Changelog

VirtualBox 3.0.12 (released 2009-11-17)

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

• VMM: reduced IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 guests; requires 64 bits support (VT-x only; bug #4392)
• VMM: fixed double timer interrupt delivery on old Linux kernels using IO-APIC (caused guest time to run at double speed; bug #3135)
• VMM: reinitialize VT-x and AMD-V after host suspend or hibernate; some BIOSes forget this (Windows hosts only; bug #5421)
• VMM: fix loading of saved state when RAM preallocation is enabled
• BIOS: ignore unknown shutdown codes instead of causing a guru meditation (bug #5389)
• GUI: never start a VM on a single click into the selector window (bug #2676)
• Serial: reduce the probability of lost bytes if the host end is connected to a raw file
• VMDK: fix handling of split image variants and fix a 3.0.10 regression (bug #5355)
• VRDP: fixed occasional VRDP server crash
• Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, some guests were able to send / receive packets (E1000; bug #5366)
• Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, the PCNet card received some spurious packets which might confuse the guest (bug #4496)
• Shared folders: fixed changing case of file names (bug #2520)
• Windows Additions: fix crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)
• Linux Additions: fix writing to files opened in O_APPEND mode (bug #3805)
• Solaris Additions: fix regression in guest additions driver which among other things caused lost guest property updates and periodic error messages being written to the system log

VirtualBox 3.0.10 (released 2009-10-29)

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

• VMM: guest SMP stability fixes
• VMM: fixed guru meditation with nested paging and SMP guests (bug #5222)
• VMM: changed VT-x/AMD-V usage to detect other active hypervisors; necessary for e.g. Windows 7 XP compatibility mode (Windows & Mac OS X hosts only; bug #4239)
• VMM: guru meditation during SCO OpenServer installation and reboot (VT-x only; bug #5164)
• VMM: fixed accessed bit handling in certain cases (bug #5248)
• VMM: fixed VPID flushing (VT-x only)
• VMM: fixed broken nested paging for 64 bits guests on 32 bits hosts (AMD-V only; bug #5285)
• VMM: fixed loading of old saved states/snapshots (bug #3984)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed memory leaks (bug #5084)
• Mac OS X hosts (Snow Leopard): fixed redraw problem in a dual screen setup (bug #4942)
• Windows hosts: installer updates for Windows 7
• Solaris hosts: out of memory handled incorrectly (bug #5241)
• Solaris hosts: the previous fix for #5077 broke the DVD host support on Solaris 10 (VBox 3.0.8 regression)
• Linux hosts: fixed module compilation against Linux 2.6.32rc4 and later
• Guest Additions: fixed possible guest OS kernel memory exhaustion
• Guest Additions: fixed stability issues with SMP guests
• Windows Additions: fixed color depth issue with low resolution hosts, netbooks, etc. (bug #4935)
• Windows Additions: fixed NO_MORE_FILES error when saving to shared folders (bug #4106)
• Windows Additions: fixed subdirectory creation on shared folders (bug #4299)
• Linux Additions: sendfile() returned -EOVERFLOW when executed on a shared folder (bug #2921)
• Linux Additions: fixed incorrect disk usage value (non-Windows hosts only)
• Linux installer: register the module sources at DKMS even if the package provides proper modules for the current running kernel
• 3D support: removed invalid OpenGL assertion (bug #5158)
• Network: fixed the Am79C973 PCNet emulation for QNX (and probably other) guests (bug #3206)
• VMDK: fix handling of split image variants
• VHD: do not delay updating the footer when expanding the image to prevent image inconsistency
• USB: stability fix for some USB 2.0 devices
• GUI: added a search index to the .chm help file
• GUI/Windows hosts: fixed CapsLock handling on French keyboards (bug #2025)
• Shared clipboard/X11 hosts: fixed a crash when clipboard initialisation failed (bug #4987)

VirtualBox 3.0.8 (released 2009-10-06)

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

• VMM: fixed 64 bits guest on 32 bits host regression in 3.0.6 (VT-x only; bug #4947)
• VMM: fixed a recompiler triple fault guru meditation (VT-x & AMD-V only; bug #5058)
• VMM: fixed hang after guest state restore (AMD-V, 32 bits Windows guest and IO-APIC enabled only; bug #5059)
• VMM: fixed paging issue with OS/2 guests
• VMM: fixed guru meditation in rare cases (2.0 regression; software virtualization only)
• VMM: fixed release assertion during state restore when using the Sound Blaster 16 emulation (bug #5042)
• Security: fixed vulnerability that allowed to execute commands with root privileges
• Linux hosts: fixed runtime assertion in semaphore implementation which was triggered under certain conditions (bug #616)
• Linux hosts: change the default USB access mode on certain distributions (bugs #3394 and #4291)
• Linux hosts: on hardened Gentoo, the VBoxSVC daemon crashed by opening the VM network settings (bug #3732)
• Linux hosts, Solaris hosts: pass the XAUTHORITY variable along the DISPLAY variable when starting a VM from VBoxManage or from the VM selector (bug #5063)
• Linux hosts: use sysfs to enumerate host drives if hal is not available
• Solaris hosts: fixed a bug which would hang the host sporadically as interrupts were not re-enabled everytime
• Solaris hosts: fixed a kernel panic with bridged and host-only networking (bug #4775)
• Solaris hosts: fixed incorrectly persistent CD/DVD-ROMs when changing them (bug #5077)
• X11-based hosts: support additional function keys on Sun keyboards (bug #4907)
• Mac OS X hosts (Snow Leopard): fixed problem starting headless VMs without a graphical session (bug #5002)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed problem listing host-only adapter names with trailing garbage (attached VMs won't start)
• Windows Additions: now work with Vista 64-bit Home editions (bug #3865)
• Windows Additions: fixed screen corruption with ZoomText Magnifier
• Windows Additions: fixed NPGetUniversalName failure (bug #4853)
• Windows Additions: fixed Windows NT regression (bug #4946)
• Windows Additions: fixed VBoxService not running if no Shared Folders are installed
• Linux Additions: implemented ftrunctate (bug #4771)
• VRDP: start VM even if configured VRDP port is in use
• Networking: the PCnet network device stopped receiving under rare conditions (bug #4870)
• VBoxManage: implemented controlvm vrdpport command
• iSCSI: fixed issue with NetApp targets (#5072)
• SCSI: add support for virtual disks larger than 2TB
• USB: fixed potential crash when unplugging USB2 devices (bug #5089)
• NAT: IPSEC did not properly work with Linux guests (bug #4801)

VirtualBox 3.0.6 (released 2009-09-09)

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

• VMM: fixed IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003 guests (AMD-V only; bug #4392)
• VMM: fixed a Guru meditation under certain circumstances when enabling a disabled device (bug #4510)
• VMM: fixed a Guru meditation when booting certain Arch Linux guests (software virtualization only; bug #2149)
• VMM: fixed hangs with 64 bits Solaris & OpenSolaris guests (bug #2258)
• VMM: fixed decreasing rdtsc values (AMD-V & VT-x only; bug #2869)
• VMM: small Solaris/OpenSolaris performance improvements (VT-x only)
• VMM: cpuid change to correct reported virtual CPU id in Linux
• VMM: NetBSD 5.0.1 CD hangs during boot (VT-x only; bug #3947)
• Solaris hosts: worked around an issue that caused the host to hang (bug #4486)
• Solaris hosts: fixed a rare host system deadlock when using bridged networking
• Solaris hosts: fixed a potential host system deadlock when CPUs were onlined or offlined
• Solaris hosts installer: added missing dependency for UTF-8 package (bug #4899)
• Linux hosts: don't crash on Linux PAE kernels < 2.6.11 (in particular RHEL/CentOS 4); disable VT-x on Linux kernels < 2.6.13 (bug #1842)
• Linux/Solaris hosts: correctly detect keyboards with fewer keys than usual (bug #4799)
• Mac OS X hosts: prevent password dialogs in 32 bits Snow Leopard
• Python WS: fixed issue with certain enumerations constants having wrong values in Python webservices bindings
• Python API: several threading and platform issues fixed
• Python shell: added exportVM command
• Python shell: various improvements and bugfixes
• Python shell: corrected detection of home directory in remote case
• OVF: fixed XML comment handling that could lead to parser errors
• Main: fixed a rare parsing problem with port numbers of USB device filters in machine settings XML
• Main: restrict guest RAM size to 1.5 GB (32 bits Windows hosts only)
• Main: fixed possible hang during guest reboot (bug #3792)
• GUI: fixed rare crash when removing the last disk from the media manager (bug #4795)
• VBoxManage: fixed guestproperty for Mac OS X hosts (bug #3806)
• VBoxManage: fixed setting guest properties with --flags or -flags
• Webservice: fixed a severe memory leak, at least on platforms using XPCOM
• Serial: fixed host mode (Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X hosts; bug #4672)
• VRDP: Remote USB Protocol version 3
• SATA: fixed hangs and BSODs introduced with 3.0.4 (bugs #4695, #4739, #4710)
• SATA: fixed a bug which prevented Windows 7 from detecting more than one hard disk
• SATA/SCSI: fixed rare random guest crashes and hangs
• SCSI: fixed problem with Fedora 11 refusing to boot after kernel update
• iSCSI: fix logging out when the target has dropped the connection, fix negotiation of simparameters, fix command resend when the connection was dropped, fix processing SCSI status for targets which do not use phase collapse
• BIOS: fixed a bug that caused the OS/2 boot manager to fail (2.1.0 regression, bug #3911)
• PulseAudio: don't hang during VM termination if the connection to the server was unexpectedly terminated (bug #3100)
• Mouse: fixed weird mouse behaviour with SMP (Solaris) guests (bug #4538)
• HostOnly Network: fixed failure in CreateHostOnlyNetworkInterface() on Linux (no GUID)
• HostOnly Network: fixed wrong DHCP server startup while hostonly interface bringup on Linux
• HostOnly Network: fixed incorrect factory and default MAC address on Solaris
• HostOnly Network: fixed the problem with listing host-only interfaces on Mac OS X when all physical interfaces are down (bugs #4698, #4790)
• DHCP: fixed a bug in the DHCP server where it allocated one IP address less than the configured range
• E1000: fixed receiving of multicast packets
• E1000: fixed up/down link notification after resuming a VM
• NAT: fixed ethernet address corruptions (bug #4839)
• NAT: fixed hangs, dropped packets and retransmission problems (bug #4343)
• Bridged Network: fixed packet queue issue which might cause DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSOD for Windows hosts (bug #4821)
• Windows Additions: fixed a bug in VBoxGINA which prevented selecting the right domain when logging in the first time
• Windows host installer: should now also work on unicode systems (like Korean, bug #3707)
• Windows host installer: check for sufficient disk space
• Shared clipboard: do not send zero-terminated text to X11 guests and hosts (bug #4712)
• Shared clipboard: use a less CPU intensive way of checking for new data on X11 guests and hosts (bug #4092)
• Guest Additions: do not hide the host mouse cursor when restoring a saved state (bug #4700)
• Windows guests: fixed issues with the display of the mouse cursor image (bugs #2603, #2660 and #4817)
• SUSE 11 guests: fixed Guest Additions installation (bug #4506)
• Guest Additions: support Fedora 12 Alpha guests (bugs #4731, #4733 and #4734)

VirtualBox 3.0.4 (released 2009-08-04)

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

• VMM: 64 bits guest stability fixes (AMD-V only; bugs #3923 & #3666)
• VMM: SMP stability fixes (AMD-V only)
• VMM: SMP performance improvement (esp. for Solaris guests)
• VMM: eliminated several bugs which could lead to a host reboot
• VMM: fixed OS/2 ACP2 boot floppy hang (VT-x only)
• VMM: small performance improvement for OpenSolaris guests (AMD-V only)
• VMM: fixed CentOS/Xen reboot (software virtualization only; bug #4509)
• SATA: fixed hangs / BSOD during Windows XP installation (bug #4342)
• SATA: mark the ports as non hotpluggable (bug #3920)
• 3D support: fix deadlocks and context/window tracking for multithreaded applications (bug #3922)
• 3D support: fix memory leaks when terminating OpenGL guest applications
• 3D support: fix crash in Call of Duty
• NAT: using two or more NAT adapters in one VM was broken (3.0.0 regression)
• NAT: fixed network communication corruptions (bugs #4499, #4540, #4591, #4604)
• NAT: fixed passive ftp access to host server (bug #4427)
• iSCSI: fixed cloning to/from iSCSI disks
• GUI: fixed path separator handling for the OVF export on Windows (bug #4354)
• GUI: the mini toolbar was only shown on the first host display (bug #4654)
• GUI: added a VM option to display the mini toolbar on top
• GUI: don’t crash when adding plus configuring host-only network interfaces
• Shared Folders: fixed selection of a drive root directory as a shared folder host path in VirtualBox (Windows host only)
• USB: fixed a bug that may have rendered USB devicefilter settings inactive (3.0.2 regression, bug #4668)
• Guest Additions: report the Guest Additions version to the guest properties (bug #3415)
• Mac OS X hosts: fix creation of VMDK files giving raw partition access (bug #1461)
• Mac OS X hosts: improved support for Snow Leopard
• Linux hosts: fixed problems leading to wrong colors or transparency in host windows with some graphics drivers (bug #3095)
• Linux hosts: hardware detection fallbacks if the hal service fails to find any DVD drives.
• Linux and Solaris hosts: Work around color handling problems in Qt (bug #4353)
• Solaris hosts: fixed memory leaks in host-only networking
• Solaris Installer: fixed incorrect netmask for Host-only interface (bug #4590)
• Solaris Installer: added package dependency for Python and Python-devel (bug #4570)
• X11 guests: prevent windows from being skipped in seamless mode KDE guests (bugs #1681 and #3574)
• X11 guests: fixed screen corruption in X11 guests when large amounts of video RAM were allocated (bug #4430)
• X11 guests: some fixes when switching between host and guest-drawn mouse pointers.
• X11 guests: fixed an issue which caused seamless mode to stop working as it should (the main issue listed in bug #2238).

VirtualBox 3.0.2 (released 2009-07-10)

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

• VMM: fixed network regressions (guest hangs during network IO) (bug #4343)
• VMM: guest SMP performance improvements
• VMM: fixed hangs and poor performance with Kaspersky Internet Security (VT-x/AMD-V only; bug #1778)
• VMM: fixed crashes when executing certain Linux guests (software virtualization only; bugs #2696 & #3868)
• ACPI: fixed Windows 2000 kernel hangs with IO-APIC enabled (bug #4348)
• APIC: fixed high idle load for certain Linux guests (3.0 regression)
• BIOS: properly handle Ctrl-Alt-Del in real mode
• iSCSI: fixed configuration parsing (bug #4236)
• OVF: fix potential confusion when exporting networks
• OVF: compatibility fix (bug #4452)
• NAT: fixed crashes under certain circumstances (bug #4330)
• 3D support: fixed dynamic linking on Solaris/OpenSolaris guests (bug #4399)
• 3D support: fixed incorrect context/window tracking for multithreaded apps
• Shared Folders: fixed loading from saved state (bug #1595)
• Shared Folders: host file permissions set to 0400 with Windows guest (bug #4381)
• X11 host and guest clipboard: fixed a number of issues, including bug #4380 and #4344
• X11 Additions: fixed some issues with seamless windows in X11 guests (bug #3727)
• Windows Additions: added VBoxServiceNT for NT4 guests (for time synchronization and guest properties)
• Windows Additions: fixed version lookup
• Linux hosts: workaround for buggy graphics drivers showing a black VM window on recent distributions (bug #4335)
• Linux hosts: fixed typo in kernel module startup script (bug #4388)
• Installer: support Pardus Linux
• Solaris hosts: several installer fixes
• Solaris host: fixed a preemption issue causing VMs to never start on Solaris 10 (bug #4328).
• Solaris guest: fixed mouse integration for OpenSolaris 2009.06 (bug #4365)
• Windows hosts: fixed high CPU usage after resuming the host (bug #2978)
• OVF: accept ovf:/disk/ specifiers with a single slash in addition to ovf://disk/ (bug #4452)
• Fixed a settings file conversion bug which sometimes caused hardware acceleration to be enabled for virtual machines that had no explicit configuration in the XML.

VirtualBox 3.0.0 (released 2009-06-30)

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

• Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only; see chapter 3.7.2.2 of the ​user manual)
• Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental; see chapter 4.8 of the ​user manual)
• Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests

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

• Solaris hosts: allow suspend/resume on the host when a VM is running (bug #3826)
• Solaris hosts: loosen the restriction for contiguous physical memory under certain conditions
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed guest PAE
• Linux hosts: kernel module compile fixes for 2.6.31 (bug #4264)
• VMM: fixed occasional guru meditation when loading a saved state (VT-x only)
• VMM: eliminated IO-APIC overhead with 32 bits guests (VT-x only, some Intel CPUs don’t support this feature (most do); bug #638)
• VMM: fixed 64 bits CentOS guest hangs during early boot (AMD-V only; bug #3927)
• VMM: performance improvements for certain PAE guests (e.g. Linux 2.6.29+ kernels)
• VMM: some Windows guests detected a completely wrong CPU frequency (bug #2227)
• VMM: fixed hanging and unkillable VM processes (bug #4040)
• VMM: fixed random infrequent guest crashes due to XMM state corruption (Win64 hosts only)
• VMM: performance improvements for network I/O (VT-x/AMD-V only)
• GUI: added mini toolbar for fullscreen and seamless mode (Thanks to Huihong Luo)
• GUI: redesigned settings dialogs
• GUI: allow to create/remove more than one host-only network adapters (non Windows hosts)
• GUI: display estimated time for long running operations (e.g. OVF import/export)
• GUI: fixed rare hangs when open the OVF import/export wizards (bug #4157)
• 3D support: fixed VM crashes for client applications using incorrect OpenGL states
• 3D support: fixed memory corruption when querying for supported texture compression formats
• 3D support: fixed incorrect rendering of glDrawRangeElements
• 3D support: fixed memory leak when using VBOs
• 3D support: fixed glew library detection
• 3D support: fixed random textures corruption
• VRDP: support Windows 7 RDP client
• Networking: fixed another problem with TX checksum offloading with Linux kernels up to version 2.6.18
• NAT: fixed “open ports on virtual router 10.0.2.2 - 513, 514” (forum)
• NAT: allow to configure socket and internal parameters
• NAT: allow to bind sockets to specific interface
• PXE boot: significant performance increase (VT-x/AMD-V only)
• VHD: properly write empty sectors when cloning of VHD images (bug #4080)
• VHD: fixed crash when discarding snapshots of a VHD image
• VHD: fixed access beyond the block bitmap which could lead to arbitrary crashes
• VBoxManage: fixed incorrect partition table processing when creating VMDK files giving raw partition access (bug #3510)
• VBoxManage: support cloning to existing image file
• OVF: several OVF 1.0 compatibility fixes
• OVF: fixed exporting of disk images when multiple virtual machines are exported at once
• Virtual mouse device: eliminated micro-movements of the virtual mouse which were confusing some applications (bug #3782)
• Shared Folders: sometimes a file was created using the wrong permissions (2.2.0 regression; bug #3785)
• Shared Folders: allow to change file attributes from Linux guests and use the correct file mode when creating files
• Shared Folders: some content was incorrectly written under certain conditions (bug #1187)
• Shared Folders: fixed incorrect file timestamps, when using Windows guest on a Linux host (bug #3404)
• X11 clipboard: fix duplicate end of lines (bug #4270)
• X11 guests: a number of shared clipboard fixes
• Linux guests: Guest Additions support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
• Linux guests: new daemon vboxadd-service to handle time synchronization and guest property lookup
• Linux guests: implemented guest properties (OS info, logged in users, basic network information)
• Windows host installer: VirtualBox Python API can now be installed automatically (requires Python and Win32 Extensions installed)
• USB: Support for high-speed isochronous endpoints has been added. In addition, read-ahead buffering is performed for input endpoints (currently Linux hosts only). This should allow additional devices to work, notably webcams (bug #242).
• USB: fixed error handling for some USB dongles
• Web service: fixed inability to handle NULL pointers for object arguments, which are valid values for a lot of APIs, in both the raw and the object-oriented web service.
• Web service: object-oriented bindings for JAX-WS did not exhibit interface inheritance correctly, fixed
• Web service: added support for IDisplay and IGuest interfaces, which were previously unavailable
• Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now

For the changelog of previous VirtualBox series, have a look at

• VirtualBox 2.2
• VirtualBox 2.1
• VirtualBox 2.0
• VirtualBox 1.6