Software Update: VirtualBox 3.1.0

Sun Microsystems released version 3.1.0 of VirtualBox on Monday. 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 3.1.0 includes several improvements. For example, 2D video acceleration can now be used for Windows guests, USB works a lot better for OpenSolaris, support for EFI has been added and the performance for PAE and AMD64 has been improved a lot. Below is the full changelog for this release:

The following major new features were added:

• Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another (see the manual for more information)
• VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well (“branched snapshots”; see the manual for more information)
• 2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion (see the manual for more information)
• More flexible storage attachments: CD/DVD drives can be attached to an arbitrary IDE controller, and there can be more than one such drive (the manual for more information)
• The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
• Complete rewrite of experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher
• Significant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging)
• Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface; see the manual for more information)
• Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net; see the manual for more information)

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

• VMM: guest SMP fixes for certain rare cases
• GUI: snapshots include a screenshot
• GUI: locked storage media can be unmounted by force
• GUI: the a log window grabbed all key events from other GUI windows (bug #5291)
• GUI: allow to disable USB filters (bug #5426)
• GUI: improved memory slider in the VM settings
• GUI: the VirtualBox website couldn’t be opened from the help menu (bug #4559)
• 3D support: major performance improvement in VBO processing
• 3D support: added GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array support
• 3D support: fixed crashes in FarCry, SecondLife, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online (bugs #2801, #2791)
• 3D support: fixed graphics corruption in World of Warcraft (#2816)
• 3D support: fixed Final frame of Compiz animation not updated to the screen (#4653)
• 3D support: fixed incorrect rendering of non ARGB textures under compiz
• iSCSI: support iSCSI targets with more than 2TiB capacity
• VRDP: fixed occasional VRDP server crash (bug #5424)
• Network: fixed the E1000 emulation for QNX (and probably other) guests (bug #3206)
• NAT: added host resolver DNS proxy (see the manual for more information)
• VMDK: fixed incorrectly rejected big images split into 2G pieces (bug #5523, #2787)
• VMDK: fixed compatibility issue with fixed or raw disk VMDK files (bug #2723)
• VHD: fixed incompatibility with Hyper-V
• Support for Parallels version 2 disk image (HDD) files; see the manual for more information
• OVF: create manifest files on export and verify the content of an optional manifest file on import
• OVF: fixed memory setting during import (bug #4188)
• Mouse device: now five buttons are passed to the guest (bug #3773)
• VBoxHeadless: fixed loss of saved state when VM fails to start
• VBoxSDL: fixed crash during shutdown (Windows hosts only)
• X11 based hosts: allow the user to specify their own scan code layout (bug #2302)
• Mac OS X hosts: don’t auto show the menu and dock in fullscreen (bug #4866)
• Mac OS X hosts (64 bit): don’t interpret mouse wheel events as left click (bug #5049)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed a VM abort during shutdown under certain conditions
• Solaris hosts: combined the kernel interface package into the VirtualBox main package
• Solaris hosts: support for OpenSolaris Boomer architecture (with OSS audio backend).
• Shared folders: VBOXSVR is visible in Network folder (Windows guests, bug #4842)
• Shared folders: performance improvements (Windows guests, bug #1728)
• Windows, Linux and Solaris Additions: added balloon tip notifier if VirtualBox host version was updated and Additions are out of date
• Solaris guests: fixed keyboard emulation (bug #1589)
• Solaris Additions: fixed as_pagelock() failed errors affecting guest properties (bug #5337)
• Windows Additions: added automatic logon support for Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Windows Additions: improved file version lookup for guest OS information
• Windows Additions: fixed runtime OS detection on Windows 7 for session information
• Windows Additions: fixed crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)
• Linux Additions: added support for uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions (bug #4039)
• Linux guest shared folders: allow mounting a shared folder if a file of the same name as the folder exists in the current directory (bug #928)
• SDK: added object-oriented web service bindings for PHP5