Oracle VM VirtualBox
®
User Manual
Oracle Corporation
Copyright © 2004-2010 Oracle Corporation
Table of Contents
1. First steps
Why is virtualization useful?
Some terminology
Features overview
Supported host operating systems
Installing VirtualBox and extension packs
Starting VirtualBox
Creating your first virtual machine
Running your virtual machine
Starting a new VM for the first time
Capturing and releasing keyboard and mouse
Typing special characters
Changing removable media
Resizing the machine's window
Saving the state of the machine
Snapshots
Taking, restoring and deleting snapshots
Snapshot contents
Virtual machine configuration
Removing virtual machines
Importing and exporting virtual machines
Alternative front-ends
2. Installation details
Installing on Windows hosts
Prerequisites
Performing the installation
Uninstallation
Unattended installation
Installing on Mac OS X hosts
Performing the installation
Uninstallation
Unattended installation
Installing on Linux hosts
Prerequisites
The VirtualBox kernel module
Performing the installation
The vboxusers group
Starting VirtualBox on Linux
Installing on Solaris hosts
Performing the installation
Starting VirtualBox on Solaris
Uninstallation
Unattended installation
Configuring a zone for running VirtualBox
3. Configuring virtual machines
Supported guest operating systems
Mac OS X Server guests
64-bit guests
Emulated hardware
General settings
"Basic" tab
"Advanced" tab
"Description" tab
System settings
"Motherboard" tab
"Processor" tab
"Acceleration" tab
Display settings
Storage settings
Audio settings
Network settings
Serial ports
USB support
USB settings
Implementation notes for Windows and Linux hosts
Shared folders
Alternative firmware (EFI)
Video modes in EFI
4. Guest Additions
Introduction
Installing and Maintaining Guest Additions
Guest Additions for Windows
Guest Additions for Linux
Guest Additions for Solaris
Guest Additions for OS/2
Shared folders
Manual mounting
Automatic mounting
Hardware-accelerated graphics
Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9)
Hardware 2D video acceleration for Windows guests
Seamless windows
Guest properties
Guest control
Memory overcommitment
Memory ballooning
Page Fusion
5. Virtual storage
Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, SAS
Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD)
The Virtual Media Manager
Special image write modes
Differencing images
Cloning disk images
Host I/O caching
Limiting bandwidth for disk images
CD/DVD support
iSCSI servers
6. Virtual networking
Virtual networking hardware
Introduction to networking modes
Network Address Translation (NAT)
Configuring port forwarding with NAT
PXE booting with NAT
NAT limitations
Bridged networking
Internal networking
Host-only networking
7. Remote virtual machines
Remote display (VRDP support)
Common third-party RDP viewers
VBoxHeadless, the remote desktop server
Step by step: creating a virtual machine on a headless server
Remote USB
RDP authentication
RDP encryption
Multiple connections to the VRDP server
Multiple remote monitors
VRDP video redirection
VRDP customization
Teleporting
8. VBoxManage
Introduction
Commands overview
VBoxManage list
VBoxManage showvminfo
VBoxManage registervm / unregistervm
VBoxManage createvm
VBoxManage modifyvm
General settings
Networking settings
Serial port, audio, clipboard, remote desktop and USB settings
Remote machine settings
Teleporting settings
VBoxManage import
VBoxManage export
VBoxManage startvm
VBoxManage controlvm
VBoxManage discardstate
VBoxManage adoptstate
VBoxManage snapshot
VBoxManage closemedium
VBoxManage storageattach
VBoxManage storagectl
VBoxManage bandwidthctl
VBoxManage showhdinfo
VBoxManage createhd
VBoxManage modifyhd
VBoxManage clonehd
VBoxManage convertfromraw
VBoxManage getextradata/setextradata
VBoxManage setproperty
VBoxManage usbfilter add/modify/remove
VBoxManage sharedfolder add/remove
VBoxManage guestproperty
VBoxManage guestcontrol
VBoxManage debugvm
VBoxManage metrics
VBoxManage hostonlyif
VBoxManage dhcpserver
VBoxManage extpack
9. Advanced topics
VBoxSDL, the simplified VM displayer
Introduction
Secure labeling with VBoxSDL
Releasing modifiers with VBoxSDL on Linux
Automated guest logons
Automated Windows guest logons
Automated Linux/Unix guest logons
Advanced configuration for Windows guests
Automated Windows system preparation
CPU hot-plugging
Advanced display configuration
Custom VESA resolutions
Configuring the maximum resolution of guests when using the graphical frontend
Advanced storage configuration
Using a raw host hard disk from a guest
Configuring the hard disk vendor product data (VPD)
Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking
Launching more than 120 VMs on Solaris hosts
Legacy commands for using serial ports
Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine
Configuring the address of a NAT network interface
Configuring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network interface
Tuning TCP/IP buffers for NAT
Binding NAT sockets to a specific interface
Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode
Using the host's resolver as a DNS proxy in NAT mode
Configuring aliasing of the NAT engine
Configuring the BIOS DMI information
Fine-tuning timers and time synchronization
Configuring the guest time stamp counter (TSC) to reflect guest execution
Accelerate or slow down the guest clock
Tuning the Guest Additions time synchronization parameters
Configuring multiple host-only network interfaces on Solaris hosts
Configuring the VirtualBox CoreDumper on Solaris hosts
Locking down the VirtualBox manager GUI
Starting the VirtualBox web service automatically
10. Technical background
Where VirtualBox stores its files
Machines created by VirtualBox version 4.0 or later
Machines created by VirtualBox versions before 4.0
Global configuration data
Summary of 4.0 configuration changes
VirtualBox XML files
VirtualBox executables and components
Hardware vs. software virtualization
Details about software virtualization
Details about hardware virtualization
Nested paging and VPIDs
11. VirtualBox programming interfaces
12. Troubleshooting
Procedures and tools
Categorizing and isolating problems
Collecting debugging information
The built-in VM debugger
VM core format
General
Guest shows IDE/SATA errors for file-based images on slow host file system
Responding to guest IDE/SATA flush requests
Poor performance caused by host power management
GUI: 2D Video Acceleration option is grayed out
Windows guests
Windows bluescreens after changing VM configuration
Windows 0x101 bluescreens with SMP enabled (IPI timeout)
Windows 2000 installation failures
How to record bluescreen information from Windows guests
No networking in Windows Vista guests
Windows guests may cause a high CPU load
Long delays when accessing shared folders
Linux and X11 guests
Linux guests may cause a high CPU load
AMD Barcelona CPUs
Buggy Linux 2.6 kernel versions
Shared clipboard, auto-resizing and seamless desktop in X11 guests
Windows hosts
VBoxSVC out-of-process COM server issues
CD/DVD changes not recognized
Sluggish response when using Microsoft RDP client
Running an iSCSI initiator and target on a single system
Bridged networking adapters missing
Host-only networking adapters cannot be created
Linux hosts
Linux kernel module refuses to load
Linux host CD/DVD drive not found
Linux host CD/DVD drive not found (older distributions)
Linux host floppy not found
Strange guest IDE error messages when writing to CD/DVD
VBoxSVC IPC issues
USB not working
PAX/grsec kernels
Linux kernel vmalloc pool exhausted
Solaris hosts
Cannot start VM, not enough contiguous memory
VM aborts with out of memory errors on Solaris 10 hosts
13. Security considerations
Potentially insecure operations
Authentication
Encryption
14. Known limitations
15. Change log
Version 4.0.0 (2010-12-22)
Version 3.2.12 (2010-11-30)
Version 3.2.10 (2010-10-08)
Version 3.2.8 (2010-08-05)
Version 3.2.6 (2010-06-25)
Version 3.2.4 (2010-06-07)
Version 3.2.2 (2010-06-02)
Version 3.2.0 (2010-05-18)
Version 3.1.8 (2010-05-10)
Version 3.1.6 (2010-03-25)
Version 3.1.4 (2010-02-12)
Version 3.1.2 (2009-12-17)
Version 3.1.0 (2009-11-30)
Version 3.0.12 (2009-11-10)
Version 3.0.10 (2009-10-29)
Version 3.0.8 (2009-10-02)
Version 3.0.6 (2009-09-09)
Version 3.0.4 (2009-08-04)
Version 3.0.2 (2009-07-10)
Version 3.0.0 (2009-06-30)
Version 2.2.4 (2009-05-29)
Version 2.2.2 (2009-04-27)
Version 2.2.0 (2009-04-08)
Version 2.1.4 (2009-02-16)
Version 2.1.2 (2009-01-21)
Version 2.1.0 (2008-12-17)
Version 2.0.8 (2009-03-10)
Version 2.0.6 (2008-11-21)
Version 2.0.4 (2008-10-24)
Version 2.0.2 (2008-09-12)
Version 2.0.0 (2008-09-04)
A. Third-party materials and licenses
Materials
Licenses
GNU General Public License (GPL)
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
Mozilla Public License (MPL)
MIT License
X Consortium License (X11)
zlib license
OpenSSL license
Slirp license
liblzf license
libpng license
lwIP license
libxml license
libxslt licenses
gSOAP Public License Version 1.3a
Chromium licenses
curl license
libgd license
BSD license from Intel
libjpeg License
x86 SIMD extension for IJG JPEG library license
B. VirtualBox privacy policy
Glossary
List of Tables
10.1.
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