Sun Microsystems VIRTUALBOX 3.0.0 User manual

Sun VirtualBox R

User Manual
Version 3.0.0
c
2004-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
http://www.virtualbox.org

Contents
1 Introduction 9
1.1 Virtualization basics ............................. 9
1.2 Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) ......... 11
1.3 Features overview .............................. 13
1.4 Supported host operating systems ..................... 16
1.5 Supported guest operating systems ..................... 17
1.6 64-bit guests ................................. 18
2 Installation 19
2.1 Installing on Windows hosts ......................... 19
2.1.1 Prerequisites ............................. 19
2.1.2 Performing the installation ..................... 19
2.1.3 Uninstallation ............................ 20
2.1.4 Unattended installation ....................... 20
2.2 Installing on Mac OS X hosts ........................ 20
2.2.1 Performing the installation ..................... 20
2.2.2 Uninstallation ............................ 21
2.2.3 Unattended installation ....................... 21
2.3 Installing on Linux hosts ........................... 21
2.3.1 Prerequisites ............................. 21
2.3.2 The VirtualBox kernel module ................... 21
2.3.3 USB and advanced networking support .............. 23
2.3.4 Performing the installation ..................... 23
2.3.5 Starting VirtualBox on Linux .................... 28
2.4 Installing on Solaris hosts .......................... 28
2.4.1 Performing the installation ..................... 28
2.4.2 Starting VirtualBox on Solaris ................... 29
2.4.3 Uninstallation ............................ 29
2.4.4 Unattended installation ....................... 30
2.4.5 Configuring a zone for running VirtualBox ............ 30
3 Starting out with VirtualBox 31
3.1 Starting the graphical user interface .................... 31
3.2 Creating a virtual machine ......................... 32
3.3 Basics of virtual machine configuration ................... 36
3.4 Running a virtual machine ......................... 38
3.4.1 Keyboard and mouse support in virtual machines ......... 39
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3.4.2 Changing removable media ..................... 41
3.4.3 Saving the state of the machine .................. 41
3.4.4 Snapshots .............................. 42
3.5 The Virtual Disk Manager .......................... 43
3.6 Deleting virtual machines .......................... 45
3.7 Virtual machine settings ........................... 45
3.7.1 General settings ........................... 46
3.7.2 System settings ........................... 47
3.7.3 Display settings ........................... 49
3.7.4 Hard disk settings .......................... 50
3.7.5 CD/DVD-ROM and floppy settings ................. 51
3.7.6 Audio settings ............................ 52
3.7.7 Network settings ........................... 52
3.7.8 Serial ports .............................. 53
3.7.9 USB support ............................. 54
3.7.10 Shared folders ............................ 56
3.8 Importing and exporting virtual machines ................. 56
4 Guest Additions 60
4.1 Introduction ................................. 60
4.2 Windows Guest Additions .......................... 61
4.2.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions .............. 62
4.2.2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions .............. 63
4.2.3 Unattended Installation ....................... 63
4.2.4 Manual file extraction ........................ 64
4.2.5 Windows Vista networking ..................... 64
4.3 Linux Guest Additions ............................ 64
4.3.1 Installing the Linux Guest Additions ................ 65
4.3.2 Video acceleration and high resolution graphics modes ..... 66
4.3.3 Updating the Linux Guest Additions ................ 66
4.4 Solaris Guest Additions ........................... 67
4.4.1 Installing the Solaris Guest Additions ............... 67
4.4.2 Uninstalling the Solaris Guest Additions .............. 67
4.4.3 Updating the Solaris Guest Additions ............... 68
4.5 OS/2 Guest Additions ............................ 68
4.6 Folder sharing ................................ 68
4.7 Seamless windows .............................. 70
4.8 Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and DirectX 8/9) .......... 71
4.9 Guest properties ............................... 72
5 Virtual storage 75
5.1 Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI .............. 75
5.2 Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD) .................... 77
5.3 Configuring image write operations .................... 78
5.4 Cloning disk images ............................. 80
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5.5 iSCSI servers ................................. 80
5.5.1 Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking ........... 80
6 Virtual networking 82
6.1 Virtual networking hardware ........................ 82
6.2 Introduction to networking modes ..................... 83
6.3 “Not attached” mode ............................. 84
6.4 Network Address Translation (NAT) .................... 84
6.4.1 Configuring port forwarding with NAT ............... 84
6.4.2 PXE booting with NAT ........................ 85
6.4.3 NAT limitations ........................... 85
6.5 Bridged networking ............................. 86
6.6 Internal networking ............................. 88
6.7 Host-only networking ............................ 89
7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines 90
7.1 Introduction ................................. 90
7.2 Using VBoxManage to control virtual machines .............. 91
7.3 VBoxSDL, the simplified VM displayer ................... 92
7.4 Remote virtual machines (VRDP support) ................. 93
7.4.1 VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server ................ 94
7.4.2 Step by step: creating a virtual machine on a headless server . . 95
7.4.3 Remote USB ............................. 97
7.4.4 RDP authentication ......................... 97
7.4.5 RDP encryption ........................... 98
7.4.6 VRDP multiple connections ..................... 99
8 VBoxManage reference 100
8.1 VBoxManage list ...............................105
8.2 VBoxManage showvminfo ..........................105
8.3 VBoxManage registervm / unregistervm ..................106
8.4 VBoxManage createvm ............................107
8.5 VBoxManage modifyvm ...........................107
8.5.1 General settings ...........................107
8.5.2 Storage settings ...........................109
8.5.3 Networking settings .........................110
8.5.4 Serial port, audio, clipboard, VRDP and USB settings ......111
8.6 VBoxManage import .............................112
8.7 VBoxManage export .............................113
8.8 VBoxManage startvm ............................114
8.9 VBoxManage controlvm ...........................115
8.10 VBoxManage discardstate ..........................116
8.11 VBoxManage snapshot ............................116
8.12 VBoxManage openmedium / closemedium .................116
8.13 VBoxManage showhdinfo ..........................117
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8.14 VBoxManage createhd ............................117
8.15 VBoxManage modifyhd ...........................118
8.16 VBoxManage clonehd ............................118
8.17 VBoxManage convertfromraw ........................119
8.18 VBoxManage addiscsidisk ..........................120
8.19 VBoxManage getextradata/setextradata ..................121
8.20 VBoxManage setproperty ..........................121
8.21 VBoxManage usbfilter add/modify/remove ................122
8.22 VBoxManage sharedfolder add/remove ..................122
8.23 VBoxManage metrics .............................122
8.24 VBoxManage guestproperty .........................124
8.25 VBoxManage dhcpserver ...........................125
9 Advanced topics 127
9.1 VirtualBox configuration data ........................127
9.2 Automated Windows guest logons (VBoxGINA) ..............128
9.3 Custom external VRDP authentication ...................129
9.4 Secure labeling with VBoxSDL .......................131
9.5 Custom VESA resolutions ..........................132
9.6 Multiple monitors for the guest .......................133
9.7 Releasing modifiers with VBoxSDL on Linux ................133
9.8 Launching more than 120 VMs on Solaris hosts ..............134
9.9 Using serial ports ...............................134
9.10 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest ..................135
9.10.1 Access to entire physical hard disk .................135
9.10.2 Access to individual physical hard disk partitions .........136
9.11 Allowing a virtual machine to start even with unavailable CD/DVD/floppy
devices ....................................138
9.12 Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine ...................138
9.12.1 Configuring the address of a NAT network interface .......138
9.12.2 Configuring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network in-
terface ................................138
9.12.3 Tuning TCP/IP buffers for NAT ...................139
9.12.4 Binding NAT sockets to a specific interface ............139
9.12.5 Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode .................140
9.13 Configuring the maximum resolution of guests when using the graphi-
cal frontend ..................................140
9.14 Configuring the BIOS DMI information ...................140
9.15 Configuring the guest time stamp counter (TSC) to reflect guest execution141
9.16 Configuring the hard disk vendor product data (VPD) ..........142
10 VirtualBox programming interfaces 143
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11 Troubleshooting 144
11.1 General ....................................144
11.1.1 Collecting debugging information .................144
11.1.2 Guest shows IDE errors for VDI on slow host file system . . . . . 144
11.1.3 Responding to guest IDE flush requests ..............145
11.2 Windows guests ...............................146
11.2.1 Windows bluescreens after changing VM configuration . . . . . 146
11.2.2 Windows 0x101 bluescreens with SMP enabled (IPI timeout) . . 146
11.2.3 Windows 2000 installation failures ................146
11.2.4 How to record bluescreen information from Windows guests . . 147
11.2.5 No networking in Windows Vista guests ..............147
11.2.6 Windows guests may cause a high CPU load ...........147
11.3 Linux guests .................................147
11.3.1 Linux guests may cause a high CPU load .............147
11.3.2 AMD Barcelona CPUs ........................148
11.3.3 Buggy Linux 2.6 kernel versions ..................148
11.4 Windows hosts ................................148
11.4.1 VBoxSVC out-of-process COM server issues ............148
11.4.2 CD/DVD changes not recognized ..................149
11.4.3 Sluggish response when using Microsoft RDP client .......149
11.4.4 Running an iSCSI initiator and target on a single system . . . . . 150
11.5 Linux hosts ..................................150
11.5.1 Linux kernel module refuses to load ................150
11.5.2 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found ................150
11.5.3 Linux host CD/DVD drive not found (older distributions) . . . . 151
11.5.4 Linux host floppy not found ....................151
11.5.5 Strange guest IDE error messages when writing to CD/DVD . . . 151
11.5.6 VBoxSVC IPC issues .........................152
11.5.7 USB not working ..........................152
11.5.8 PAX/grsec kernels ..........................153
11.5.9 Linux kernel vmalloc pool exhausted ...............153
11.6 Solaris hosts .................................154
11.6.1 Cannot start VM, not enough contiguous memory ........154
11.6.2 VM aborts with out of memory errors on Solaris 10 hosts . . . . 154
12 Change log 155
12.1 Version 3.0.0 (2009-06-30) .........................155
12.2 Version 2.2.4 (2009-05-29) .........................158
12.3 Version 2.2.2 (2009-04-27) .........................160
12.4 Version 2.2.0 (2009-04-08) .........................161
12.5 Version 2.1.4 (2009-02-16) .........................165
12.6 Version 2.1.2 (2009-01-21) .........................167
12.7 Version 2.1.0 (2008-12-17) .........................170
12.8 Version 2.0.8 (2009-03-10) .........................172
12.9 Version 2.0.6 (2008-11-21) .........................173
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12.10Version 2.0.4 (2008-10-24) .........................174
12.11Version 2.0.2 (2008-09-12) .........................176
12.12Version 2.0.0 (2008-09-04) .........................178
12.13Version 1.6.6 (2008-08-26) .........................179
12.14Version 1.6.4 (2008-07-30) .........................180
12.15Version 1.6.2 (2008-05-28) .........................182
12.16Version 1.6.0 (2008-04-30) .........................183
12.17Version 1.5.6 (2008-02-19) .........................185
12.18Version 1.5.4 (2007-12-29) .........................187
12.19Version 1.5.2 (2007-10-18) .........................189
12.20Version 1.5.0 (2007-08-31) .........................191
12.21Version 1.4.0 (2007-06-06) .........................194
12.22Version 1.3.8 (2007-03-14) .........................197
12.23Version 1.3.6 (2007-02-20) .........................198
12.24Version 1.3.4 (2007-02-12) .........................199
12.25Version 1.3.2 (2007-01-15) .........................200
12.26Version 1.2.4 (2006-11-16) .........................201
12.27Version 1.2.2 (2006-11-14) .........................201
12.28Version 1.1.12 (2006-11-14) ........................202
12.29Version 1.1.10 (2006-07-28) ........................203
12.30Version 1.1.8 (2006-07-17) .........................203
12.31Version 1.1.6 (2006-04-18) .........................204
12.32Version 1.1.4 (2006-03-09) .........................204
12.33Version 1.1.2 (2006-02-03) .........................205
12.34Version 1.0.50 (2005-12-16) ........................207
12.35Version 1.0.48 (2005-11-23) ........................207
12.36Version 1.0.46 (2005-11-04) ........................208
12.37Version 1.0.44 (2005-10-25) ........................208
12.38Version 1.0.42 (2005-08-30) ........................209
12.39Version 1.0.40 (2005-06-17) ........................210
12.40Version 1.0.39 (2005-05-05) ........................211
12.41Version 1.0.38 (2005-04-27) ........................211
12.42Version 1.0.37 (2005-04-12) ........................212
13 Known limitations 213
14 Third-party licenses 216
14.1 Materials ...................................216
14.2 Licenses ....................................218
14.2.1 GNU General Public License (GPL) .................218
14.2.2 GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) ............223
14.2.3 Mozilla Public License (MPL) ....................230
14.2.4 X Consortium License (X11) ....................237
14.2.5 zlib license ..............................237
14.2.6 OpenSSL license ...........................238
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14.2.7 Slirp license .............................239
14.2.8 liblzf license .............................239
14.2.9 libpng license ............................240
14.2.10lwIP license .............................240
14.2.11libxml license ............................241
14.2.12libxslt licenses ............................241
14.2.13gSOAP Public License Version 1.3a .................242
14.2.14Chromium licenses .........................249
14.2.15curl license ..............................251
14.2.16dnsproxy license ...........................252
15 VirtualBox privacy policy 253
Glossary 255
8

1 Introduction
Sun VirtualBox is a collection of powerful virtual machine tools, targeting desktop
computers, enterprise servers and embedded systems. With VirtualBox, you can virtu-
alize 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems on machines with Intel and AMD processors,
either by using hardware virtualization features provided by these processors or even
entirely in software, at your option.
You can find a brief feature overview in chapter 1.3,Features overview, page 13; see
chapter 12,Change log, page 155 for a detailed list of version changes.
1.1 Virtualization basics
With VirtualBox, you can run unmodified operating systems – including all of the
software that is installed on them – directly on top of your existing operating system,
in a special environment called a “virtual machine”. Your physical computer is then
usually called the “host”, while the virtual machine is often called a “guest”.
The following image shows you how VirtualBox, on a Linux host, is running Win-
dows Vista as guest operating system in a virtual machine window:
VirtualBox allows the guest code to run unmodified, directly on the host computer,
and the guest operating system “thinks” it’s running on a real machine. In the back-
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1 Introduction
ground, however, VirtualBox intercepts certain operations that the guest performs to
make sure that the guest does not interfere with other programs on the host.
The techniques and features that VirtualBox provides are useful for several scenar-
ios:
•Operating system support. With VirtualBox, one can run software written for
one operating system on another (for example, Windows software on Linux)
without having to reboot to use it. You can even install an old operating system
such as DOS or OS/2 in a virtual machine if your real computer’s hardware is
too advanced to be supported.
•Infrastructure consolidation. Virtualization can significantly reduce hardware
and electricity costs. The full performance provided by today’s powerful hard-
ware is only rarely really needed, and typical servers have an average load of
only a fraction of their theoretical power. So, instead of running many such
physical computers that are only partially used, one can pack many virtual ma-
chines onto a few powerful hosts and balance the loads between them. With
VirtualBox, you can even run virtual machines as mere servers for the VirtualBox
Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP), with full client USB support. This allows for
consolidating the desktop machines in an enterprise on just a few RDP servers,
while the actual clients only have to be capable of displaying VRDP data.
•Testing and disaster recovery. Once installed, a virtual box and its virtual hard
disk can be considered a “container” that can be arbitrarily frozen, woken up,
copied, backed up, and transported between hosts. On top of that, with the use
of another VirtualBox feature called “snapshots”, one can save a particular state
of a virtual machine and revert back to that state, if necessary. This way, one
can freely experiment with a computing environment. If something goes wrong
(e.g. after installing misbehaving software or infecting the guest with a virus),
one can easily switch back to a previous snapshot and avoid the need of frequent
backups and restores.
When dealing with virtualization (and also for understanding the following chapters
of this documentation), it helps to acquaint oneself with a bit of crucial terminology,
especially the following terms:
Host operating system (host OS): the operating system of the physical computer
where VirtualBox is running. There are versions of VirtualBox for several host
operating systems (see chapter 1.4,Supported host operating systems, page 16 for
further information). While the various VirtualBox versions are usually discussed
together in this document, there may be platform-specific differences which we
will point out where appropriate.
Guest operating system (guest OS): the operating system that is running inside
the virtual machine. Theoretically, VirtualBox can run any x86 operating sys-
tem (DOS, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD, OpenBSD), but to achieve near-native
10