VirtualBox 2.1.0 (released 2008-12-17)

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

• Support for hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) on Mac OS X hosts
• Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems (experimental; see user manual, chapter 1.6, 64-bit guests, page 16)
• Added support for Intel Nehalem virtualization enhancements (EPT and VPID; see user manual, chapter 1.2, Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V), page 10))
• Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL (see user manual, chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), page 66)
• Experimental LsiLogic and BusLogic SCSI controllers (see user manual, chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 70)
• Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots (see user manual, chapter 5.2, Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD), page 72)
• New NAT engine with significantly better performance, reliability and ICMP echo (ping) support (bugs #1046, #2438, #2223, #1247)
• New Host Interface Networking implementations for Windows and Linux hosts with easier setup (replaces TUN/TAP on Linux and manual bridging on Windows)

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: significant performance improvements for VT-x (real mode execution)
• VMM: support for hardware breakpoints (VT-x and AMD-V only; bug #477)
• VMM: VGA performance improvements for VT-x and AMD-V
• VMM: Solaris and OpenSolaris guest performance improvements for AMD-V (Barcelona family CPUs only)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation while running the Dr. Web virus scanner (software virtualization only; bug #1439)
• VMM: deactivate VT-x and AMD-V when the host machine goes into suspend mode; reactivate when the host machine resumes (Windows, Mac OS X & Linux hosts; bug #1660)
• VMM: fixed guest hangs when restoring VT-x or AMD-V saved states/snapshots
• VMM: fixed guru meditation when executing a one byte debug instruction (VT-x only; bug #2617)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation for PAE guests on non-PAE hosts (VT-x)
• VMM: disallow mixing of software and hardware virtualization execution in general (bug #2404)
• VMM: fixed black screen when booting OS/2 1.x (AMD-V only)
• GUI: pause running VMs when the host machine goes into suspend mode (Windows & Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: resume previously paused VMs when the host machine resumes after suspend (Windows & Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level (Windows hosts)
• GUI: properly restore the position of the selector window when running on the compiz window manager
• GUI: properly restore the VM in seamless mode (2.0 regression)
• GUI: warn user about non optimal memory settings
• GUI: structure operating system list according to family and version for improved usability
• GUI: predefined settings for QNX guests
• IDE: improved ATAPI passthrough support
• Networking: added support for up to 8 Ethernet adapters per VM
• Networking: fixed issue where a VM could lose connectivity after a reboot
• iSCSI: allow snapshot/diff creation using local VDI file
• iSCSI: improved interoperability with iSCSI targets
• Graphics: fixed handling of a guest video memory which is not a power of two (bug #2724)
• VBoxManage: fixed bug which prevented setting up the serial port for direct device access.
• VBoxManage: added support for VMDK and VHD image creation
• VBoxManage: added support for image conversion (VDI/VMDK/VHD/RAW)
• Solaris hosts: added IPv6 support between host and guest when using host interface networking
• Mac OS X hosts: added ACPI host power status reporting
• API: redesigned storage model with better generalization
• API: allow attaching a hard disk to more than one VM at a time
• API: added methods to return network configuration information of the host system
• Shared Folders: performance and stability fixes for Windows guests (Microsoft Office Applications)

VirtualBox 2.0.6 (released 2008-11-21)

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

• VMM: fixed Guru meditation when running 64 bits Windows guests (bug #2220)
• VMM: fixed Solaris 10U6 boot hangs (VT-x and AMD-V) bug #2565)
• VMM: fixed Solaris 10U6 reboot hangs (AMD-V only; bug #2565)
• GUI: the host key was sometimes not properly displayed (Windows hosts only, bug #1996)
• GUI: the keyboard focus was lost after minimizing and restoring the VM window via the Windows taskbar (bugs #784)
• VBoxManage: properly show SATA disks when showing the VM information (bug #2624)
• SATA: fixed access if the buffer size is not sector-aligned (bug #2024)
• SATA: improved performance
• SATA: fixed snapshot function with ports>1 (bug #2510)
• E1000: fixed crash under rare circumstances
• USB: fixed support for iPhone and Nokia devices (Linux host: bugs #470 & #491)
• Windows host installer: added proper handling of open VirtualBox applications when updating the installation
• Windows host installer: fixed default installation directory on 64-bit on new installations (bug #2501)
• Linux/Solaris/Darwin hosts: verify permissions in /tmp/vbox-$USER-ipc
• Linux hosts: fixed assertion on high network load (AMD64 hosts, fix for Linux distributions with glibc 2.6 and newer (bug #616)
• Linux hosts: don’t crash during shutdown with serial ports connected to a host device
• Solaris hosts: fixed incompatibility between IPSEC and host interface networking
• Solaris hosts: fixed a rare race condition while powering off VMs with host interface networking
• Solaris hosts: fixed VBoxSDL on Solaris 10 by shipping the required SDL library (bug #2475)
• Windows additions: fixed logged in users reporting via guest properties when using native RDP connections
• Windows additions: fixed Vista crashes when accessing shared folders under certain circumstances (bug #2461)
• Windows additions: fixed shared folders access with MS-Office (bug #2591)
• Linux additions: fixed compilation of vboxvfs.ko for 64-bit guests (bug #2550)
• SDK: added JAX-WS port caching to speedup connections

VirtualBox 2.0.4 (released 2008-10-24)

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

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

VirtualBox 2.0.2 (released 2008-09-12)

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

• VMM: fixed inability to run more than one VM in parallel (AMD-V on CPUs with erratum 170 only; bug #2167)
• VMM: VT-x stability fixes (bug #2179 and others)
• VMM: fixed Linux 2.6.26+ kernel crashes (used by Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha, Fedora 10 Alpha; bug #1875)
• VMM: fixed 64 bits Linux 2.6.26 kernel crashes (Debian)
• VMM: fixed Vista (32 bits) guest crash during boot when PAE and NX are enabled (applied to 64 bits hosts with VT-x enabled only)
• VMM: fixed OS/2 guest crashes during boot (AMD-V; bug #2132)
• GUI: fixed crash when trying to release an inaccessible image in the virtual disk manager
• GUI: fixed invalid error message for a changed snapshot path even if that path wasn't changed (bug #2064)
• GUI: fixed crash when creating a new hard disk image (bug #2060)
• GUI: fixed crash when adding a hard disk in the VM settings (bug #2081)
• GUI: fixed a bug where VirtualBox isn't working with the new QGtkStyle plugin (bug #2066)
• GUI: fixed VM close dialog in seamless mode (Mac OS X hosts only; bug #2067)
• GUI: fixed standard menu entries for NLS versions (Mac OS X hosts only)
• GUI: disable the VT-x/AMD-V setting when it's not supported by the CPU (or on Mac OS X hosts)
• VBoxManage: fixed crash during internalcommands createrawvmdk (bug #2184)
• VBoxManage: fixed output of snapshot showvminfo (bug #698)
• Guest properties: added information about guest network interfaces (Windows guests only)
• Shared Folders: fixed regression that caused Windows guest crashes (bug #2055)
• API: fixed number of installed CPUs (Solaris hosts only)
• VRDP: allow a client to reconnect to an existing session on the VRDP server by dropping the existing connection (configurable and disabled by default; only relevant when multiconnection mode is disabled)
• VRDP: fixed an image repaint problem
• Linux hosts: fixed bug in vboxdrv.ko that could corrupt kernel memory and panic the kernel (bug #2078)
• Linux hosts: compile fixes for kernel module on Linux 2.6.27
• Mac OS X hosts: added Python support
• Additions: fixed a possible hang in HGCM communication after a VM reboot
• Windows additions: added support for Windows XP 64 bits (bug #2117)
• Linux additions: deactivate dynamic resizing on Linux guests with buggy X servers
• Linux additions: support Ubuntu 8.10 guests and Fedora 9 guests (dynamic resizing disabled for the latter) (bug #1854)
• Linux additions: added installer check for the system architecture
• Linux additions: fixed Xorg modules path for some Linux distributions (bug #2128)
• VMDK: be more liberal with ambiguous parts of the format specification and accept more format variants (bug #2062)
• VHD: fixed a bug in the VHD backend which resulted in reading the wrong data (bug #2085)
• Solaris hosts: fixed kernel panic on certain machines when starting VMs with host interface networking (bug #2183)
• Solaris hosts: fixed inability to access NFS shares on the host when host interface networking was enabled
• Solaris hosts: installer now detects and reports when installing under the wrong architecture
• Solaris hosts: fixed security hardening that prevented starting VMs from non-global zones even as root (bug #1948)
• Solaris additions: combined the 32 bit and 64 bit additions installer into a single package
• Mac OS X hosts: experimental support for attaching a real serial port to the guest

VirtualBox 2.0.0 (released 2008-09-04)

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

• 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only)
• New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
• The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements
• New-version notifier
• Guest property information interface
• Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
• New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts
• Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)
• Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)
• Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)
• Clipboard integration for OS/2 Guests
• Created separate SDK component featuring a new Python programming interface on Linux and Solaris hosts
• Support for VHD disk images

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: VT-x fixes
• AHCI/SATA: improved performance
• GUI: keyboard fixes
• Linux installer: properly uninstall the package even if unregistering the DKMS module fails
• Linux additions: the guest screen resolution is properly restored
• Network: added support for jumbo frames (> 1536 bytes)
• Shared Folders: fixed guest crash with Windows Media Player 11
• Mac OS X: Ctrl+Left mouse click doesn’t simulate a right mouse click in the guest anymore. Use Hostkey+Left for a right mouse click emulation. (bug #1766)

VirtualBox 1.6.6 (released 2008-08-26)

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

• VMM: fixed excessive logging (bug #1901)
• VMM: AMD-V stability fixes (bug #1685)
• GUI: added support for Ctrl+Caps reversed keyboards (bug #1891)
• SATA: fixed BSODs of Windows guests on a SATA disk (bug #1941)
• SATA: fixed hard disk detection on Solaris 10 U5 (bug #1789)
• VBoxHeadless: don’t start the clipboard service (bug #1743)
• VBoxHeadless: added -vrdp parameter which allows to start the VM session without VRDP (bug #1960)
• VBoxManage: fixes to creating raw disk/partition VMDK files, now accepts removable media on Windows (bug #1869)
• VRDP: fixed communication with MS Remote Desktop Connection on Mac OS X (bug #1337)
• VRDP: clipboard fixes (bug #1410)
• VRDP: fixed crash during PAM authentication (bug #1953)
• Shared Folders: fixed a regression introduced in version 1.6.2: the shared folders service was sometimes not properly installed (Windows guests only, bug #1915)
• Shared Folders: don’t deny to load a VM if a shared folder is not accessible (bug #822)
• BIOS: allow to specify empty DMI strings (bug #1957)
• OSE archive: added missing Makefiles (bug #1912)
• Linux hosts: workaround for buggy gcc-4.3 compilers (e.g. openSUSE 11)
• Linux hosts: one more fix for compiling the kernel modules on Linux 2.6.27 (bug #1962)
• Mac OS X hosts: shared folders unicode fix
• Solaris hosts: fixed link issue (bug #1840)
• Windows additions: allow to downgrade the package
• Windows additions: fixed corrupted installer icon on Windows 2000 (bug #1486)
• Windows additions: fixed bug when creating intermediate directories (bug #1870)
• Windows additions: implemented /xres=, /yres= and /depth= switches for the installer (bug #1990)
• Linux additions: properly unregister the misc device when unloading the kernel module
• Linux additions: fixed startup order for recent Linux distributions again (e.g. openSUSE 11)
• Linux additions: attempt to fix the autostart issue of !VBoxClient with Mandriva guests (bug #1699)
• Linux additions: fixed detection of patched Linux 2.6.18 kernels of RHEL5 / FC6 / CentOS 5.2 (bugs #1899, #1973)
• Linux additions: added new mount flags dmode, fmode, umask, dmask and fmask allowing to override the file mode (bug #1776)
• Documentation: added a note that jumbo frames don’t work (bug #1877)
• Documentation: document special host interface names on openSUSE11 (bug #1892)