Software Update: VirtualBox 3.1.6

Oracle released version 3.1.6 of VirtualBox on Friday, the third update for version 3.1.0, which was released in early December. 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 not present in the open source version. Version 3.1.6 is a maintenance release and the changelog mainly shows bug fixes:

The following items were fixed and/or added:

• Linux hosts: fixed timing issue on hosts with Linux kernels 2.6.31 or later with certain CPUs (asynchronous timer mode; bug #6250)
• Linux hosts: properly handle host suspend/resume events on Linux kernels 2.6.30 or later (bug #5562)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed VBoxSVC crash while enumerating the host network interfaces under certain circumstances
• Snapshots: fixed image corruption after snapshot merge under certain circumstances (bug #6023)
• Snapshots: fixed crash with VBoxHeadless / OSE
• VMM: fixed reference counting guru meditation (bug #4940)
• VMM: improved guest SMP stability
• VMM: fixed VT-x hardware debug issues (bugs #477 & #5792)
• VMM: fixed PGMDynMapHCPage guru meditation (Mac OS X; VT-x only; bug #6095)
• VMM: fixed pgmPoolTrackFlushGCPhysPTInt guru meditations (Mac OS X; VT-x only; bugs #6095 & #6125)
• VMM: Fixed host crash when running PAE guests in VT-X mode (Mac OS X only; bug #5771).
• GUI: fix displaying or error message (bug #4345)
• GUI: fix inability to enter seamless mode (bugs #6185, #6188)
• 3D support: fixed assertion and flickering when guest application uses several windows with a single OpenGL context (bug #4598)
• 3D support: fixed host crashes when using GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array and array element calls (bug #6165)
• 3D support: fixed runtime linker errors with OpenGL guest libs (bug #5297)
• 3D support: fixed OpenGL extension viewer crash on startup (bug #4962)
• NAT: fixed a 3.1.4 regression on Windows hosts where graceful connection termination was broken (bug #6237)
• NAT: alternative network setting was not stored persistent (bug #6176)
• NAT: fixed memory corruption during ICMP traffic under certain circumstances
• Network: allow to switch the host interface or the internal network while a VM is running (bug #5781)
• VHD: fix for images with a block size different than 2MB
• USB: fixed filtered device attach regression (bug #6251)
• USB: fixed crash in OHCI under rare circumstances (bug #3571)
• VRDP: fixed hang under rare circumstances when attaching USB devices
• ACPI: prevent guest freezes when accessing /proc/acpi for determining the state of the host battery and the AC adapter (Linux hosts only; bug #2836)
• PulseAudio: fixed guest freezes under certain conditions (3.1.4 regression; bug #6224)
• BIOS: increased space for DMI strings
• BIOS: fixed interrupt routing problem for certain configurations (I/O-APIC enabled, ACPI not used; bug #6098)
• iSCSI: be more robust when handling the INQUIRY response
• iSCSI: be more robust when handling sense data
• BusLogic: fixed FreeBSD guests
• web service: vboxwebsrv is now multithreaded
• Solaris Installer: fixed netmask to stay persistent across reboots for Host-only interface (bug #4590)
• Linux installer: removed external dependency to libpng12.so (bug #6243)
• Solaris Additions: fixed superfluous kernel logging (bug #6181)
• Linux Additions: fixed hang when starting the X server in Fedora12 guests and in guests with Linux 2.6.33 or later (bug #6198)
• Linux Additions: support Mandriva speedboot runlevel (bug #5484)
• Linux Additions: fixed SELinux security context or mount.vboxsf (bug #6362)
• Linux Additions: support Ubuntu 10.04 (bug #5737)
• Web service: update PHP bindings to fix problems with enums and collections