[vbox-dev] VirtualBox 2.2 Beta 1 released

[Frank Mehnert]

Hi,

please do not use this VirtualBox Beta release on production machines.
A VirtualBox Beta release should be considered a bleeding-edge release
meant for early evaluation and testing purposes.

You can download the binaries here:

  http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.2.0_BETA1/

See our 'VirtualBox Beta Feedback Forum'

  http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=15

for more information about the Beta program.

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

  * OVF (Open Virtualization Format) appliance import and export
  * Host-only networking mode
  * Hypervisor optimizations with significant performance gains for
    high context switching rates
  * VT-x/AMD-V are enabled by default for newly created virtual machines
  * USB (OHCI & EHCI) is enabled by default for newly created virtual
    machines (Qt GUI only)
  * Experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts
  * Shared folders for Solaris and OpenSolaris guests
  * OpenGL 3d acceleration for Linux guests
  * Experimental support for OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) hosts running
    both the 64-bit and the 32-bit kernel

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

  * VMM: FreeBSD guest related fix for V86 flags (bug #2342)
  * VMM: Fixed guru meditation when booting an AsteriskNow Linux VM
    (bug #2342)
  * VMM: Fixed PGMPOOLKIND_FREE guru meditation (bugs #3356, #3431)
  * VMM: Fixed Windows XP boot hang (guest PAE + nested paging only)
  * VMM: Allow mixing of VT-x/AMD-V and software virtualization
  * VMM: fixed extremely slow safe mode booting in e.g. Windows 2008
    (VT-x/AMD-V only)
  * VMM: significant speedup of certain Grub boot loaders (e.g.
    Solaris) (VT-x/AMD-V only)
  * VMM: real-mode IOPL fix for DOS guests (VT-x only)
  * VMM: fixed VT-x detection with certain BIOSes that enable VT-x,
    but don't set the lock bit in MSR_IA32_FEATURE_CONTROL
  * NAT: Truncated downloads with NAT (ftp) (bug #3257)
  * NAT: Blocked UDP packets cause crash (bug #3426)
  * USB: further reduced host CPU utilization for OHCI and EHCI; the
    "VBoxInternal/Devices/usb-ohci/0/Config/FrameRate" CFG key is no
    longer necessary and no longer supported
  * VRDP: fixed hangs when VRDP server is enabled or disabled in runtime
  * X11 guests: show the guest mouse pointer at the right position if
    the virtual desktop is larger than the guest resolution (bug #2306)
  * Solaris guests: added xpg4/xcu4 dependency to the guest additions
    installer (bug #3524)
  * Linux hosts: do proper reference counting to prevent unloading the
    vboxnetflt module as long as this code is in use
  * Linux installers: fixes for Slackware, Arch Linux and Linux from
    Scratch systems
  * Windows installers: Combined installer executable which contains
    both (32- and 64-bit) architectures
  * VBoxManage: less cryptic command-line error messages
  * VBoxManage: 'list vm' commands now default to compact format
  * Hard disks: improved immutable disk support to auto-reset diff
    file at VM startup
  * GUI: enable the audio adapter by default for new VMs
  * GUI: warn if VT-x/AMD-V is not operational when starting a 64 bits
    guest
  * GUI: deactivate 64 bits guest support when the host CPU does not
    support VT-x/AMD-V
  * GUI: removed floppy icon from the status bar
  * GUI: show build revision in about dialog
  * GUI: fixed sticky status bar text
  * GUI/Mac OS X: fixed disabled close button
  * GUI: improved error dialogs
  * 3D support: added opengl select/feedback support (bug #2920)
  * 3D support: close opengl subsystem for terminated guest
    applications (bug #3243)
  * 3D support: fixed VM hangs when starting guests with 3D acceleration
    enabled (bug #3437)
  * PXE: fixed boot hangs when hardware virtualization is used (bug #2536)

Kind regards,

Frank
-- 
Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert    Sun Microsystems    http://www.sun.com/
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