work of the Library even though the source code is not Whether this is true is especially sign
210. te Guest Additions have to be updated General added support for multi generation snapshots VMM fixed Linux guest reboot regression 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 122 12 ChangeLog 12 13 Version 1 1 2 2006 02 03 Note Guest Additions have to be updated The installation method has changed e BIOS fixed CMOS checksum calculation to avoid guest warnings BIOS improved APM support to
211. the 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 To revert to an earlier snapshot you click on the Current state item and select Discard current state This will bring the VM back to the state of the nearest most recent snapshot In the same way you can merge several earlier snapshots into one Note The snapshot reverted to will affect the virtual hard drives that are connected 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 snapshot 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 snapshots they remain unaltered when a machine is reverted See chapter 5 Virtual storage page 51 for details 3 5 The Virtual Disk 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 Disk Manager which you can access from the File menu in the VirtualBox main window 34 3 Startin
212. the interface to the first network card of the virtual machine My VM VBoxManage modifyvm My VM hostifdevl vbox0 6 5 1 3 Bridging on Redhat and Fedora hosts On Redhat and Fedora hosts we recommend to use the VBoxAddIF utility shipped with VirtualBox see chapter 6 5 1 5 The VBoxAddIF and VBoxDeleteIF utilities page 64 to create a TAP interface and add it to a bridge As with openSUSE this leaves open the question how to create bridge on Redhat and Fedora For this you must first install the bridge utilities bridge utils package Then you must create a configuration file describing the bridge you wish to create The following is the contents of an example configuration file etc sysconfig network scripts ifcfg br0 which sets the bridge brO to get its IP address using DHCP and to start automatically when the system is started You will probably want to adjust this to match your networking requirements DEVICE br0 TYPE Bridge BOOTPROTO dhcp ONBOOT yes To add the network card eth0 to the bridge add the following line to the end of the file etc sysconfig network scripts ifcfg etho BRIDGE br0 62 6 Virtual networking You can activate the bridge immediately after creating it with the command sudo sbin service network restart The bridge will be activated automatically from now on when the host is restarted Now to create a permanent host interface called vbox0 all host interfaces created in this way must be ca
213. the list on the left and select Show logs from the Machine window 11 1 2 Guest shows IDE errors for VDI 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 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 a VDI 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 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 VDI 102 11 Troubleshooting 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 using the following command VBoxManage setextradata lt vmname gt VBoxInternal Devices piix3ide 0 LUN x Config FlushInterval b The value x that selects the disk is O for the master device on the first channel 1 for the slave device on the first chan
214. the setup process As VirtualBox can provide ISO files as virtual CD ROM drives to the Windows guests Windows can automatically install these additions 45 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions 4 2 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 where you have installed a Windows guest operating system 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 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 3 In the Virtual Disk Manager press the Add button and browse your host file system for the VBoxGuestAdditions iso file e On a Windows host you can find this file in the VirtualBox installation directory usually under C Program fileslinnotek VirtualBox e OnaLinux host you can find this file in the additions folder under where you installed VirtualBox normally opt VirtualBox 1 4 0 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 2 1 2 Running the installer Unless you have t
215. the the VBoxMan age command line interface see chapter 8 VBoxManage reference page 76 The command is as follows VBoxManage sharedfolder add VM name name sharename hostpath C test There are two types of shares 49 4 The VirtualBox Guest Additions 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 Then you can mount the shared folder from inside a VM the same way as you would mount an ordinary network share e In a Windows guest use the following command net use x vboxsvr sharename While vboxsvr is a fixed name replace x with the drive letter that you want to use for the share and sharename with the share name specified with VBoxManage e Ina Linux guest use the following command mount t vboxsf o OPTIONS sharename mountpoint Replace sharename with the share name specified with VBoxManage and mountpoint with the path where you want the share to be mounted e g mnt share The usual mount rules apply that is create this directory first if it does not exist yet 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 characte
216. therefore initially be small on the host hard drive and only later grow to the size specified as it is filled with data 26 3 Starting out with VirtualBox e 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 1 Virtual Disk Image VDD files page 51 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 Press the Select button to select the location and name of the file to store the virtual hard disk image or type a file name in the entry field Image File Name WinXP boot disk Select the size of the virtual hard disk image in megabytes This size will be reported to the Guest OS as the size of the virtual hard disk Image Size i 10 85 Ge SER 4 00 MB 2 00 TB Next gt Cancel 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 Yo
217. 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 collectiv
218. ting 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 or none of these With VBoxManage modifyvm boot 1 4 you can also configure a VM to boot from the network see chapter 8 5 VBoxManage modifyvm page 81 Enable ACPI VirtualBox can present the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface ACPI to the guest operating system for configuring the virtual hardware In addition via ACPI VirtualBox can present the host s power status information to the guest 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 Note that 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 Turning it on after installation will have no effect however 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 However software
219. to 1 and reboot your system VirtualBox relies on Windows notifying it of media changes 11 3 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 3 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 g
220. to the snapshot its state will be fully reset 2 By contrast immutable images are read only and can be used from multiple virtual machines simultaneously Write accesses to immutable hard disks will be directed to a special differencing disk image which VirtualBox creates automat ically However when you shut down the VM to which the immutable disk is attached the changes in the differencing disk will be completely discarded Of course creating a virtual disk image as immutable makes no sense because then the hard disk would always be reset to an empty state when the VM is shut down to which it is attached Hence you will ordinarily create a normal virtual disk image and then when its contents are deemed useful then mark it immutable To mark a disk image as immutable use the VBoxManage modifyvdi com mand see chapter 8 13 VBoxManage modifyvdi page 87 3 Finally write through hard disks are like normal hard disks in that they fully support read and write operations also However their state is not saved when a snapshot is taken and not restored when a VM s state is reverted To create a disk image as write through use the VBoxManage createvdi command see chapter 8 12 VBoxManage createvdi page 87 To mark an exist ing image as write through use VBoxManage modi fyvdi see chapter 8 13 VBoxManage modifyvdi page 87 To illustrate the differences between the various types with respect to snapshots Yo
221. 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 7 6 2 Implementation notes On Windows hosts two kernel mode device drivers provide USB proxy support A USB filter driver allows VirtualBox to capture devices when they are plugged in In stalling uninstalling and updating this filter requires a system restart A second USB 42 3 Starting out with VirtualBox device driver then claims USB devices and makes them available to a virtual machine After defining a USB device filter for a VM the device needs to be replugged once for VirtualBox to claim it Also you might have to confirm a driver signing warning when starting a VM with assigned USB devices On Linux hosts VirtualBox accesses USB devices on Linux through the usb s file system Therefore 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 adde
222. tool provides a fixed server mode named pipe at pipe vmwaredebug and connects incoming TCP connections on port 567 with the named pipe 9 8 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 51 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 much more quickly than with disk images since data does not have to pass through two file systems the one in the guest and the one on the host 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 see chapter 5 2 VMDK image files page 53 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 example you
223. tual Disk 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 Also as can be seen in the screen shot if you have created snapshots for a virtual machine additional differencing hard disk images may automatically be created see chapter 3 4 4 Snapshots page 33 for details The Virtual Disk Manager allows you to 35 3 Starting out with VirtualBox create new hard disk images using the New button this will bring up the Create Disk Image wizard already described in chapter 3 2 Creating a virtual machine page 23 e import existing VDI or VMDK files from your hard drive into VirtualBox using the Add button e 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
224. u have installed your guest operating system in your VM and you have 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 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 VDI to a VM you may want to have one immutable for the operating system and one write through for your data files 52 5 Virtual storage 5 2 VMDK image files Starting with version 1 4 VirtualBox also supports the popular and open VMDK con tainer format that is now supported by a large number of virtualization products This means you can import your existing VMDK files by way of the Virtual Disk Manager just like existing VDI images see chapter 3 5 The Virtual Disk Manager page 34 While VirtualBox fully supports using VMDK files in most situations the more advanced features of virtual hard disks are presently
225. u will then see it in the list on the left side of the main window with the name you have entered 3 3 Basics of 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 27 3 Starting out with VirtualBox 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 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
226. ualBox 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 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 machine or to other computers on the same network However VirtualBox can make given services available outside of the guest by using port forwarding This means that VirtualBox listens to certain ports on the host and resends all packages 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 to 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 bu
227. ually 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 abovementioned 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 RBG color values The following syntax is used to enable secure labeling VBoxSDL securelabel seclabelfnt fonts arial ttf seclabelsiz 14 Windows XP seclabelfbcol 00FF00 seclabelbgcol OOFFFF In addition to enabling secure labeling a TrueType font has to be supplied 94 9 Advanced Topics Typically full screen resolutions are limited to certain standard geometries such as 1024 x 768 Adding the secure label with a height of 20 pixels would therefore require the resolution to be 1024 x 788 which is either not possible for results in suboptimal display quality In most cases VBoxSDL would chose the next higher resolution e g 1280 x 1024 and the guest s screen would not cover the whole display surface If V
228. uest 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 106 11 Troubleshooting 11 4 Linux hosts 11 4 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 e 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 e The kernel disagrees about th
229. 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 13 2 7 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 produ
230. updatesettings The updatesettings command updates all VirtualBox configuration files from an earlier to the current version You will need this when you upgrade your version of VirtualBox but should not need it apart from that 90 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 e On Linux this is SHOME VirtualBox e On Windows this is SHOMEDRIVES HOMEPATH N VirtualBox typically something like C Documents and Settings Username 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 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 request that these files not be edited manually VirtualBox provides complete access to its configuration data through its Application Programming Interface API and the VBoxManage command line tool see chapter 8 VBoxManage reference page 76 In the configuration directory VirtualBox xml is the main configuration file This includes global configuration options and the media and virtual machine reg istry The medi
231. urrent state of the VM to disk and then stop the VM This is equivalent to selecting the Close item in the VM 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 6 VBoxManage startvm page 85 A few extra options are available with cont rolvm that do not directly affect the VM running state e The setlinkstate lt 1 4 gt operation connects or disconnects virtual network cables from their network interfaces e 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 e 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 drives found on the host and the names VirtualBox uses to access them e floppyattach works in a similar way e 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 e
232. uter s hard drive 8 11 VBoxManage showvdiinfo 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 8 12 VBoxManage createvdi This command creates a new virtual hard disk image You must specify the filename for the new image and the virtual size If you give the static option disk space for the whole image will be allocated at once on the host With the comment option you can attach a comment to the image The register option if given tells VirtualBox to register the image for use with virtual machines You can use the type option to create a disk in write through mode which will not be affected by snapshots see chapter 5 1 Virtual Disk Image VDI files page 51 for details As described there you cannot create a VDI with the immutable type as it would then always remain empty 8 13 VBoxManage modifyvdi The modifyvdi command can be used to compact disk images 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 87 8 VBoxManage reference 8 14 VBoxManage clonevdi 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 3 5
233. will be allocated from the host Operating system from resident memory so it must be available or made avail able 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 Again this is the same set ting that was specified in the New Virtual Machine wizard as described with guidelines under chapter 3 2 Creating a virtual machine page 23 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 Note As Microsoft Windows activation mechanism is sensitive to some hard ware changes if you are changing settings for a Windows guest some of these changes may trigger a request for another activation with Microsoft 37 3 Starting out with VirtualBox Video memory size Size of the memory provided by the virtual graphics card avail able 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 mem ory higher resolutions and color depths may be available but for most setups the default video memory size of 8MB should be sufficient 3 7 1 2 Advanced tab 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 set
234. work 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 VirtualBox can simulate up to four virtual network cards for a virtual machine These cards are presented as AMD PCNet cards which most current operating systems as well as GNU GRUB support out of the box without needing extra drivers Note Unfortunately Windows Vista has dropped support for this familly of network cards and requires manual driver installation see chapter 4 2 4 Win dows Vista networking page 47 When you first create a virtual machine VirtualBox by default enables one of these four cards and selects Network Address Translation NAT for it This way the 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 For a more detailed discussion of networking in virtual machines including other networking options please see chapter 6 Virtual networking page 54 3 7 6 USB support 3 7 6 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 to the guest operating system a virtual USB controller As soon as t
235. ws 2000 installation failures When installing Windows 2000 guests you might run into one of the following issues e Installation reboots usually during component registration e Installation fills the whole hard disk with empty log files e Installation complains about a failure installing msgina dll 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 signalled 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 se
236. ws guesets to perform automated logons To activate the GINA module first install the Guest Additions You will then find the GINA module a file called VBoxGINA d11 in the Additions target directory Copy this file to the Windows SYSTEM32 directory Then in the registry create the following key HKEY LOCAL MACHINENSOFTWAREMMicrosoftNWindows 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 92 9 Advanced Topics VBoxManage controlvm Windows XP setcredentials John Doe secretpassword DOMTEST While the VM is running the credentials can be queried by the VirtualBox GINA module using the VirtualBox Guest Additions device driver When Windows is in logged out mode the GINA module will constantly poll for credentials and if they are present a logon will be attempted After retrieving the credentials the GINA module 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
237. xSDL the simplified VM displayer page 70 allows for an additional way of configuring TAP interfaces if it is started from a custom parent process This parent process can allocate the required TAP interfaces and let VirtualBox inherit the file handles For this to work the file descriptor has to be passed to VBoxSDL using the option tapfd lt N gt fd In this case the setup and termination scripts will not be called 6 6 Internal networking Internal Networking is similar to host interface networking in that the VM can directly communicate 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 host interface networking there are two good reasons why this extra mode was implemented 1 Security In host interface networking mode all traffic goes through an inter face of the host system It is therefore possible to attach a packet sniffer such as Ethereal to the host interface and log all traffic that goes over a given interface If for any reason you prefer two or more VMs on the same machine to commu nicate privately hiding their data from both the host system and the user Host Interface Networking therefore is not an option 66 6 Virtual networking 2 Speed Internal networking is more efficient than host interface networking as VirtualBox can d
238. y While redistributing the Work or Derivative Works thereof You may choose to offer and charge a fee for acceptance of support warranty indemnity or other liability obligations and or rights consistent with this License However in accepting such obligations You may act only on Your own behalf and on Your sole responsibility not on behalf of any other Contributor and only if You agree to indemnify defend and hold each Contributor harmless for any liability incurred by or claims asserted against such Contributor by reason of your accepting any such warranty or additional liability END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS 143 13 3rd party licenses 13 2 5 OpenSSL license This package is an SSL implementation written by Eric Young eay cryptsoft com The implementation was written so as to conform with Netscapes SSL This library is free for commercial and non commercial use as long as the following conditions are aheared 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 tjh cryptsoft com 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
239. y 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 non free programs must be allowed to use the library A more frequent case is that a free library does the same job as widely used non free libraries In this case there is little to gain by limiting the free library to free Software only so we use the Lesser General Public License In other cases permission to use a particular library in non free programs enables a greater number of people to use a large body of free software For example permission to use the GNU C Library in non free programs enables many more people to use the whole GNU operating system as well as its variant the GNU Linux operating system 133 13 3rd party licenses Although the Lesser General Public License is Less protective of the users freedom it does ensure that the user of a program that is linked with the Library has the freedom and the wherewithal to run that program using a modified version of the Library The precise terms and conditions for copying distribution and modification follow Pay close attention to the difference between a work based on the library and a work that uses the library The former contains code derived from the library whereas the latter must be combined
240. y other than the default installation directory add the desired path as an extra parameter sudo VirtualBox run install opt innotek VirtualBox Or if you do not have the sudo command available run the following as root instead VirtualBox run install opt innotek VirtualBox If any users on your system should be able to access host USB devices from within VirtualBox guests you should add them to the appropriate user group that your distri bution uses for USB access e g usb or usbusers 2 2 3 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

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