VirtualBox 4.2.12

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

Features:

• Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

• Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

• Guest Additions for Windows, Linux and Solaris. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows, Linux and Solaris virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window). There are also guest additions for OS/2 with somewhat reduced functionality.

• Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.

What's New:

• VMM: fixed a Guru Meditation on putting Linux guest CPU online if nested paging is disabled
• VMM: invalidate TLB entries even for non-present pages
• GUI: Multi-screen support: fixed a crash on visual-mode change
• GUI: Multi-screen support: disabled guest-screens should now remain disabled on visual-mode change
• GUI: Multi-screen support: handle host/guest screen plugging/unplugging in different visual-modes
• GUI: Multi-screen support: seamless mode: fixed a bug when empty seamless screens were represented by fullscreen windows
• GUI: Multi-screen support: each machine window in multi-screen configuration should have correct menu-bar now (Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: Multi-screen support: machine window View menu should have correct content in seamless/fullscreen mode now (Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: VM manager: vertical scroll-bars should be now updated on content/window resize
• GUI: VM settings: fixed crash on machine state-change event
• GUI: don't show warnings about enabled or disabled mouse integration if the VM was restored from a saved state
• Virtio-net: properly announce that the guest has to handle partial TCP checksums (bug #9380)
• Storage: Fixed incorrect alignment of VDI images causing disk size changes when using snapshots (bug #11597)
• Audio: fixed broken ALSA & PulseAudio on some Linux hosts due to invalid symbol resolution (bug #11615)
• PS/2 keyboard: re-apply keyboard repeat delay and rate after a VM was restored from a saved state (bug #10933)
• BIOS: updated DMI processor information table (type 4): corrected L1 & L2 cache table handles
• Timekeeping: fix several issues which can lead to incorrect time, Solaris guests sporadically showed time going briefly back to Jan 1 1970
• Main/Metrics: disk metrics are collected properly when software RAID, symbolic links or rootfs are used on Linux hosts
• VBoxManage: don't stay paused after a snapshot was created and the VM was running before
• VBoxManage: introduced controlvm nicpromisc (bug #11423)
• VBoxManage: don't crash on controlvm guestmemoryballoon if the VM isn't running (bug #11639)
• VBoxHeadless: don't filter guest property events as this would affect all clients (bug #11644)
• Guest control: prevent double CR in the output generated by guest commands and do NLS conversion
• Linux hosts / guests: fixed build errors on Linux 3.5 and newer kernels if the CONFIGUIDGIDSTRICTTYPECHECKS config option is enabled (bug #11664)
• Linux Additions: handle fall-back to VESA driver on RedHat-based guests if vboxvideo cannot be loaded
• Linux Additions: RHEL/OEL/CentOS 6.4 compile fix (bug #11586)
• Linux Additions: Debian Linux kernel 3.2.0-4 (3.2.39) compile fix (bug #11634)
• Linux Additions: added auto-logon support for Linux guests using LightDM as the display manager
• Windows Additions: Support for multimonitor. Dynamic enable/disable of secondary virtual monitors. Support for XPDM/WDDM based guests
• X11 Additions: support X.Org Server 1.14 (bug #11609)