VirtualBox 4.1.18 Released

A new maintenance release for VirtualBox has been released. This release brings stability fixes and regression fixes from previous version:
This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: fixed VERR_REM_VIRTUAL_CPU_ERROR under rare conditions after the guest has been reset (bug #5164 and others)
• VMM: fixed host freezes with 64-bit guests on 32-bit Linux hosts (bug #10528)
• VRDP: added a workaround for rdesktop clients not properly updating the screen size when minimized
• AHCI: fixed a rare bug which can cause a guest memory corruption after the guest storage controler has been reset
• NAT: another attempt to fix crashes under rare conditions (Windows hosts only; bug #10513)
• Mac OS X hosts: addressed issues running Leopard / Snow Leopard (bug #10631)
• Linux hosts / Bridged Networking: fixed the problem with device driver unloading on kernels 3.2.18 and newer due to an invalid reference counter (bug #10624)
• Linux hosts / guests: Linux 3.5-rc1 fixes
• Linux Additions: the guest content was sometimes not properly updated (bug #9887)
• Solaris Additions: installer fix for X.org Server 1.11 and 1.12

VirtualBox 4.1.16 Released

Oracle has managed to release a new version of VirtualBox, 4.1.16. As usual, this version comes with a lot of bug fixes and some new additions for better support of XOrg and new Linux Kernel (3.4).

Here's the ChangeLog:

• VMM: fixed a Guru Meditation VERR_ACCESS_DENIED with certain guests (bugs #7589, #8247)
• VMM: fixed a Guru Meditation VERR_PAGE_TABLE_NOT_PRESENT with Ubuntu 32-bit guests with nested paging enabled on AMD CPUs (bug #10183)
• VMM: preserve segment limits and attributes when switching to unreal mode required for some legacy guests to work properly (VT-x without unrestricted guest execution only; bug #9941)
• VMM: fixed a VM hang after a resume from pause / savestate with SMP guests in rare cases
• 3D Support: several fixes for the Windows WDDM video driver crash
• NAT: fixed a crash on attempt to process ICMP datagram under some circumstances (bug #10527)
• Host-only Networking: lifted the maximal number of interfaces to 128 on Linux and Mac OS X hosts (there is no such limitation for Solaris and Windows hosts)
• EFI: fixed wrong SEC/PEI Core entry point calculation (bug #10531)
• VRDP: fixed a display update problem (bug #10503)
• Main: set the proper VM state if savestate failed for some reason (bug #6189)
• Main: more useful error message if a medium is inaccessible
• VBoxManage: fixed controlvm savestate if the VM is already paused
• Mac OS X hosts: addressed issues running on Mountain Lion Preview 3 (bug #10267)
• Linux hosts: Linux 3.4 compile fixes
• Linux hosts: fixed wrong help path in some rpm-based packages (bug #10418)
• Guest Additions: fixed handling of custom environment variables during VBoxManage guestcontrol execute (bug #10581)
• Windows Additions: fixed guest driver crash of VBoxSF in certain cases (4.1.10 regression, bug #10408)
• Windows Additions: don't load the WDDM driver if 3D support is not available for Windows 8 guests to keep the guest maintainable in that case (still better to miss some features than providing a blank screen)
• Solaris Additions: added support for X.org Server 1.11 and 1.12

Releases from Oracle

Today, Oracle releases updates to several of their products, including VirtualBox and Java.

VirtualBox 4.1.14 maintenance release is now the latest version and this version only fixes 3 bugs compared to previous releases, so if you are not really affected by the bugs mentioned on the Changelog, you can safely stay with the current version installed on your machine.

Meanwhile in Java, Oracle pushed updates to JDK/JRE 6 and 7 and for JDK/JRE 7, they introduced some new features. Here are the highlights for JDK/JRE 7:

• JDK Support for Mac OS X
• New JVM (Java HotSpot Virtual Machine, version 23)
• New Supported Garbage Collector: Garbage First (G1)
• JavaFX 2.1 Runtime co-installs with JRE 7 during auto-update
• JAXP upgraded to 1.4.6
• Java DB upgraded to 10.8.2.2
• SPARC T4 specific crypto optimizations in the security area
• New flag to unlock Commercial Features

VirtualBox 4.1 Released

After having several quick Beta release, VirtualBox 4.1 is now officially released by Oracle team in Germany. This is a major upgrade, so new features are introduced along with other bug fixes mentioned on the changelog:

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

• Support for cloning of VMs (bug #5853, see the manual for more information): full clones can be created through the GUI and VBoxManage, linked clones only through VBoxManage
• GUI: enhanced wizard for creating new virtual disks
• GUI: new wizard for copying virtual disks
• GUI: keep the aspect ratio in scale mode (Windows and OSX hosts only; bug #7822)
• VMM: raised the memory limit for 64-bit hosts to 1TB
• Experimental support for PCI passthrough for Linux hosts, see the manual for more information
• Windows guests: Experimental WDDM graphics driver, supporting Windows Aero (bug #4607) and providing Direct3D support using a cleaner approach (no need to install the guest drivers in Safe Mode anymore)
• Guest Additions: status of modules and features can now be queried separately by the frontends
• Networking: new network attachment mode "Generic Driver", which offers an open plugin architecture for arbitrary and separately distributable virtual network implementations
• Host-only Networking: fixed host crash in kernels prior to 2.6.29
• New Networking Mode UDP Tunnel: allows to interconnect VMs running on different hosts easily and transparently, see the manual for more information
• Experimental support for SATA hard disk hotplugging available with VBoxManage
• Solaris hosts: New Crossbow based bridged networking driver for Solaris 11 build 159 and above

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

• VMM: more SMP timer fixes
• VMM: fixed sporadic recompiler crashes with SMP guests
• VMM: many small fixes
• GUI: when reverting to a snapshot, ask for taking a snapshot of the current state
• GUI: added a View menu
• GUI: added a setting for the promiscuous mode policy for internal networks, bridged networks and host-only networks
• GUI: added slider for setting the CPU execution cap allowing to limit the amount of CPU time spent for the execution of the guest, see the manual for more information.
• GUI: the VM description is editable during the runtime of a VM (bug #1551)
• GUI: added proxy settings (bug #2870)
• GUI: made the number of SATA ports configurable
• GUI: decrease time before showing the VM configuration dialog
• VBoxManage: more convenient configuration of storage controller attachments by automatically determining the port or device parameter when a storage controller has only one port or device per port
• VBoxManage: changed syntax of the guestcontrol command group, fixed various bugs, removed obsolete options
• VBoxBalloonCtrl: new service for automatic dynamic adjustment of the balloon size for running VMs
• Settings: machine names and snapshot names are not allowed to be a valid UUID
• Settings: provide better diagnostics if a single medium is used twice in a VM configuration
• Settings: provide better diagnostics for errors in medium create/merge/clone operations, and fix memory leaks in error cases
• Storage: ATA/SATA drives can be marked as non-rotational, i.e. the guest OS will detect them as a SSD if supported, which can improve performance
• Storage: virtual CD/DVD images will be detached if the guest ejects the medium, unless the drive is marked to handle ejects only on a temporary basis
• Storage: the medium UUID can be changed again when attaching a medium for the first time, which allows using images which are exact duplicates including the UUID
• Storage: fixed possible data corruption under certain circumstances with VHD and Parallels images (bug #9150)
• Storage: fixed unnecessary expansion when cloning differential images in VDI format
• Storage: fixed detection code to handle empty files for VDI and VMDK format
• Storage: fixed access to CD/DVD images beyond 4GB when using the SATA controller (bug #8592)
• Floppy: several bugs have been fixed
• Floppy: make it possible to unmount a host floppy disk (bug #6651)
• BIOS: disk-related structures are now checksummed correctly (bug #8739)
• USB: many fixes for the Windows USB host driver
• NAT: reduced memory footprint
• Networking: fixed the problem with segmentation offloading when several VMs are transmitting in parallel
• Networking: workaround for a bug in wireshark when operating directly on a capture file created by VirtualBox
• Serial: announce the serial devices in the ACPI tables to make Windows guests find the virtual hardware (bug #7411)
• VRDP: support for TLS connections (see the manual for more information)
• VRDP: support for multimonitor client configurations with MS RDP clients
• VRDP: fixed a rare screen corruption
• 3D support: fixed GL_VERSION string for different locales (bug #8916)
• Webservice: fixed timeout handling with HTTP 1.1 keepalive, and be more robust when connections fail
• VBoxSVC: fixed regression when several clients trigger autostart simultaneously
• Main: fixed incorrect handling of the medium location for media which are not file based (e.g. iSCSI), which resulted in confusing location values in many places
• JAX-WS client bindings: fixed resource leak
• Sources: fixed USB 2.0 support using extension packs for non-official builds
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed non-VT-x mode on Lion hosts
• Windows hosts: fixed copy'n'paste in the GUI and for the VM window (bug #4491)
• Windows hosts (64-bit only): enabled removing of all mediums when removing a VM
• Windows hosts (64-bit only): enabled live snapshot deletion
• Windows hosts: use native controls in the installer (bug #5520)
• Solaris hosts: fixed preemption issue with Solaris 11 hosts (builds 166 and above)
• Solaris hosts: better control of USB device access on Solaris 11 hosts
• Guest Additions: improved driver installation on Windows guests
• Guest Additions: fixed high CPU usage while executing guest programs from the host
• Solaris Additions: fixed automounting of shared folders (bug #8014)

VirtualBox Update

Oracle has released a maintenance update for their VirtualBox product. The latest version is now 4.0.10 and it fixes quite a lot of bugs, like:

• GNOME 3 fixes on Mac OS Lion
• VT-x detection on Linux 3.0 based hosts
• Updated rdesktop-vrdp to 1.7.0
• Several problems with storage and USBs
• Many more

See the ChangeLog for detailed changes on this release.

I have upgraded all of my machine to this version, including two of my virtual machines

Second Virtual Server

I built a virtual server on top of VirtualBox last year with some hope that the students can take advantage of it if they need a LAMP server for a spesific subject related to web development. I didn't really think about it because at first, i only wanted to try the headless installation article that i saw on one of ID-Slackware's member blog post. The server was up and running up to now and it has been used on several course, including for final project as well.

Since Slackware 13.37 has been released, i wanted to build another virtual server using the new Slackware 13.37, so this morning, i decided to make a new one. It's up and running now and it has almost the exact configuration as the first one, except that i make it more up to date for the applications and libraries installed on it.I also allocate more space on it, so that it could be occupied by more and more students project.

One note about this new installation is that it's the first time i used XFS as the default filesystem for all of the partition (except for swap). I heard a lot of article and benchmarking said that XFS is a nice FS for server, so i wanted to try this one, so i used it as the default. For now, i can't see the results yet, as there are no projects or loads, but there will be soon enough.

If you are curious about the server, you can take a look the spec here.

Testing Ubuntu 11.04

Ubuntu 11.04 has been released the same day as Slackware 13.37 and it brings a major upgrade to Ubuntu system in general with the inclusion of Unity replacing the standard GNOME desktop. I was so curious about Unity which for some people caused so much headache and painful configuration in many areas and for the rest saying this is a worthed upgrade.

Later on today, i will try installing Ubuntu 11.04 on a virtual machine (using Virtual Box) in my workstation (running Slackware 13.37) and see what will be my first impression about Ubuntu 11.04. So far, i'm pleased with Ubuntu 10.10 since it was so stable and well maintained. Let's see if this impression can continue in 11.04?

Some people said that xx.04 release is not so stable since in most cases, Canonical introduces big changes to the Ubuntu (like this Unity thing), but i am about to see if it's true or not in the next few hours. It's still 5:10 AM here, so i won't be testing anything for now

(Update: 10:48 AM): I have installed Ubuntu on top of Virtual Box and sadly, it's like the others. It was kinda dissapointing. The installer stucked at time zone selection until i disabled my network adapter. It seems the installer were downloading something from Internet and it took all the resources.

I couldn't test unity since the hardware acceleration is not present in my system. I didn't know that Unity requires 3D acceleration to be present
Some applications are not responding at first, but after i install Ubuntu 11.04 updates (there are around 49 MB of updates with just few days of updates, can you believe that?), it works normally again. It's a sign of an untested applications before release. This is contrary to Slackware installation on my machine. Everything worked as intended.

I guess i wouldn't recommend Ubuntu 11.04 for now. Stay with 10.10 for now and upgrade when 11.10 is released in the next five months if it's considered stable. Most likely Unity will become more mature and the base system will be much more stable than current version.

Testing Hackintosh

After taking an early rest last night, i woke up this morning at 3:30 AM. Yeah, i know. 3:30 in the morning is so bad, but i have plenty of time to work on something, so i fired up my laptop, upgrade to the latest Slackware-Current packages and syncing my portable hard drive with -Current packages.

Also, i wanted to try installing Hackintosh on top of VirtualBox. I have done it on my desktop and also on my workstation and it worked. On my workstation, there are some unresolved issues, such as resolution not maximized and sound card is not detected, but that's only a small issues for me. My desktop at home has a better situation where all of the above problems are solved after doing some tricky steps.

After making sure that my laptop has the minimum requirements to install Hackintosh, i tried to launch VirtualBox and see if it works. Right now it's installing phase and it should be done in the next 10 minutes or so. Let's see about that later

Building New Virtual Server

Few weeks ago, i built a new virtual server on top of one of my server in my campus. It was built using Slackware 13.1 on top of VirtualBox 4.0.2. So far, the performance is good and i have no problem with it.

Last Friday, we discussed about further usage of virtual server to support our education process. We can use the virtual server to host student's work or final project so that they can try it out without having to buy new hosting or domain and use internal resources.

I decided that we will go on with the idea, but i will wait until Slackware 13.2 is released before i start the new virtual server which should have better and optimized configuration compared to the first one. I actually built it for testing purposes, but it went well, so i used it for my class

For the next configuration, i have prepared some adjustment to make it more robust, configurable, efficient, and should be more up to date compared with the current one.

Working With Headless Virtual Machine

Yesterday, i was trying to learn new thing: configuring a headless virtual machine. I need this one as i will teach Internet Application Engineering this semester and i'm hoping to provide a hosting site for the students to upload their work, but i don't want to risk the available systems, so i decided to try on building a virtual machine on top of the current system.

I'm used to VMWare, but i don't know if VMWare does offer headless virtualization, so i tried to use Virtual Box from Oracle. It took me a while to learn about all the command line options, but finally i managed to build the machine using Slackware 13.1 and configure it's services. I basically only need small number of services, which are HTTP, Database (MySQL), and SCP/SSH. I don't use FTP, since it's not secure and i want to make sure that all data transfer happened in secure channel.

For now, it has been working well, and i'm still configuring several things, including the possibility of having SVN or any other SCM tools (they are already installed actually, but i will try to provide web-svn access for the students). Not bad for something new and being worked under 24 hours