VirtualBox 2.1.2

VirtualBox 2.1.2 (released 2009-01-21)

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

• USB: improved support for recent Linux hosts
• VMM: fixed guru meditation for PAE guests on non-PAE hosts (AMD-V)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation on Mac OS X hosts when using VT-x
• VMM: allow running up to 1023 VMs on 64-bit hosts (used to be 127)
• VMM: several FreeBSD guest related fixes (bugs #2342, #2341, #2761)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation when installing Suse Enterprise Server 10U2 (VT-x only; bug #3039)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation when booting Novell Netware 4.11 (VT-x only; bug #2898)
• VMM: fixed VERR_ADDRESS_TOO_BIG error on some Mac OS X systems when starting a VM
• VMM: clear MSR_K6_EFER_SVME after probing for AMD-V (bug #3058)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation during Windows 7 boot with more than 2 GB guest RAM (VT-x, nested paging only)
• VMM: fixed hang during OS/2 MCP2 boot (AMD-V and VT-x only)
• VMM: fixed loop during OpenBSD 4.0 boot (VT-x only)
• VMM: fixed random crashes related to FPU/XMM with 64 bits guests on 32 bits hosts
• VMM: fixed occasional XMM state corruption with 64 bits guests
• GUI: raised the RAM limit for new VMs to 75% of the host memory
• GUI: added Windows 7 as operating system type
• VBoxSDL: fixed -fixed fixedmode parameter (bug #3067)
• Clipboard: stability fixes (Linux and Solaris hosts only, bug #2675 and #3003)
• 3D support: fixed VM crashes for certain guest applications (bugs #2781, #2797, #2972, #3089)
• LsiLogic: improved support for Windows guests (still experimental)
• VGA: fixed a 2.1.0 regression where guest screen resize events were not properly handled (bug #2783)
• VGA: significant performance improvements when using VT-x/AMD-V on Mac OS X hosts
• VGA: better handling for VRAM offset changes (fixes GRUB2 and Dos DOOM display issues)
• VGA: custom VESA modes with invalid widths are now rounded up to correct ones (bug #2895)
• IDE: fixed ATAPI passthrough support (Linux hosts only; bug #2795)
• Networking: fixed kernel panics due to NULL pointer dereference in Linux kernels < 2.6.20 (Linux hosts only; bug #2827)
• Networking: fixed intermittend BSODs when using the new host interface (Windows hosts only; bugs #2832, #2937, #2929)
• Networking: fixed several issues with displaying hostif NICs in the GUI (Windows hosts only; bugs 2814, #2842)
• Networking: fixed the issue with displaying hostif NICs without assigned IP addresses (Linux hosts only; bug #2780)
• Networking: fixed the issue with sent packets coming back to internal network when using hostif (Linux hosts only; bug #3056).
• NAT: fixed port forwarding (Windows hosts only; bug #2808)
• NAT: fixed booting from the builtin TFTP server (bug #1959)
• NAT: fixed occasional crashes (bug #2709)
• SATA: vendor product data (VPD) is now configurable
• SATA: raw disk partitions were not recognized (2.1.0 regression, Windows host only, bug #2778)
• SATA: fixed timeouts in the guest when using raw VMDK files (Linux host only, bug #2796)
• SATA: huge speed up during certain I/O operations like formatting a drive
• SATA/IDE: fixed possible crash/errors during VM shutdown
• VRDP: fixed loading of libpam.so.1 from the host (Solaris hosts only)
• VRDP: fixed RDP client disconnects
• VRDP: fixed VRDP server misbehavior after a broken client connection
• VBoxManage showvminfo: fixed assertion for running VMs (bug #2773)
• VBoxManage convertfromraw: added parameter checking and made it default to creating VDI files; fixed and documented format parameter (bug #2776)
• VBoxManage clonehd: fixed garbled output image when creating VDI files (bug #2813)
• VBoxManage guestproperty: fixed property enumeration (incorrect parameters/exception)
• VHD: fixed error when attaching certain container files (bug #2768)
• Solaris hosts: added support for serial ports (bug #1849)
• Solaris hosts: fix for Japanese keyboards (bug #2847)
• Solaris hosts: 32-bit and 64-bit versions now available as a single, unified package
• Linux hosts: don’t depend on libcap1 anymore (bug #2859)
• Linux hosts: compile fixes for 2.6.29-rc1
• Linux hosts: don’t drop any capability if the VM was started by root (2.1.0 regression)
• Mac OS X hosts: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level
• Mac OS X hosts: improved window resizing of the VM window
• Mac OS X hosts: added GUI option to disable the dock icon realtime preview in the GUI to decrease the host CPU load when the guest is doing 3D
• Mac OS X hosts: polished realtime preview dock icon
• Windows Additions: fixed guest property and logging OS type detection for Windows 2008 and Windows 7 Beta
• Windows Additions: added support for Windows 7 Beta (bugs #2995, #3015)
• Windows Additions: fixed Windows 2000 guest freeze when accessing files on shared folders (bug #2764)
• Windows Additions: fixed Ctrl-Alt-Del handling when using VBoxGINA
• Windows Additions Installer: Added /extract switch to only extract (not install) the files to a directory (can be specified with /D=path)
• Linux installer and Additions: added support for the Linux From Scratch distribution (bug #1587) and recent Gentoo versions (bug #2938)
• Additions: added experimental support for X.Org Server 1.6 RC on Linux guests
• Linux Additions: fixed bug which prevented to properly set fmode on mapped shared folders (bug #1776)
• Linux Additions: fixed appending of files on shared folders (bug #1612)
• Linux Additions: ignore noauto option when mounting a shared folder (bug #2498)
• Linux Additions: fixed a driver issue preventing X11 from compiling keymaps (bug #2793 and #2905)
• X11 Additions: workaround in the mouse driver for a server crash when the driver is loaded manually (bug #2397)