Changelog for VirtualBox 5.1

This page lists all changes of the VirtualBox 5.1 releases.
All branches: 5.1 · 5.0 · 4.3 · 4.2 · 4.1 · 4.0

For 5.0.26 changes, please go here.

VirtualBox 5.1.8 (released 2016-10-18)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: fixed keyboard shortcut handling regressions (Mac OS X hosts only; bugs #15937 and #15938)
• GUI: fixed keyboard handling regression for separate UI (Windows hosts only; bugs #15928)
• NAT: don't exceed the maximum number of "search" suffixes. Patch from bug #15948.
• NAT: fixed parsing of port-forwarding rules with a name which contains a slash (bug #16002)
• NAT Network: when the host has only loopback nameserver that cannot be mapped to the guests (e.g. dnsmasq running on 127.0.1.1), make DHCP supply NAT Network DNS proxy as nameserver.
• Bridged Network: prevent flooding syslog with packet allocation error messages (bug #15569)
• Audio: now using Audio Queues on Mac OS X hosts
• Audio: fixed recording with the PulseAudio backend (5.1 regression)
• Audio: various bugfixes
• Snapshots: fixed regression in 5.1.4 for deleting snapshots with several disks (bug #15831)
• Snapshots: crash fix and better error reporting when snapshot deletion failed
• Storage: some fixes for the NVMe emulation with Windows guests
• API: fixed initialization of SAS controllers (bug #15972)
• Build system: make it possible to build VBox on systems which default to Python 3
• Windows hosts: detect certain cases of REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG errors and print a helpful error message
• Windows hosts: adapted to changes in Windows 10 build 14901 (bug #15944)
• Windows hosts: better support for processor groups on Windows 7 and later which is required on certain hosts with many CPUs
• Windows installer / Additions: added option to prevent creating of start menu items (bug #15922)
• Windows Additions / VGA: if the guest's power management turns a virtual screen off, blank the corresponding VM window rather than hide the window
• Windows Additions: fixed a generic bug which could lead to freezing shared folders (bug #15662)
• Linux hosts / guests: fix for kernels with CONFIG_CPUMASK_OFFSTACK set (bug #16020)
• Linux Additions: don't require all virtual consoles be in text mode. This should fix cases when the guest is booted with a graphical boot screen (bug #15683)
• Linux Additions: added depmod overrides for the vboxguest and vboxsf kernel modules to fix conflicts with modules shipped by certain Linux distributions
• X11 Additions: disable 3D on the guest if the host does not provide enough capabilities (bug #15860)

VirtualBox 5.1.6 (released 2016-09-12)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: fixed issue with opening '.vbox' files and it's aliases
• GUI: keyboard grabbing fixes (bugs #15771 and #15745)
• GUI: fix for passing through Ctrl + mouse-click (Mac OS X hosts only; bug #15714)
• GUI: fixed automatic deletion of extension pack files (bugs #11352 and #14742)
• USB: fixed showing unknown device instead of the manufacturer or product description under certain circumstances (5.1.0 regression; bug #15764)
• XHCI: another fix for a hanging guest under certain conditions as result of the fix for bug #15747, this time for Windows 7 guests
• Serial: fixed high CPU usage with certain USB to serial converters on Linux hosts (bug #7796)
• Storage: fixed attaching stream optimized VMDK images (bug #14764)
• Storage: reject image variants which are unsupported by the backend (bug #7227)
• Storage: fixed loading saved states created with VirtualBox 5.0.10 and older when using a SCSI controller (bug #15865)
• Storage: fixed broken NVMe emulation if the host I/O cache setting is enabled
• Storage: fixed using multiple NVMe controllers if ICH9 is used
• NVMe: fixed a crash during reset which could happen under certain circumstances
• Audio: fixed microphone input (5.1.2 regression; bugs #14386 and #15802)
• Audio: fixed crashes under certain conditions (5.1.0 regression; bug #15887 and others)
• Audio: fixed recording with the ALSA backend (5.1 regression)
• Audio: fixed stream access mode with OSS backend (5.1 regression, thanks to Jung-uk Kim)
• E1000: do also return masked bits when reading the ICR register, this fixes booting from iPXE (5.1.2 regression; bug #15846)
• BIOS: fixed 4bpp scanline calculation (bug #15787)
• API: relax the check for the version attribute in OVF/OVA appliances (bug #15856)
• Windows hosts: fixed crashes when terminating the VM selector or other VBox COM clients (bug #15726 and others)
• Linux Installer: fixed path to the documentation in .rpm packages (5.1.0 regression)
• Linux Installer: fixed the vboxdrv.sh script to prevent an SELinux complaint (bug #15816)
• Linux hosts: don't use 32-bit legacy capabilities
• Linux Additions: Linux 4.8 fix for the kernel display driver (bugs #15890 and #15896)
• Linux Additions: don't load the kernel modules provided by the Linux distribution but load the kernel modules from the official Guest Additions package instead (bug #15324)
• Linux Additions: fix dynamic resizing problems in recent Linux guests (bug #15875)
• User Manual: fixed error in the VBoxManage chapter for the getextradata enumerate example (bug #15862)

VirtualBox 5.1.4 (released 2016-08-16)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: show actual VM uptime in the session information window
• Audio: re-enabled speakers for Mac OS X guests (5.1.0 regression; bug #15611)
• Audio: fixed crashes under certain conditions
• USB: fixed a hang under certain conditions
• USB: fixed a hanging guest under certain conditions (bug #15747)
• PIIX4: implemented dummy SMBus controller to prevent annoying Linux kernel warnings about uninitialized SMBus base address (bug #9517)
• NVMe: several fixes to improve stability, fixed a crash while saving a VM state
• VMDK: Fixed an issue creating fixed size images with certain sizes and the Split2G option enabled (bug #15748)
• VHDX: fixed cloning images with VBoxManage clonehd (bug #14288)
• Storage: Fixed broken bandwidth limitation when the limit is very low (bug #14982)
• EFI: fixed sending debug messages in the EFI firmware if a serial port is enabled (bug #12161)
• OVF: when importing appliances, make sure that the version of the embedded VirtualBox-specific settings is processed, to get the default settings handling right
• VBoxManage: Don't try to set the medium type if there is no change (bug #13850)
• Linux installer: fixed some scripting issues (bugs #15701 and #15702)
• Linux installer: fixed a path issue on certain Linux distributions (bug #15717)
• Windows hosts: fixed corrupted mouse pointers with some Linux and Solaris guests (bug #15665)
• Linux Additions: made the video driver work on 32-bit guests with large video memory sizes (bug #15621)
• Linux Additions: made the video driver work on kernel 4.7 and later (bug #15769)
• Linux Additions: converted a failure message to an informational one when drivers could not be stopped during upgrade (bug #15692)
• Linux Additions: made the video driver work around an X server bug which cause screen refresh to stop (bug #15511)
• Windows Additions: auto-resizing fixes for Windows 10 guests (bug #15257)
• Windows Additions: fixed VBoxTray problems with Windows 2000 (bug #15661)

VirtualBox 5.1.2 (released 2016-07-21)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: several fixes
• GUI: fixed screenshot if the VM is started in separate mode
• GUI: fixed issue with double-click/opening registered file types (.vbox and .vbox-extpack) on Mac OS X (bug #15648)
• GUI: fixed a bug which made it impossible close some error/warning messages using the close button
• GUI: weakened the control over the VM window behavior allowing to resize it across multiple screens and to use in Snap Assist techniques
• GUI: jump to the second tab of the session information window (5.1.0 regression)
• GUI: fix for Alt-Tab
• Storage: fixed creating fixed size VHD images (bug #15601)
• Storage: fixed a hang during power off if the VM was suspended before and a NVMe controller is configured
• USB: fixed a crash under certain conditions
• Audio: make AC'97 volume control work again (5.1.0 regression; bug #15598)
• Audio: fixed rare VM hangs when using AC'97 emulation
• Audio: SB16 fixes
• EFI: fixed access to devices attached to SATA port 2 and higher (bug #15607)
• OVA: fix for checking certain signatures
• OVA: fixed MAC address generation for appliances created by VirtualBox (5.1.0 regression; bug #15623)
• API: fixed audio settings handling for older config files (bug #15626)
• API: fixed truncation of USB product/vendor IDs on Linux hosts (5.1.0 regression; bug #15644)
• API: fixed VRDP with authentication (bug #15653)
• API: don't crash if there is no graphics controller configured (bug #15628)
• Linux hosts: fixed EL5 builds (bug #15634)
• non-Windows hosts: fixed a crash during shutdown under rare circumstances (bug #15568)
• Linux Additions: fixed SELinux issue which prevented certain Linux guests to work in 3D mode (bug #15574)
• User Manual: updates

VirtualBox 5.1 (released 2016-07-12)

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

• VMM: new APIC and I/O APIC implementations that result in significantly improved performance in certain situations (for example with networking, bug #15295)
• VMM: added support for Hyper-V paravirtualized debugging of Windows guests
• VMM: emulate even more MMIO and shadow pagetable exits without going back to user mode
• GUI: overall migration to Qt5 (bug #11775)
• GUI: passive API event listener improving the VM GUI performance and response time
• Audio: added HDA (High Definition Audio) support for newer Linux guests
• Audio: added on-demand timers which should improve the overall performance and reduce the CPU consumption
• Audio: more fine-grained volume control for the AC'97 emulation, which now also takes the master volume control into account
• better support for Python 3

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

• VMM: activate the x2APIC by default for Linux guests
• VMM: many more fixes
• GUI: the Detach UI action is now a part of the VM Machine menu
• GUI: reworked session information window
• GUI: the new VM wizard now allows to choose the VM location for the VM which is being created
• GUI: fixed location of touch events in unscaled HiDPI mode (bugs #14366, #14367)
• GUI: various bugfixes and internal cleanup
• Storage: use fallocate() or similar if present to speed up creating fixed-sized disk images (bug #5967)
• Storage: implemented NVMHCI-compatible storage controller
• Audio: various bugfixes and infrastructure improvements
• E1000: implemented interrupt throttling for performance improvements
• EFI: many improvements, for example allow to boot from USB
• OVF: improved handling of signed manifests
• API: Windows XP guests and Windows 2003 server guests now default to the E1000 T Server network card
• VBoxSVC: fixed several memory leaks when handling .dmg images
• Installers: ship VBoxBugReport
• Windows hosts: reworked COM proxy (e.g. bug #8298)
• Linux installers: no longer rely on DKMS for module rebuilding
• Linux Additions: fix a problem when updating the initramfs after the guest modules are compiled (bug #15579)
• Linux Additions: try to fix a problem where the OpenGL libraries where loaded by the X server when we only support X clients (bug #15574)