Software Update: VirtualBox 3.0.12

Sun Microsystems has released the sixth update for VirtualBox version 3.0, which was released at the end of June. This program can be used to install other operating systems on a computer in a virtual environment. That way, different OSes can be used on the same hardware. VirtualBox is available for Windows 2000 and above, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris, and can handle a variety of guest operating systems.

VirtualBox is available in two versions. The full version has additional functionality, such as support for USB ports and the remote display protocol, but it is only free for private use and evaluation purposes. This extra functionality is closed source and is therefore missing in the open source version. Version 3.0.12 contains a number of changes that should improve stability and performance and of course make support for Windows 7 better. The changelog also mainly shows bug fixes:

The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: reduced IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 guests; requires 64-bit support (VT-x only; bug #4392)
• VMM: fixed double timer interrupt delivery on old Linux kernels using IO-APIC (caused guest time to run at double speed; bug #3135)
• VMM: reinitialize VT-x and AMD-V after host suspend or hibernate; some BIOSes forget this (Windows hosts only; bug #5421)
• VMM: fix loading of saved state when RAM preallocation is enabled
• BIOS: ignore unknown shutdown codes instead of causing a guru meditation (bug #5389)
• GUI: never start a VM on a single click into the selector window (bug #2676)
• Serial: reduce the probability of lost bytes if the host end is connected to a raw file
• VMDK: fix handling of split image variants and fix a 3.0.10 regression (bug #5355)
• VRDP: fixed occasional VRDP server crash
• Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, some guests were able to send / receive packets (E1000; bug #5366)
• Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, the PCNet card received some spurious packets which might confuse the guest (bug #4496)
• Shared folders: fixed changing case of file names (bug #2520)
• Windows Additions: fix crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)
• Linux Additions: fix writing to files opened in O_APPEND mode (bug #3805)
• Solaris Additions: fix regression in guest additions driver which among other things caused lost guest property updates and periodic error messages being written to the system log