Category Archives: Oracle

[EN] VirtualBox 4.3.30 released. Wait v.5.0.2 too!

Last three months I was very busy. Too many things to do, too many travels, to many… The result of this I had no chance to update my VirtualBox system for newest version. But I notice yesterday, that new version is available – I spend one day a little bit mozy lazy mode with updating/upgaring/de- and installing some software.

I went to VirtualBox Site to download newest version of Oracle’s software (version 4.3.30 released 10th of July). Then I discovered that it’s the family of old builds (as v.4.3.30, v.4.3.28, v.4.3.26 and older):

Captura_VBox_v.4.3.30

It was yesterday morning (Sept 13th) when I get newest version of VirtualBox – version 5.0.2 (why i missed version 5.0.0 from 9th July? Have no idea). Neverming. This is the newest, fresh version of VirtualBox. Based on Release Blog form latest versions. In short summary most important from my perspective:

  • support for encryption YAY!!!!
    • disk image encryption
    • encryption settings tab
    • encryption password validation on the fly
  • beginning of support for Windows 10
    • fixed crash when opening Windows 10 dialog
    • fixed audio (less important)
    • fixed potential WDDM driver crash
    • Please be aware that Windows 10 is not yet officially supported! There are known problems with VirtualBox 5.0.2 on Windows 10 hosts and with Windows 10 guests. Some of the problems are fixed in the most recent test build which can be found here.
  • support USB 3.0
  • support for paravirtualization

The following major new features were added with version 5.0.0:

  • Paravirtualization support for Windows and Linux guests to improve time-keeping accuracy and performance
  • Make more instruction set extensions available to the guest when running with hardware-assisted virtualization and nested paging. Among others this includes: SSE 4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX-2, AES-NI, POPCNT, RDRAND and RDSEED
  • xHCI Controller to support USB 3 devices (see the manual for more information)
  • Drag and drop support (bidirectional) for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests
  • Disk image encryption (see the manual for more information)
  • VMs can now be started in separate mode. The VM process is started headless while the frontend runs as a separate process which can be terminated without stopping the VM.
  • GUI: VM guest-content scaling support (including 3D acceleration)
  • GUI: New User Interface settings page for customizing status-bar, menu-bar and guest-content scaling
  • GUI: New Encryption settings tab for customizing encryption options for disk images
  • GUI: HiDPI support including application icons and optional unscaled HiDPI output on Mac OS X (including 3D acceleration)
  • GUI: Hotplugging support for SATA disks
  • New, modular audio architecture for providing a better abstraction of the host audio backends
  • Support for the NDIS6 networking framework on Windows (default on Vista and later)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added with version 5.0.2:

  • VMM: added support for guest crash report MSRs with Hyper-V paravirtualization
  • VMM: fixed an issue causing artifically high load averages on Linux hosts
  • VMM: fixed a kernel panic with thread-context hooks caused by incompatible changes made to Linux 4.2 kernels
  • VMM: fixed a saved state issue with VT-x/AMD-V disabled (5.0 regression; bug #14304)
  • VMM: fixed VERR_SUPDRV_TSC_DELTA_MEASUREMENT_FAILED Guru Meditations on certain AMD CPUs (5.0 regression; bug #14370)
  • VMM: fixed a crash while creating a guest core dumps via the VM debug facility (5.0 regression)
  • VMM: This release has AVX2 passthrough disabled on every host and AVX passthrough disabled for 64-bit VMs on 32-bit hosts. This will be properly fixed in a future 5.0.x maintenance release (see e.g. bug #14262).
  • GUI: fixed rare hang and crash on VM shutdown/poweroff
  • GUI: X11: fixed few crashes caused by the Qt alien widgets feature
  • GUI: X11: fixed various mini-toolbar geometry quirks like positioning, z-order, transiency issues on certain window managers (bug#14257)
  • GUI: X11: fixed mini-toolbar minimize button issue under certain window managers (bug #14284)
  • GUI: VM menu actions availability should now be properly updated on full-screen/seamless/scaled mode switches
  • GUI: disk encryption password validation should be performed when user confirmed the password, not after each entered symbol
  • GUI: do not change the VM/group selection in the VM Manager to the newly created VM if it was created by another client (e.g. VBoxManage)
  • GUI: Mac OS X: do not treat ‘almost maximized’ VM windows as ‘maximized’, watch for the strict window geometry instead
  • GUI: improve the quality in scaled mode under some circumstances (5.0 regression; bug #14303)
  • VBoxManage: do not deny changing the network adapter type at VM runtime (5.0 regression; bug #14308)
  • VRDP: allow Windows 10 RDP clients (bug #14216)
  • Audio: fix a possible crash on VM process termination (5.0 regression)
  • Storage: improved raw disk access on OS X by unmounting any accessed volume before first use and prevent any mount attempt by the host (bug #14219)
  • 3D: basic support for saving/restoring display lists
  • Drag and drop: fixed guest to host transfers on OS X hosts
  • Drag and drop: fixed memory leak on Windows guests
  • Shared Folders: fixed a problem with accessing CIFS shares (bug #14252)
  • Shared Folders: improved path conversion between hosts and guests with different path separators (bug #14153)
  • API: skip resetting of immutable media when the VM in saved state is started (bug #13957)
  • API: fixed method for setting medium IDs which used zero (invalid) UUIDs instead random (valid) UUIDs if no UUIDs were passed (bug#14350)
  • API: for Windows host fix detection of API client crashes which have a session open
  • OVF: properly export all VBox features including the setting for paravirtualization (bug #14390)
  • Mac OS X hosts: El Capitan USB fixes
  • Windows hosts: fixed crash when opening Windows dialogs from the VM process on Windows 10 (bug #14351)
  • Windows hosts: fixed host-only adapter creation issues on Windows 10 (bug #14040)
  • Windows hosts: fixed audio on Windows 10 (bug #14432)
  • Linux hosts: more fixes for activated SMAP on Linux 3.19 and newer (Broadwell and later; bug #13961)
  • Linux hosts: check then name space before attaching to a host network interface (bug #13795)
  • Linux Additions: Linux 4.2 fixes (bug #14227)
  • Linux Additions: improved the performance of stat() to speed up certain file operations on shared folders
  • Windows Additions: fixed a potential crash in the WDDM driver with Windows 10 (bug #14190)
  • Solaris Additions: added support for X.Org Server 1.17
  • X11 Additions: various seamless mode fixes, including invisible windows under LXDE.

 Captura_VBox_v.5_01

Now you can do to DOWNLOAD PAGE, get it for free and install: Virtual Box (for host) an Extension Pack (for host/guests). By downloading, you agree to the terms and conditions of the respective license.

  • VirtualBox 5.0.2 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack All supported platforms
    Please install the extension pack with the same version as your installed version of VirtualBox!
  • VirtualBox 5.0.2 Software Developer Kit (SDK) All platforms

#####     #####     #####     #####     #####     #####

What’s new BEFORE installation? Is not as easy as could be:

Captura_VBox5_01

Pict. 01 | Two processes blocking installation. Just kill them and click next.

Captura_VBox5_02

Pict. 02 | Another nine processes stopped installation. Should I kill them immediately? Nope!

Here is the list of all (in my case):

  • 11652 – iTunes Helper
  • 15332 – Outlook
  • 18004 – Total Commander
  • 2128 – iType
  • 2248 – Apple Mobile Device Service
  • 28300 – Microsoft Word
  • 5304 – Lync (Skype for Business)
  • 6092 – Snipping Tool
  • 8472 – Send To One Note

How they are connected with VirtualBox? It’s question for another post…

Captura_VBox5_03

Pict. 03 | After firs execution we need update Extension Pack to version 5.0.2 release 102096

Captura_VBox5_05

Pict. 04 | Here we can see three newest features: USB 3.0, support for WebCam (!) and Disk Encryption

What’s new AFTER installation? Some samples just from interface:

Captura_VBox5_06

Pict. 05 | Section: GENERAL >> new bookmark: Encryption /Cifrado. And User Interface/Interfaz de Usario at the bottom. We will back for this part, later.

Captura_VBox5_07

Pict. 06 | Section: GENERAL >> Bookmark Encryption and three options: Leave without Changes/Dejar sin Cambiar, encryption AES-128bit and encryption AES-256bit (only word PLAIN is a little strange, but I will investigate it later). Of course my machine is not prepared for encryption (I will investigate it later).

Captura_VBox5_08

Pict. 07 | Section: SYSTEMS/SISTEMA >> Motherboard/Placa Base with new functionality : support for USB Tablet/Tableta USB (very useful for for graphic desiners)

Captura_VBox5_09

Pict. 08 | Section: SCREEN >> new feature for standard screen Scaling (zooming)/Factor de Escalado (useful for disabled users)

Captura_VBox5_10

Pict. 09 | Section: SCREEN >> bookmark Video Capturing/Captura de Video Whoooha! amazingly funcionality added not only speed (fps) but quality too (kbps). hope support for more screens will be added soon.

Captura_VBox5_11

Pict. 10 | Section USB – not only full support for USB 1.1, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 but easy way to enforce which USB we want to share with virtual machine.

Captura_VBox5_12

Pict. 11 | Section USER INTERFACE/INTERFAZ DE USARIO >> new functionality which give the administrator opportunity to choose which tasks, features, settings will be available for users.

And finally one of the newest functionality: The User Interface for VM’s, that has been tried and tested on a mock api:

2015-08-14_21-52-00

Pict. 12 | Section: ARCHIVE >> Preferences, Network

2015-08-14_21-52-19

Pict. 13 | Section: MACHINE/MÁQUINA >> Configuration, Pause, Start, Save State, Shutdown and more

2015-08-14_21-52-34

Pict. 14 | Section VIEW/VER >> Full Screen, Scaling Mode, Capturing Screen, Capturing Video, Remote Desktop, Virtual Screen, qutoscaling and more

2015-08-14_21-52-49

Pict. 15 | Section: INPUT/ENTRADA >> Keyboard, Mouse

2015-08-14_21-53-06

Pict. 16 | Section: DEVICES/DISPOSITIVOS >> Disks, Camera, Network, USB, HDD, FDD, DVD, Shared Folders and most important Insert CD <Guest Additions> which is nomally use to connect external CD/DVD or throught process of instalaltion VirtualBox Extension Pack

2015-08-14_21-53-21

Pict. 17 |Section: RUN/DEPURAR >> Statistics, Command Line, Trace Logs, History

2015-08-14_21-54-03

Pict. 18 | Section: ABOUT/AYUDA >> with links to VirtualBox Site, and info about installed version of VirtualBox

Really, Really nice. Gooood Jooob Oracle!

[EN] VirtualBox 4.3.16 released

After few months of break (holiday, break, computer change, migration whatever) I’m going back to my VirtualBox environment. Yesterday I went to VirtualBox Site to download actual software (version 4.3.16 release 96972). This version has been published in the name day of this month: 09/09.

image

Change log say many interesting things:

  • VMM: fixed restoring 32-bit FPU state on 64-bit capable VMs and restoring guest FPU in raw-mode VMs (bug #12646; 4.3 regression)
  • GUI: properly restore normal/scale mode guest-screen size after exiting full-screen/seamless mode
  • GUI: mini-toolbar should provoke less artifacts/conflicts with 3D guest rendering
  • GUI: Mac OS X: Native full-screen multi-screen transition was able to blackout host-screens for nearly minute
  • GUI: X11: Modern window managers should now use native full-screen multi-screen mapping API
  • GUI: added extradata item for configuring the mouse capture behavior, see the manual for more information (bug #3506)
  • Storage: fixed a VBoxSVC crash when querying an iSCSI target with authentication configured (4.3.14 regression)
  • Storage: fixed a rare data corruption during reads if another allocating write is running concurrently and accesses the same range
  • Storage: fixed a rare crash for certain VHD images from other products
  • Storage: fixed a rare release assertion when using the AHCI controller
  • Floppy: fixed read errors and guest memory corruption when running under control of QEMM
  • 3D: added experimental support for rendering on offline GPUs for Mac OS X host
  • 3D: fixed white window appearing on entering FullScreen mode on OSX host
  • 3D: fixed video recording support for 3D data regression (bug #13073)
  • 3D: fixes for MS Office 2013 support
  • 3D: several fixes
  • Bridged Networking: improved IPv6 support when bridging to a wireless interface
  • NAT: prevent internal DNS service from stuck in host-resolver mode when host was switched from one network to another one while host was sleeping (Mac OS X hosts)
  • NAT: preserve DF (if possible) and TOS when proxying outbound UDP datagrams (bugs #9440, #12309)
  • NAT: don’t let multicast datagrams out (bug #7338)
  • NAT: fixed handling of large incoming UDP datagrams on Windows hosts (bug #12136)
  • NAT: fixed handling of the RFC 1533 DHCP PAD option
  • NAT Network: fixed inbound half-close on Windows hosts
  • NAT Network: preserve IPv4 DF (if possible), TTL, TOS and IPv6 Hop Limit when proxying outbound UDP datagrams
  • VRDP: fixed a rare crash when using remote audio input
  • USB: fixed several regressions from 4.3.14 (bug #13320)
  • Audio: made the HDA sound emulation work with certain OSX guests (e.g. Mountain Lion)
  • Windows hosts: fixed startup problems on certain Windows hosts due to conflicts with anti-virus software (4.3.14 regression, bug #13187)
  • Windows hosts: fixed 4.3.14 regression whereby AltGr stopped working for some people (bug #13216)
  • X11 hosts: made the extra key on Brazilian Thinkpads work (bug #8745)
  • X11 hosts: fixed a problem of input focus cycles and immediately released key presses in full screen mode (bug #13238)
  • Linux hosts: fixed flooding the kernel log with USB related messages when passing through certain USB devices to a VM (bug #13085)
  • Linux guests: stop applications crashing when drm_wait_vblank is called (bug #13265)
  • Linux guests: fix a crash in gnome-session (bug #13335)
  • X11 guests: do not start VBoxClient over an SSH connection (bug #13107)
  • X11 guests: added support for X.Org Server 1.16 (bug #13207)
  • X11 guests: fixed a wrong parameter in the video driver which caused problems with full-screen X11 clients (bug #2748)
  • VirtualKD: introduced stub/loader device for speeding up Windows kernel debugging, details see http://virtualkd.sysprogs.org/

As I posted before – pink is the important colour.

Please remember to download and install full setup – in phase one: Virtual Box (for host) and in phase two: Extension Pack (for host/guests). Extention Pack support e.g USB 2.0 Host Controller, Host Webcam, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM with E1000. And here are the links:

But this time I found something new for me. Four hot topic on home page:

Under first link you can download pre-built machines: Oracle WebCenter Portal VM / Oracle Data Integrator 12c VM / Oracle Big Data Lite VM / Service Delivery Platform VM / Database App Development VM / Enterprise Java Development VM / Oracle VM Manager & Server VMs / Oracle Linux 6 Admin VM / Solaris 11 Admin VM / Oracle Tuxedo Web Application Server Demo VM / Oracle Business Intelligence SampleApp / SOA & BPM Development VM / Enterprise PHP Development VM

ENJOY!

[EN] VirtualBox 4.3.8 released

As always – two-three weeks after release date – I’m ready for installing new version of my favourite virtualizator – VirtualBox (from many months by Oracle). Official release date is 25th Feb, now on 15th March I can meet this version. Many of bugs has been fixed by developers team, and here is the change log (base on original from web site) – most important changes for my are in pink:

  • VMM: more work on improving the emulation of certain MSR registers (e.g. bugs #12224, #12544)
  • VMM: fixed a VERR_INVALID_RPL Guru Meditation when booting certain guests (bug #11350)
  • VMM: experimental support for SSE 4.1 / SSE 4.2 passthrough, see the manual for more information how to enable it (bug #8651)
  • VMM: fix for recent Linux kernels with software virtualization
  • GUI: experimental HID LEDs synchronization for Windows hosts, see the manual for more information
  • GUI: warn the user if the Oracle Extension Pack is not installed and the user tries to activate the remote display feature (bug #9104)
  • GUI: make sure that a minimized guest (using mini toolbar in fullscreen/seamless mode) keeps the minimized state (bug #12199)
  • GUI: popup banner’s "do not show this message again" check-box replaced with corresponding button
  • GUI: network adapter cables can now be connected/disconnected directly through the running virtual machine Devices / Network menu a Network status-bar indicator
  • GUI: the new VM wizard now proposes 64-bit guests on 64-bit hosts by default; better distinction between 32-bit OS types 64-bit OS types (bug #12533)
  • GUI: better error message if appliance import fails (bug #12657)
  • GUI: allow to set host-combination to ‘None’ using the Global settings / Input page (bug #12730)
  • GUI: don’t switch the guest to a black screen during online snapshot merge (4.3 regression)
  • VBoxManage: when exporting an appliance, support the suppression of MAC addresses, which means they will be always recreated on import, avoiding duplicate MAC addresses for VMs which are imported several times
  • AHCI: fixed a VM hang during suspend under certain circumstances
  • AHCI: fixed a VM hang during online snapshot merge under certain circumstances
  • AHCI: fixed a bug which resulted in Windows XP guest hangs if a SATA CDROM is attached (bug #12417)
  • AHCI: fixed a Guru Meditation under certain conditions
  • AHCI: ejecting a CD/DVD medium failed under certain conditions
  • AHCI: disk hotplugging fixes
  • NAT: transparent handling of host sleep/resume and network configuration changes if the dnsproxy is enabled or if the hostresolver is used (bug #12441)
  • NAT: fixed crash and misbehaviour under some circumstances with ICMP packets having TTL=1
  • NAT Network: fixed IPv6 reassembly
  • NAT Network: ping proxy implemented
  • OVF: fixed reading of the OVF 0.9 section element (4.3 regression; bug #12345)
  • OVF: several fixes
  • 3D support: several fixes, multiscreen fixes (e.g. bug #9124)
  • 3D support: include 3D content in captured videos (bug #12666)
  • 3D support: include 3D content in captured screenshot (bug #11758)
  • VGA: proper handling of legacy graphics modes if the Guest Additions are active (bug #6649)
  • USB: fixed crash during isochronous transfer under rare circumstances
  • BIOS: better disk geometry handling of SCSI drives
  • API: fix crashes in Java API clients using the XPCOM binding, happened with output parameters only (bug #11232)
  • VBoxSVC: documented the handling of host power management events (see the manual for more information) and added an extradata item for configuring the handling of the battery-low event (bug#9925)
  • VBoxSVC: fixed a bug which could trigger a crash if a VM snapshot was restored the second time and the VM has associated bandwidth groups (bug #12569)
  • VBoxSVC: properly detect ifconfig if located in /bin (bug #12713)
  • Shared Folders: fixed a failure to restore transient shared folders when starting a VM from a saved state (bug #12578)
  • Mac OS X hosts: fixed issue when the application icon was frozen in the dock if the bridging interface was not connected to a network (bug #12241)
  • Linux hosts: also consider the physical package ID when determining the number of physical CPU cores
  • Linux hosts / guests: don’t warn in kernel log if memory allocation fails (bug #11171)
  • Solaris hosts: fixed the autostart SMF script (bug #11720)
  • Windows hosts: fixes for non-ANSI code page user names and similar environment contents (bug #12596)
  • Windows hosts / guests: fixed setting and using a guest user’s process environment variables (relevant for Guest Control)
  • Windows Additions: fixed handle leaks in VBoxTray (bug #12563)
  • Windows Additions: fixed a crash while detecting active guest users
  • Windows Additions: fixed restoring backed up D3D files on XPDM -> WDDM upgrade
  • Guest Control: fixed setting and using a guest user’s process environment variables
  • Linux Additions: support Enterprise Linux 6.5 kernels (bug #12505)
  • Linux Additions: fixed CPU hot-remove on newer Linux kernels
  • Linux / Solaris Additions: don’t automount a shared folder which is already mounted
  • X11 Additions: support X.Org Server 1.15 (bug #12623)

It’s definitely more than in last version (post about it are here). Please remember to download and install full setup – in phase one: Virtual Box (for host) and in phase two: Extension Pack (for host/guests). Extention Pack support e.g USB 2.0 Host Controller, Host Webcam, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM with E1000. And here are the links:

[EN] VirtualBox 4.3.6 released

New version of VirtualBox has been released about one month ago. Current edition (build 4.3.6.91406) is only one good news from Oracle from last few days {read more: Oracle spoils your day with NEARLY 150 patches • The Register}. Developer’s Team fixed many bugs and added few new items, listed below:

  • VMM: fixed a Guru Meditation VINF_EM_TRIPLE_FAULT caused by VMCB caching with nested paging on certain AMD CPUs (bug #12451)
  • VMM: fixed a Guru Meditation VERR_VMX_UNEXPECTED_INTERRUPTION_EXIT_TYPE while intercepting debug exceptions (VT-x only; bug #12410)
  • VMM: fixed a Guru Meditation VERR_SVM_UNEXPECTED_EXIT while intercepting debug register accesses (AMD-V only; bug #12481)
  • VMM: fixed a VERR_SSM_STRUCTURE_MAGIC error when trying to load a saved state made with VBox 4.3.4 when VT-x/AMD-V is disabled. Unfortunately, VBox 4.3.4 produced broken saved states for this configuration so you have to discard these states (bug #12414)
  • VMM: added a few more MSRs to the whitelist required by certain guests (bug #12245)
  • GUI: fixed deleting of inaccessible VMs (4.3 regression, bug #12205)
  • GUI: fixed warnings in VM settings / number of guest processors (bug #12480)
  • Main: don’t automatically enable 64-bit guests on 64-bit hosts if VT-x/AMD-V is not available (bug #12424)
  • Main: always expose the DMI memory information to Windows 2012 guests (bug #12017)
  • Main: fixed occasional crashes on guest display resolution change (bug #7063)
  • Main: fixed reporting back temporary name when calling IGuestSession::DirectoryCreateTemp() (bug #12498)
  • API: fix for a hang when launching a GUI VM through the API, which crashes due to GUI unavailability
  • Storage: fix for BLKCACHE_IOERR runtime errors under rare circumstances (bug #11030)
  • Network: allow to start more than 5 PCNet instances (bug #12426)
  • E1000: if the cable was disconnected before the guest initialized the device, the link status was not properly set to ‘down’ after the initialization completed despite the fact that there was no connection
  • 3D support: fixed offset of guest 3D image elements (Mac OS X Retina hosts only; bug #11021)
  • Solaris hosts: fixed accessing the host driver from non-global zones (4.3 regression, bug #12271)

I discovered this update yesterday – that is the result of using some software not frequently enough. For my development, sometimes my VirtualBox and VMachines are in “sleeping mode” for few weeks.

Anyway, download VirtualBox platform package and VirtualBox Extention Pack HERE.

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