VirtualBox 3.1.0

VirtualBox 3.1.0 (released 2009-11-30)

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

• Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another (see the manual for more information)
• VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well ("branched snapshots"; see the manual for more information)
• 2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion (see the manual for more information)
• More flexible storage attachments: CD/DVD drives can be attached to arbitrary storage controllers, and there can be more than one such drive (the manual for more information)
• The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
• Complete rewrite of experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher
• Significant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging)
• Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface; see the manual for more information)
• Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net; see the manual for more information)

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

• VMM: guest SMP fixes for certain rare cases
• GUI: snapshots include a screenshot
• GUI: locked storage media can be unmounted by force
• GUI: the a log window grabbed all key events from other GUI windows (bug #5291)
• GUI: allow to disable USB filters (bug #5426)
• GUI: improved memory slider in the VM settings
• GUI: the VirtualBox website couldn't be opened from the help menu (bug #4559)
• 3D support: major performance improvement in VBO processing
• 3D support: added GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array support
• 3D support: fixed crashes in FarCry, SecondLife, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online (bugs #2801, #2791)
• 3D support: fixed graphics corruption in World of Warcraft (#2816)
• 3D support: fixed Final frame of Compiz animation not updated to the screen (#4653)
• 3D support: fixed incorrect rendering of non ARGB textures under compiz
• iSCSI: support iSCSI targets with more than 2TiB capacity
• VRDP: fixed occasional VRDP server crash (bug #5424)
• Network: fixed the E1000 emulation for QNX (and probably other) guests (bug #3206)
• NAT: added host resolver DNS proxy (see the manual for more information)
• VMDK: fixed incorrectly rejected big images split into 2G pieces (bug #5523, #2787)
• VMDK: fixed compatibility issue with fixed or raw disk VMDK files (bug #2723)
• VHD: fixed incompatibility with Hyper-V
• Support for Parallels version 2 disk image (HDD) files; see the manual for more information
• OVF: create manifest files on export and verify the content of an optional manifest file on import
• OVF: fixed memory setting during import (bug #4188)
• Mouse device: now five buttons are passed to the guest (bug #3773)
• VBoxHeadless: fixed loss of saved state when VM fails to start
• VBoxSDL: fixed crash during shutdown (Windows hosts only)
• X11 based hosts: allow the user to specify their own scan code layout (bug #2302)
• Mac OS X hosts: don't auto show the menu and dock in fullscreen (bug #4866)
• Mac OS X hosts (64 bit): don't interpret mouse wheel events as left click (bug #5049)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed a VM abort during shutdown under certain conditions
• Solaris hosts: combined the kernel interface package into the VirtualBox main package
• Solaris hosts: support for OpenSolaris Boomer architecture (with OSS audio backend).
• Shared folders: VBOXSVR is visible in Network folder (Windows guests, bug #4842)
• Shared folders: performance improvements (Windows guests, bug #1728)
• Windows, Linux and Solaris Additions: added balloon tip notifier if VirtualBox host version was updated and Additions are out of date
• Solaris guests: fixed keyboard emulation (bug #1589)
• Solaris Additions: fixed as_pagelock() failed errors affecting guest properties (bug #5337)
• Windows Additions: added automatic logon support for Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Windows Additions: improved file version lookup for guest OS information
• Windows Additions: fixed runtime OS detection on Windows 7 for session information
• Windows Additions: fixed crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)
• Linux Additions: added support for uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions (bug #4039)
• Linux guest shared folders: allow mounting a shared folder if a file of the same name as the folder exists in the current directory (bug #928)
• SDK: added object-oriented web service bindings for PHP5