[vbox-dev] Guest/Host interactions

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Frédéric Dreier wrote:
> I look a way to access guest OS informations from the host OS. Is there 
> a way to get for example the list of running processes or access the 
> filesystem inside a running VM from the hosting OS?

Currently not. All such functionality needs to be implemented in the 
guest additions. By itself VirtualBox has no clue what logical 
structures exist inside a guest - it just virtualizes the CPU, the 
various peripherals etc.

> Do you think it is practicable or just "mission impossible" (specialy in 
> case of Microsoft OS) ?

It's certainly not impossible, bit it's a lot of work (and involves 
quite a bit of system programming). And as the windows guest additions 
aren't completely available in the open source edition (due to copyright 
issues, as it's almost impossible writing a windows driver from scratch 
without using driver source code samples (c) microsoft, which prohibits 
releasing the source), it's pretty tough.

-- 
Dr. Klaus Espenlaub     innotek GmbH, http://www.innotek.de