%all.entities; ]> &product-name; provides Guest Addition modules for Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris to enable automated logins on the guest. When a guest operating system is running in a virtual machine, it might be desirable to perform coordinated and automated logins using credentials passed from the host. Credentials are user name, password, and domain name, where each value might be empty. Windows provides a modular system login subsystem, called Winlogon, which can be customized and extended by means of so-called GINA (Graphical Identification and Authentication) modules. In Windows Vista and later releases, the GINA modules were replaced with a new mechanism called credential providers. The &product-name; Guest Additions for Windows come with both, a GINA and a credential provider module, and therefore enable any Windows guest to perform automated logins. To activate the &product-name; GINA or credential provider module, install the Guest Additions using the command line switch /with_autologon. All the following manual steps required for installing these modules will be then done by the installer. To manually install the &product-name; GINA module, extract the Guest Additions as shown in , and copy the VBoxGINA.dll file to the Windows SYSTEM32 directory. In the registry, create the following key with a value of VBoxGINA.dll: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GinaDLL The &product-name; GINA module is implemented as a wrapper around the MSGINA.DLL standard Windows GINA module. As a result, it might not work correctly with third-party GINA modules. To manually install the &product-name; credential provider module, extract the Guest Additions as shown in and copy the VBoxCredProv.dll file to the Windows SYSTEM32 directory. In the registry, create the following keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Authentication\Credential Providers\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B} HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B} HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B}\InprocServer32 All default values, the key named Default, must be set to VBoxCredProv. Create the following string and assign it a value of Apartment. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B}\InprocServer32\ThreadingModel To set credentials, use the following command on a running VM: $ VBoxManage controlvm "Windows XP" setcredentials "John Doe" "secretpassword" "DOMTEST" While the VM is running, the credentials can be queried by the &product-name; login modules, GINA or credential provider, using the &product-name; Guest Additions device driver. When Windows is in logged out mode, the login modules will constantly poll for credentials and if they are present, a login will be attempted. After retrieving the credentials, the login modules will erase them so that the above command will have to be repeated for subsequent logins. For security reasons, credentials are not stored in any persistent manner and will be lost when the VM is reset. Also, the credentials are write-only. There is no way to retrieve the credentials from the host side. Credentials can be reset from the host side by setting empty values. Depending on the Windows guest version, the following restrictions apply: For Windows XP guests. The login subsystem needs to be configured to use the classic login dialog, as the &product-name; GINA module does not support the Windows XP-style welcome dialog. Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 guests. The login subsystem does not support the so-called Secure Attention Sequence, Ctrl+Alt+Del. As a result, the guest's group policy settings need to be changed to not use the Secure Attention Sequence. Also, the user name given is only compared to the true user name, not the user friendly name. This means that when you rename a user, you still have to supply the original user name as Windows never renames user accounts internally. Automatic login handling of the built-in Windows Remote Desktop Service, formerly known as Terminal Services, is disabled by default. To enable it, create the following registry key with a DWORD value of 1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Oracle\VirtualBox Guest Additions\AutoLogon The following command forces &product-name; to keep the credentials after they were read by the guest and on VM reset: $ VBoxManage setextradata "Windows XP" VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/KeepCredentials 1 Note that this is a potential security risk, as a malicious application running on the guest could request this information using the proper interface. &product-name; provides a custom PAM module (Pluggable Authentication Module) which can be used to perform automated guest logins on platforms which support this framework. Virtually all modern Linux and UNIX distributions rely on PAM. For automated logins on Ubuntu, or Ubuntu-derived, distributions using LightDM as the display manager. See . The pam_vbox.so module itself does not do an actual verification of the credentials passed to the guest OS. Instead it relies on other modules such as pam_unix.so or pam_unix2.so down in the PAM stack to do the actual validation using the credentials retrieved by pam_vbox.so. Therefore pam_vbox.so has to be on top of the authentication PAM service list. The pam_vbox.so module only supports the auth primitive. Other primitives such as account, session, or password are not supported. The pam_vbox.so module is shipped as part of the Guest Additions but it is not installed and/or activated on the guest OS by default. In order to install it, it has to be copied from /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-version/other/ to the security modules directory. This is usually /lib/security/ on 32-bit Linux guests or /lib64/security/ on 64-bit Linux guests. Please refer to your guest OS documentation for the correct PAM module directory. For example, to use pam_vbox.so with a Ubuntu Linux guest OS and the GNOME Desktop Manager (GDM) to log in users automatically with the credentials passed by the host, configure the guest OS as follows: Copy the pam_vbox.so module to the security modules directory. In this case, /lib/security. Edit the PAM configuration file for GDM, found at /etc/pam.d/gdm. Add the line auth requisite pam_vbox.so at the top. Additionally, in most Linux distributions there is a file called /etc/pam.d/common-auth. This file is included in many other services, like the GDM file mentioned above. There you also have to add the line auth requisite pam_vbox.so. If authentication against the shadow database using pam_unix.so or pam_unix2.so is desired, the argument try_first_pass for pam_unix.so or use_first_pass for pam_unix2.so is needed in order to pass the credentials from the &product-name; module to the shadow database authentication module. For Ubuntu, this needs to be added to /etc/pam.d/common-auth, to the end of the line referencing pam_unix.so. This argument tells the PAM module to use credentials already present in the stack, such as the ones provided by the &product-name; PAM module. An incorrectly configured PAM stack can effectively prevent you from logging into your guest system. To make deployment easier, you can pass the argument debug right after the pam_vbox.so statement. Debug log output will then be recorded using syslog. By default, pam_vbox does not wait for credentials to arrive from the host. When a login prompt is shown, for example by GDM/KDM or the text console, and pam_vbox does not yet have credentials it does not wait until they arrive. Instead the next module in the PAM stack, depending on the PAM configuration, will have the chance for authentication. pam_vbox supports various guest property parameters that are located in /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/PAM/. These parameters allow pam_vbox to wait for credentials to be provided by the host and optionally can show a message while waiting for those. The following guest properties can be set: CredsWait: Set to 1 if pam_vbox should start waiting until credentials arrive from the host. Until then no other authentication methods such as manually logging in will be available. If this property is empty or gets deleted no waiting for credentials will be performed and pam_vbox will act like before. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). CredsWaitAbort: Aborts waiting for credentials when set to any value. Can be set from host and the guest. CredsWaitTimeout: Timeout, in seconds, to let pam_vbox wait for credentials to arrive. When no credentials arrive within this timeout, authentication of pam_vbox will be set to failed and the next PAM module in chain will be asked. If this property is not specified, set to 0 or an invalid value, an infinite timeout will be used. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). To customize pam_vbox further there are the following guest properties: CredsMsgWaiting: Custom message showed while pam_vbox is waiting for credentials from the host. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). CredsMsgWaitTimeout: Custom message showed when waiting for credentials by pam_vbox has timed out. For example, they did not arrive within time. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). If a pam_vbox guest property does not have the correct flag set (RDONLYGUEST) the property is ignored and, depending on the property, a default value will be used. This can result in pam_vbox not waiting for credentials. Consult the appropriate syslog file for more information and use the debug option. &product-name; comes with a greeter module, named vbox-greeter, that can be used with LightDM. LightDM is the default display manager for Ubuntu Linux and therefore can also be used for automated guest logins. vbox-greeter does not need the pam_vbox module described in in order to function. It comes with its own authentication mechanism provided by LightDM. However, to provide maximum flexibility both modules can be used together on the same guest. As with the pam_vbox module, vbox-greeter is shipped as part of the Guest Additions but it is not installed or activated on the guest OS by default. To install vbox-greeter automatically upon Guest Additions installation, use the --with-autologon option when starting the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run file: # ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run -- --with-autologon For manual or postponed installation, copy the vbox-greeter.desktop file from /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-<version>/other/ to the xgreeters directory, which is usually /usr/share/xgreeters/. See your guest OS documentation for the name of the correct LightDM greeter directory. The vbox-greeter module is installed by the &product-name; Guest Additions installer and is located in /usr/sbin/. To enable vbox-greeter as the standard greeter module, edit the file /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf as follows: [SeatDefaults] greeter-session=vbox-greeter The LightDM server must be fully restarted in order for vbox-greeter to be used as the default greeter. As root on Ubuntu, run service lightdm --full-restart or restart the guest. vbox-greeter is independent of the graphical session you choose, such as Gnome, KDE, or Unity. However, vbox-greeter does require FLTK 1.3 or later to implement its own user interface. There are numerous guest properties which can be used to further customize the login experience. For automatically logging in users, the same guest properties apply as for pam_vbox. See . In addition to the previously mentioned guest properties, vbox-greeter enables you to further customize its user interface. The following guest properties are located in the /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Greeter/ directory: HideRestart: Set to 1 if vbox-greeter should hide the button to restart the guest. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). HideShutdown: Set to 1 if vbox-greeter should hide the button to shutdown the guest. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). BannerPath: Path to a .PNG file to use as a banner image on the top of the greeter. The image size must be 460 x 90 pixels, any bit depth. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). UseTheming: Set to 1 for turning on the following theming options. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). Theme/BackgroundColor: Hexadecimal RRGGBB color for the background. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). Theme/LogonDialog/HeaderColor: Hexadecimal RRGGBB foreground color for the header text. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). Theme/LogonDialog/BackgroundColor: Hexadecimal RRGGBB color for the login dialog background. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). Theme/LogonDialog/ButtonColor: Hexadecimal RRGGBB background color for the login dialog button. This property must be set read-only for the guest (RDONLYGUEST). The same restrictions for the guest properties above apply as for the ones specified in the pam_vbox section. Microsoft offers a system preparation tool called Sysprep, to prepare a Windows system for deployment or redistribution. Some Windows releases include Sysprep on the installation medium, but the tool is also available for download from the Microsoft web site. In a standard For most Windows versions, Sysprep is included in a default installation. Sysprep mainly consists of an executable called sysprep.exe which is invoked by the user to put the Windows installation into preparation mode. The Guest Additions offer a way to launch a system preparation on the guest operating system in an automated way, controlled from the host system. See for details of how to use this feature with the special identifier sysprep as the program to execute, along with the user name sysprep and password sysprep for the credentials. Sysprep is then started with the required system rights. Specifying the location of sysprep.exe is not possible. Instead the following paths are used, based on the Windows release: C:\sysprep\sysprep.exe for Windows XP and earlier %WINDIR%\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe for Windows Vista and later The Guest Additions will automatically use the appropriate path to execute the system preparation tool. The &product-name; Guest Additions contain several different drivers. If you do not want to configure them all, use the following command to install the Guest Additions: $ sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run no_setup After running this script, run the rcvboxadd setup command as root to compile the kernel modules. On some 64-bit guests, you must replace lib with lib64. On older guests that do not run the udev service, you must add the vboxadd service to the default runlevel to ensure that the modules are loaded. To set up the time synchronization service, add the vboxadd-service service to the default runlevel. To set up the X11 and OpenGL part of the Guest Additions, run the rcvboxadd-x11 setup command. Note that you do not need to enable additional services. Use the rcvboxadd setup to recompile the guest kernel modules. After compilation, reboot your guest to ensure that the new modules are loaded. This section assumes that you are familiar with configuring the X.Org server using xorg.conf and optionally the newer mechanisms using hal or udev and xorg.conf.d. If not you can learn about them by studying the documentation which comes with X.Org. The &product-name; Guest Additions includes drivers for X.Org. By default these drivers are in the following directory: /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-version/other/ The correct versions for the X server are symbolically linked into the X.Org driver directories. For graphics integration to work correctly, the X server must load the vboxvideo driver. Many recent X server versions look for it automatically if they see that they are running in &product-name;. For an optimal user experience, the guest kernel drivers must be loaded and the Guest Additions tool VBoxClient must be running as a client in the X session. For mouse integration to work correctly, the guest kernel drivers must be loaded. In addition, for legacy X servers the correct vboxmouse driver must be loaded and associated with /dev/mouse or /dev/psaux. For most guests, a driver for a PS/2 mouse must be loaded and the correct vboxmouse driver must be associated with /dev/vboxguest. The &product-name; guest graphics driver can use any graphics configuration for which the virtual resolution fits into the virtual video memory allocated to the virtual machine, minus a small amount used by the guest driver, as described in . The driver will offer a range of standard modes at least up to the default guest resolution for all active guest monitors. The default mode can be changed by setting the output property VBOX_MODE to "<width>x<height>" for any guest monitor. When VBoxClient and the kernel drivers are active this is done automatically when the host requests a mode change. The driver for older versions can only receive new modes by querying the host for requests at regular intervals. With legacy X Servers before version 1.3, you can also add your own modes to the X server configuration file. Add them to the "Modes" list in the "Display" subsection of the "Screen" section. For example, the following section has a custom 2048x800 resolution mode added: Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "VirtualBox graphics card" Monitor "Generic Monitor" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "2048x800" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection EndSection With virtual machines running modern server operating systems, &product-name; supports CPU hot-plugging. On a physical computer CPU hot-plugging would mean that a CPU can be added or removed while the machine is running. &product-name; supports adding and removing of virtual CPUs while a virtual machine is running. CPU hot-plugging works only with guest operating systems that support the feature. So far this applies only to Linux and Windows Server. Windows supports only hot-add, while Linux supports hot-add and hot-remove. To use this feature with more than 8 CPUs, a 64-bit Linux guest is required. CPU hot-plugging is done using the VBoxManage command-line interface. First, hot-plugging needs to be enabled for a virtual machine: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --cpuhotplug on The --cpus option is used to specify the maximum number of CPUs that the virtual machine can have: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --cpus 8 When the VM is off, you can then add and remove virtual CPUs with the VBoxManage modifyvm --plugcpu and VBoxManage modifyvm --unplugcpu commands, which take the number of the virtual CPU as a parameter, as follows: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --plugcpu 3 $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --unplugcpu 3 Note that CPU 0 can never be removed. While the VM is running, CPUs can be added and removed with the VBoxManage controlvm plugcpu and VBoxManage controlvm unplugcpu commands instead, as follows: $ VBoxManage controlvm VM-name plugcpu 3 $ VBoxManage controlvm VM-name unplugcpu 3 See and for details. With Linux guests, the following applies: To prevent ejection while the CPU is still used it has to be ejected from within the guest before. The Linux Guest Additions contain a service which receives hot-remove events and ejects the CPU. Also, after a CPU is added to the VM it is not automatically used by Linux. The Linux Guest Additions service will take care of that if installed. If not a CPU can be started with the following command: $ echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu<id>/online &product-name; includes a feature called webcam passthrough, which enables a guest to use a host webcam. This complements the general USB passthrough support which was the typical way of using host webcams in legacy releases. The webcam passthrough support can handle non-USB video sources in theory, but this is completely untested. The webcam passthrough module is shipped as part of the &product-name; extension pack, which must be installed separately. See . The host webcam can be attached to the VM using the Devices menu in the VM menu bar. The Webcams menu contains a list of available video input devices on the host. Clicking on a webcam name attaches or detaches the corresponding host device. The VBoxManage command line tool can be used to enable webcam passthrough. Please see the host-specific sections below for additional details. The following commands are available: Get a list of host webcams, or other video input devices: $ VBoxManage list webcams The output format is as follows: alias "user friendly name" host path or identifier The alias can be used as a shortcut in other commands. Alias '.0' means the default video input device on the host. Alias '.1', '.2'means first, second video input device, and so on. The device order is host-specific. Attach a webcam to a running VM, as follows: VBoxManage controlvm VM name webcam attach [host_path|alias [settings]] This attaches a USB webcam device to the guest. The settings parameter is a string Setting1=Value1;Setting2=Value2, which enables you to configure the emulated webcam device. The following settings are supported: MaxFramerate: The highest rate at which video frames are sent to the guest. A higher frame rate requires more CPU power. Therefore sometimes it is useful to set a lower limit. Default is no limit and allow the guest to use all frame rates supported by the host webcam. MaxPayloadTransferSize: How many bytes the emulated webcam can send to the guest at a time. Default value is 3060 bytes, which is used by some webcams. Higher values can slightly reduce CPU load, if the guest is able to use larger buffers. However, a high MaxPayloadTransferSize might be not supported by some guests. Detach a webcam from a running VM, as follows: VBoxManage controlvm VM-name webcam detach [host_path|alias] List the webcams attached to a running VM, as follows: VBoxManage controlvm VM-name webcam list The output contains the path or alias which was used in the webcam attach command for each attached webcam. When the webcam device is detached from the host, the emulated webcam device is automatically detached from the guest. Mac OS X version 10.9 or later is required. When the webcam device is detached from the host, the emulated webcam device remains attached to the guest and must be manually detached using the VBoxManage controlvm VM-name webcam detach command. When the webcam is detached from the host the emulated webcam device is automatically detached from the guest only if the webcam is streaming video. If the emulated webcam is inactive it should be manually detached using the VBoxManage controlvm VM-name webcam detach command. Aliases .0 and .1 are mapped to /dev/video0, alias .2 is mapped to /dev/video1 and so forth. Apart from the standard VESA resolutions, the &product-name; VESA BIOS enables you to add up to 16 custom video modes which will be reported to the guest operating system. When using Windows guests with the &product-name; Guest Additions, a custom graphics driver will be used instead of the fallback VESA solution so this information does not apply. Additional video modes can be configured for each VM using the extra data facility. The extra data key is called CustomVideoModex with x being a number from 1 to 16. Please note that modes will be read from 1 until either the following number is not defined or 16 is reached. The following example adds a video mode that corresponds to the native display resolution of many notebook computers: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "CustomVideoMode1" "1400x1050x16" The VESA mode IDs for custom video modes start at 0x160. In order to use the above defined custom video mode, the following command line has to be supplied to Linux: vga = 0x200 | 0x160 vga = 864 For guest operating systems with &product-name; Guest Additions, a custom video mode can be set using the video mode hint feature. When guest systems with the Guest Additions installed are started using the graphical frontend, the normal &product-name; application, they will not be allowed to use screen resolutions greater than the host's screen size unless the user manually resizes them by dragging the window, switching to full screen or seamless mode or sending a video mode hint using VBoxManage. This behavior is what most users will want, but if you have different needs, you can change it by issuing one of the following commands from the command line: Remove all limits on guest resolutions. VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution any Manually specify a maximum resolution. VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution widthxheight Restore the default settings to all guest VMs. VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution auto As an alternative to using virtual disk images as described in , &product-name; can also present either entire physical hard disks or selected partitions as virtual disks to virtual machines. With &product-name;, this type of access is called raw hard disk access. It enables a guest operating system to access its virtual hard disk without going through the host OS file system. The actual performance difference for image files compared to raw disk varies greatly depending on the overhead of the host file system, whether dynamically growing images are used, and on host OS caching strategies. The caching indirectly also affects other aspects such as failure behavior. For example, whether the virtual disk contains all data written before a host OS crash. Consult your host OS documentation for details on this. Raw hard disk access is for expert users only. Incorrect use or use of an outdated configuration can lead to total loss of data on the physical disk. Most importantly, do not attempt to boot the partition with the currently running host operating system in a guest. This will lead to severe data corruption. Raw hard disk access, both for entire disks and individual partitions, is implemented as part of the VMDK image format support. As a result, you will need to create a special VMDK image file which defines where the data will be stored. After creating such a special VMDK image, you can use it like a regular virtual disk image. For example, you can use the VirtualBox Manager, see , or VBoxManage to assign the image to a virtual machine. While this variant is the simplest to set up, you must be aware that this will give a guest operating system direct and full access to an entire physical disk. If your host operating system is also booted from this disk, please take special care to not access the partition from the guest at all. On the positive side, the physical disk can be repartitioned in arbitrary ways without having to recreate the image file that gives access to the raw disk. On a Linux host, to create an image that represents an entire physical hard disk which will not contain any actual data, as this will all be stored on the physical disk, use the following command: $ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename \ path-to-file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda This creates the /path-to-file.vmdk file image that must be an absolute path. All data is read and written from /dev/sda. On a Windows host, instead of the above device specification, for example use \\.\PhysicalDrive0. On a Mac OS X host, instead of the above device specification use for example /dev/disk1. Note that on Mac OS X you can only get access to an entire disk if no volume is mounted from it. Creating the image requires read/write access for the given device. Read/write access is also later needed when using the image from a virtual machine. On some host platforms, such as Windows, raw disk access may be restricted and not permitted by the host OS in some situations. Just like with regular disk images, this does not automatically attach the newly created image to a virtual machine. This can be done as follows: $ VBoxManage storageattach WindowsXP --storagectl "IDE Controller" \ --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium path-to-file.vmdk When this is done the selected virtual machine will boot from the specified physical disk. This raw partition support is quite similar to the full hard disk access described above. However, in this case, any partitioning information will be stored inside the VMDK image. This means that you can install a different boot loader in the virtual hard disk without affecting the host's partitioning information. While the guest will be able to see all partitions that exist on the physical disk, access will be filtered in that reading from partitions for which no access is allowed the partitions will only yield zeroes, and all writes to them are ignored. To create a special image for raw partition support, which will contain a small amount of data, on a Linux host, use the command: $ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename \ path-to-file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 The command is identical to the one for full hard disk access, except for the additional -partitions parameter. This example would create the image /path-to-file.vmdk, which must be absolute, and partitions 1 and 5 of /dev/sda would be made accessible to the guest. &product-name; uses the same partition numbering as your Linux host. As a result, the numbers given in the above example would refer to the first primary partition and the first logical drive in the extended partition, respectively. On a Windows host, instead of the above device specification, use for example \\.\PhysicalDrive0. On a Mac OS X host, instead of the above device specification use /dev/disk1, for example. Note that on OS X you can only use partitions which are not mounted. Eject the respective volume first. Partition numbers are the same on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X hosts. The numbers for the list of partitions can be taken from the output of the following command: $ VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk /dev/sda The output lists the partition types and sizes to give the user enough information to identify the partitions necessary for the guest. Images which give access to individual partitions are specific to a particular host disk setup. You cannot transfer these images to another host. Also, whenever the host partitioning changes, the image must be recreated. Creating the image requires read/write access for the given device. Read/write access is also later needed when using the image from a virtual machine. If this is not feasible, there is a special variant for raw partition access, currently only available on Linux hosts, that avoids having to give the current user access to the entire disk. To set up such an image, use: $ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename \ path-to-file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 -relative When used from a virtual machine, the image will then refer not to the entire disk, but only to the individual partitions. In this example, /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5. As a consequence, read/write access is only required for the affected partitions, not for the entire disk. During creation however, read-only access to the entire disk is required to obtain the partitioning information. In some configurations it may be necessary to change the MBR code of the created image. For example, to replace the Linux boot loader that is used on the host by another boot loader. This enables for example the guest to boot directly to Windows, while the host boots Linux from the "same" disk. For this purpose the -mbr option is provided. It specifies a file name from which to take the MBR code. The partition table is not modified at all, so a MBR file from a system with totally different partitioning can be used. An example of this is: $ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename path-to-file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 -mbr winxp.mbr The modified MBR will be stored inside the image, not on the host disk. The created image can be attached to a storage controller in a VM configuration as usual. &product-name; reports vendor product data for its virtual hard disks which consist of hard disk serial number, firmware revision and model number. These can be changed using the following commands: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/SerialNumber" "serial" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/FirmwareRevision" "firmware" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ModelNumber" "model" The serial number is a 20 byte alphanumeric string, the firmware revision an 8 byte alphanumeric string and the model number a 40 byte alphanumeric string. Instead of Port0, referring to the first port, specify the desired SATA hard disk port. The above commands apply to virtual machines with an AHCI (SATA) controller. The commands for virtual machines with an IDE controller are: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/PrimaryMaster/SerialNumber" "serial" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/PrimaryMaster/FirmwareRevision" "firmware" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/PrimaryMaster/ModelNumber" "model" For hard disks, you can mark the drive as having a non-rotational medium by using the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/NonRotational" "1" Additional three parameters are needed for CD/DVD drives to report the vendor product data: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIVendorId" "vendor" VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIProductId" "product" VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIRevision" "revision" The vendor id is an 8 byte alphanumeric string, the product id an 16 byte alphanumeric string and the revision a 4 byte alphanumeric string. Instead of Port0, referring to the first port, specify the desired SATA hard disk port. As an experimental feature, &product-name; enables access to an iSCSI target running in a virtual machine which is configured to use Internal Networking mode. See , , and . The IP stack accessing Internal Networking must be configured in the virtual machine which accesses the iSCSI target. A free static IP and a MAC address not used by other virtual machines must be chosen. In the example below, adapt the name of the virtual machine, the MAC address, the IP configuration, and the Internal Networking name (MyIntNet) according to your needs. The following eight commands must first be issued: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Trusted 1 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/MAC 08:00:27:01:02:0f $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/IP 10.0.9.1 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/Netmask 255.255.255.0 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Driver IntNet $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/Network MyIntNet $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/TrunkType 2 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/IsService 1 Finally the iSCSI disk must be attached with the --intnet option to tell the iSCSI initiator to use internal networking, as follows: $ VBoxManage storageattach ... --medium iscsi --server 10.0.9.30 \ --target iqn.2008-12.com.sun:sampletarget --intnet Compared to a regular iSCSI setup, the IP address of the target must be specified as a numeric IP address, as there is no DNS resolver for internal networking. The virtual machine with the iSCSI target should be started before the VM using it is powered on. If a virtual machine using an iSCSI disk is started without having the iSCSI target powered up, it can take up to 200 seconds to detect this situation. The VM will fail to power up. In NAT mode, the guest network interface is assigned to the IPv4 range 10.0.x.0/24 by default where x corresponds to the instance of the NAT interface +2. So x is 2 when there is only one NAT instance active. In that case the guest is assigned to the address 10.0.2.15, the gateway is set to 10.0.2.2 and the name server can be found at 10.0.2.3. If the NAT network needs to be changed, use the following command: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name \ --natnet1 "192.168/16" This command would reserve the network addresses from 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.254.254 for the first NAT network instance of VM-name The guest IP would be assigned to 192.168.0.15 and the default gateway could be found at 192.168.0.2. For network booting in NAT mode, by default &product-name; uses a built-in TFTP server at the IP address 10.0.2.4. This default behavior should work fine for typical remote-booting scenarios. However, it is possible to change the boot server IP and the location of the boot image with the following commands: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name \ --nattftpserver1 10.0.2.2 $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name \ --nattftpfile1 /srv/tftp/boot/MyPXEBoot.pxe The &product-name; NAT stack performance is often determined by its interaction with the host's TCP/IP stack and the size of several buffers, SO_RCVBUF and SO_SNDBUF. For certain setups users might want to adjust the buffer size for a better performance. This can by achieved using the following commands, where values are in kilobytes and can range from 8 to 1024: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name \ --natsettings1 16000,128,128,0,0 This example illustrates tuning the NAT settings. The first parameter is the MTU, then the size of the socket's send buffer and the size of the socket's receive buffer, the initial size of the TCP send window, and lastly the initial size of the TCP receive window. Note that specifying zero means fallback to the default value. Each of these buffers has a default size of 64KB and default MTU is 1500. By default, &product-name;'s NAT engine will route TCP/IP packets through the default interface assigned by the host's TCP/IP stack. The technical reason for this is that the NAT engine uses sockets for communication. If you want to change this behavior, you can tell the NAT engine to bind to a particular IP address instead. For example, use the following command: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name \ --natbindip1 "10.45.0.2" After this, all outgoing traffic will be sent through the interface with the IP address 10.45.0.2. Ensure that this interface is up and running before changing the NAT bind address. The NAT engine by default offers the same DNS servers to the guest that are configured on the host. In some scenarios, it can be desirable to hide the DNS server IPs from the guest, for example when this information can change on the host due to expiring DHCP leases. In this case, you can tell the NAT engine to act as DNS proxy using the following command: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --natdnsproxy1 on For resolving network names, the DHCP server of the NAT engine offers a list of registered DNS servers of the host. If for some reason you need to hide this DNS server list and use the host's resolver settings, thereby forcing the &product-name; NAT engine to intercept DNS requests and forward them to host's resolver, use the following command: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --natdnshostresolver1 on Note that this setting is similar to the DNS proxy mode, however whereas the proxy mode just forwards DNS requests to the appropriate servers, the resolver mode will interpret the DNS requests and use the host's DNS API to query the information and return it to the guest. In some cases it might be useful to intercept the name resolving mechanism, providing a user-defined IP address on a particular DNS request. The intercepting mechanism enables the user to map not only a single host but domains and even more complex naming conventions if required. The following command sets a rule for mapping a name to a specified IP: VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \ unique-rule-name-of-interception-rule/HostIP" IPv4 VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \ unique-rule-name/HostName" hostname The following command sets a rule for mapping a pattern name to a specified IP: VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \ unique-rule-name/HostIP" IPv4 VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \ unique-rule-name/HostNamePattern" hostpattern The host name pattern can include the following wildcard characters: pipe (|), question mark (?), and asterisk (*). This example demonstrates how to instruct the host-resolver mechanism to resolve all domain and probably some mirrors of www.blocked-site.info site with IP 127.0.0.1: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/HostResolverMappings/all_blocked_site/HostIP" 127.0.0.1 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/HostResolverMappings/all_blocked_site/HostNamePattern" "*.blocked-site.*|*.fb.org" The host resolver mechanism should be enabled to use user-defined mapping rules, otherwise they do not have any effect. By default, the NAT core uses aliasing and uses random ports when generating an alias for a connection. This works well for the most protocols like SSH, FTP and so on. Though some protocols might need a more transparent behavior or may depend on the real port number the packet was sent from. You can change the NAT mode by using the following commands: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name \ --nataliasmode1 proxyonly $ VBoxManage modifyvm "Linux Guest" --nataliasmode1 sameports The first example disables aliasing and switches NAT into transparent mode, the second example enforces preserving of port values. These modes can be combined if necessary. The DMI data that &product-name; provides to guests can be changed for a specific VM. Use the following commands to configure the DMI BIOS information. In case your VM is configured to use EFI firmware you need to replace pcbios by efi in the keys. DMI BIOS information (type 0) $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSVendor" "BIOS Vendor" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSVersion" "BIOS Version" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseDate" "BIOS Release Date" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseMajor" 1 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseMinor" 2 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSFirmwareMajor" 3 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSFirmwareMinor" 4 DMI system information (type 1) $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemVendor" "System Vendor" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemProduct" "System Product" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemVersion" "System Version" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSerial" "System Serial" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSKU" "System SKU" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemFamily" "System Family" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemUuid" \ "9852bf98-b83c-49db-a8de-182c42c7226b" DMI board information (type 2) $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardVendor" "Board Vendor" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardProduct" "Board Product" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardVersion" "Board Version" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardSerial" "Board Serial" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardAssetTag" "Board Tag" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardLocInChass" "Board Location" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardBoardType" 10 DMI system enclosure or chassis (type 3) $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisVendor" "Chassis Vendor" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisType" 3 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisVersion" "Chassis Version" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisSerial" "Chassis Serial" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisAssetTag" "Chassis Tag" DMI processor information (type 4) $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiProcManufacturer" "GenuineIntel" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiProcVersion" "Pentium(R) III" DMI OEM strings (type 11) $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiOEMVBoxVer" "vboxVer_1.2.3" $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiOEMVBoxRev" "vboxRev_12345" If a DMI string is not set, the default value of &product-name; is used. To set an empty string use "<EMPTY>". Note that in the above list, all quoted parameters (DmiBIOSVendor, DmiBIOSVersion but not DmiBIOSReleaseMajor) are expected to be strings. If such a string is a valid number, the parameter is treated as number and the VM will most probably refuse to start with an VERR_CFGM_NOT_STRING error. In that case, use "string:value". For example: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSerial" "string:1234" Changing this information can be necessary to provide the DMI information of the host to the guest to prevent Windows from asking for a new product key. On Linux hosts, the DMI BIOS information can be obtained with the following command: $ dmidecode -t0 The DMI system information can be obtained as follows: $ dmidecode -t1 You can configure &product-name; to present up to four custom ACPI tables to the guest. Use a command such as the following to configure custom ACPI tables. Note that CustomTable1, CustomTable2, and CustomTable3 are available in addition to CustomTable0. $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ "VBoxInternal/Devices/acpi/0/Config/CustomTable0" "/path-to-table.bin" Configuring custom ACPI tables can for example avoid the need for asking for a new product key on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and later guests. On Linux hosts, one of the system's ACPI tables can be read from /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/. By default, &product-name; keeps all sources of time visible to the guest synchronized to a single time source, the monotonic host time. This reflects the assumptions of many guest operating systems, which expect all time sources to reflect "wall clock" time. In special circumstances it may be useful however to make the time stamp counter (TSC) in the guest reflect the time actually spent executing the guest. This special TSC handling mode can be enabled on a per-VM basis, and for best results must be used only in combination with hardware virtualization. To enable this mode use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution" 1 To revert to the default TSC handling mode use: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution" Note that if you use the special TSC handling mode with a guest operating system which is very strict about the consistency of time sources you may get a warning or error message about the timing inconsistency. It may also cause clocks to become unreliable with some guest operating systems depending on how they use the TSC. For certain purposes it can be useful to accelerate or to slow down the virtual guest clock. This can be achieved as follows: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" 200 The above example will double the speed of the guest clock while $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" 50 will halve the speed of the guest clock. Note that changing the rate of the virtual clock can confuse the guest and can even lead to abnormal guest behavior. For instance, a higher clock rate means shorter timeouts for virtual devices with the result that a slightly increased response time of a virtual device due to an increased host load can cause guest failures. Note further that any time synchronization mechanism will frequently try to resynchronize the guest clock with the reference clock, which is the host clock if the &product-name; Guest Additions are active. Therefore any time synchronization should be disabled if the rate of the guest clock is changed as described above. See . The &product-name; Guest Additions ensure that the guest's system time is synchronized with the host time. There are several parameters which can be tuned. The parameters can be set for a specific VM using the following command: $ VBoxManage guestproperty set VM-name "/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/VBoxService/property" value property is one of the following: --timesync-interval Specifies the interval at which to synchronize the time with the host. The default is 10000 ms (10 seconds). --timesync-min-adjust The minimum absolute drift value measured in milliseconds to make adjustments for. The default is 1000 ms on OS/2 and 100 ms elsewhere. --timesync-latency-factor The factor to multiply the time query latency with to calculate the dynamic minimum adjust time. The default is 8 times, which means as follows: Measure the time it takes to determine the host time, the guest has to contact the VM host service which may take some time. Multiply this value by 8 and do an adjustment only if the time difference between host and guest is bigger than this value. Do not do any time adjustment otherwise. --timesync-max-latency The max host timer query latency to accept. The default is 250 ms. --timesync-set-threshold The absolute drift threshold, given as milliseconds where to start setting the time instead of trying to smoothly adjust it. The default is 20 minutes. --timesync-set-start Set the time when starting the time sync service. --timesync-set-on-restore 0|1 Set the time after the VM was restored from a saved state when passing 1 as parameter. This is the default. Disable by passing 0. In the latter case, the time will be adjusted smoothly, which can take a long time. All these parameters can be specified as command line parameters to VBoxService as well. Once installed and started, the &product-name; Guest Additions will try to synchronize the guest time with the host time. This can be prevented by forbidding the guest service from reading the host clock: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled" 1 &product-name; includes a network filter driver that utilizes Oracle Solaris 11's Crossbow functionality. By default, this new driver is installed for Oracle Solaris 11 hosts that have support for it. To force installation of the older STREAMS based network filter driver, execute as root the following command before installing the &product-name; package: $ touch /etc/vboxinst_vboxflt To force installation of the Crossbow based network filter driver, execute as root the following command before installing the &product-name; package: $ touch /etc/vboxinst_vboxbow To check which driver is currently being used by &product-name;, execute: $ modinfo | grep vbox If the output contains "vboxbow", it indicates &product-name; is using the Crossbow network filter driver, while the name "vboxflt" indicates usage of the older STREAMS network filter. &product-name; supports Virtual Network Interface (VNIC) templates for configuring VMs over VLANs. An &product-name; VNIC template is a VNIC whose name starts with vboxvnic_template. The string is case-sensitive. On Oracle Solaris 11 hosts, when Crossbow-based bridged networking is used, a VNIC template may be used to specify the VLAN ID to use while bridging over a network link. The following is an example of how to use a VNIC template to configure a VM over a VLAN. Create an &product-name; VNIC template, by executing as root: # dladm create-vnic -t -l nge0 -v 23 vboxvnic_template0 This will create a temporary VNIC template over interface nge0 with the VLAN ID 23. To create VNIC templates that are persistent across host reboots, skip the -t parameter in the above command. You may check the current state of links using the following command: $ dladm show-link LINK CLASS MTU STATE BRIDGE OVER nge0 phys 1500 up -- -- nge1 phys 1500 down -- -- vboxvnic_template0 vnic 1500 up -- nge0 $ dladm show-vnic LINK OVER SPEED MACADDRESS MACADDRTYPE VID vboxvnic_template0 nge0 1000 2:8:20:25:12:75 random 23 Once the VNIC template is created, any VMs that need to be on VLAN 23 over the interface nge0 can be configured to bridge using this VNIC template. VNIC templates makes managing VMs on VLANs simpler and efficient. The VLAN details are not stored as part of every VM's configuration but rather inherited from the VNIC template while starting the VM. The VNIC template itself can be modified anytime using the dladm command. VNIC templates can be created with additional properties such as bandwidth limits and CPU fanout. Refer to your Oracle Solaris network documentation for details. The additional properties are also applied to VMs which bridge using the VNIC template. By default &product-name; provides you with one host-only network interface. Adding more host-only network interfaces on Oracle Solaris hosts requires manual configuration. Here is how to add another host-only network interface. Begin by stopping all running VMs. Then, unplumb the existing "vboxnet0" interface by execute the following command as root: # ifconfig vboxnet0 unplumb If you have several vboxnet interfaces, you will need to unplumb all of them. Once all vboxnet interfaces are unplumbed, remove the driver by executing the following command as root: # rem_drv vboxnet Edit the file /platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/vboxnet.conf and add a line for the new interface we want to add as shown below: name="vboxnet" parent="pseudo" instance=1; name="vboxnet" parent="pseudo" instance=2; Add as many of these lines as required with each line having a unique instance number. Next, reload the vboxnet driver by executing the following command as root: # add_drv vboxnet On Oracle Solaris 11.1 and newer hosts you may want to rename the default vanity interface name. To check what name has been assigned, execute: $ dladm show-phys LINK MEDIA STATE SPEED DUPLEX DEVICE net0 Ethernet up 100 full e1000g0 net2 Ethernet up 1000 full vboxnet1 net1 Ethernet up 1000 full vboxnet0 In the above example, we can rename "net2" to "vboxnet1" before proceeding to plumb the interface. This can be done by executing as root: # dladm rename-link net2 vboxnet1 Now plumb all the interfaces using ifconfig vboxnetX plumb, where X would be 1 in this case. Once the interface is plumbed, it may be configured like any other network interface. Refer to the ifconfig documentation for further details. To make the settings for the newly added interfaces persistent across reboots, you will need to edit the files /etc/inet/netmasks, and if you are using NWAM /etc/nwam/llp and add the appropriate entries to set the netmask and static IP for each of those interfaces. The &product-name; installer only updates these configuration files for the one "vboxnet0" interface it creates by default. &product-name; is capable of producing its own core files for extensive debugging when things go wrong. Currently this is only available on Oracle Solaris hosts. The &product-name; CoreDumper can be enabled using the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpEnabled 1 You can specify which directory to use for core dumps with this command, as follows: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpDir path-to-directory Make sure the directory you specify is on a volume with sufficient free space and that the &product-name; process has sufficient permissions to write files to this directory. If you skip this command and do not specify any core dump directory, the current directory of the &product-name; executable will be used. This would most likely fail when writing cores as they are protected with root permissions. It is recommended you explicitly set a core dump directory. You must specify when the &product-name; CoreDumper should be triggered. This is done using the following commands: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpReplaceSystemDump 1 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpLive 1 At least one of the above two commands will have to be provided if you have enabled the &product-name; CoreDumper. Setting CoreDumpReplaceSystemDump sets up the VM to override the host's core dumping mechanism and in the event of any crash only the &product-name; CoreDumper would produce the core file. Setting CoreDumpLive sets up the VM to produce cores whenever the VM process receives a SIGUSR2 signal. After producing the core file, the VM will not be terminated and will continue to run. You can thus take cores of the VM process using the following command: $ kill -s SIGUSR2 VM-process-id The &product-name; CoreDumper creates core files of the form core.vb.process-name.process-ID such as core.vb.VBoxHeadless.11321. Oracle Solaris kernel zones on x86-based systems make use of hardware-assisted virtualization features like &product-name; does. However, for kernel zones and &product-name; to share this hardware resource, they need to cooperate. By default, due to performance reasons, &product-name; acquires the hardware-assisted virtualization resource (VT-x/AMD-V) globally on the host machine and uses it until the last &product-name; VM that requires it is powered off. This prevents other software from using VT-x/AMD-V during the time &product-name; has taken control of it. &product-name; can be instructed to relinquish use of hardware-assisted virtualization features when not executing guest code, thereby allowing kernel zones to make use of them. To do this, shutdown all &product-name; VMs and execute the following command: $ VBoxManage setproperty hwvirtexclusive off This command needs to be executed only once as the setting is stored as part of the global &product-name; settings which will continue to persist across host-reboots and &product-name; upgrades. There are several advanced customization settings for locking down the VirtualBox Manager. Locking down means removing some features that the user should not see. VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations property[,property ...] property is one of the following properties: noSelector Do not allow users to start the VirtualBox Manager. Trying to do so will show a window containing a proper error message. noMenuBar VM windows will not contain a menu bar. noStatusBar VM windows will not contain a status bar. To disable any of these VirtualBox Manager customizations use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations The following per-machine VM extradata settings can be used to change the behavior of the VM selector window in respect of certain VMs: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name property true property can be any of the following: GUI/HideDetails Do not show the VM configuration of a certain VM. The details window will remain just empty if this VM is selected. GUI/PreventReconfiguration Do not allow the user to open the Settings dialog for a certain VM. GUI/PreventSnapshotOperations Prevent snapshot operations for a VM from the GUI, either at runtime or when the VM is powered off. GUI/HideFromManager Hide a certain VM in the VM selector window. GUI/PreventApplicationUpdate Disable the automatic update check and hide the corresponding menu item. Note that these settings do not prevent the user from reconfiguring the VM by using the VBoxManage modifyvm command. You can disable certain entries in the global settings page of the VM selector: $ VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/RestrictedGlobalSettingsPages property[,property...] property is one of the following: General Do not show the General settings pane. Input Do not show the Input settings pane. Update Do not show the Update settings pane. Language Do not show the Language settings pane. Display Do not show the Display settings pane. Network Do not show the Network settings pane. Extensions Do not show the Extensions settings pane. Proxy Do not show the Proxy settings pane. This is a global setting. You can specify any combination of properties. To restore the default behavior, use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/RestrictedGlobalSettingsPages You can disable certain menu actions in the VM window: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMenus OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords: All Do not show any menu in the VM window. Application Do not show Application/File menu in the VM window. Machine Do not show the Machine menu in the VM window. View Do not show the View menu in the VM window. Input Do not show Input menu in the VM window. Devices Do not show the Devices menu in the VM window. Help Do not show the Help menu in the VM window. Debug Do not show the Debug menu in the VM window. The Debug menu is only visible if the GUI was started with special command line parameters or environment variable settings. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use the following command: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMenus You can also disable certain menu actions of certain menus. Use the following command to disable certain actions of the Application menu. This is only available on Mac OS X hosts. VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeApplicationMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords: All Do not show any menu item in this menu. About Do not show the About menu item in this menu. Preferences Do not show the Preferences menu item in this menu. NetworkAccessManager Do not show the Network Operations Manager menu item in this menu. ResetWarnings Do not show the Reset All Warnings menu item in this menu. Close Do not show the Close menu item in this menu. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use the following command: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMenus Use the following command to disable certain actions of the Machine menu: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMachineMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords: All Do not show any menu item in this menu. SettingsDialog Do not show the Settings menu item in this menu. TakeSnapshot Do not show the Take Snapshot... menu item in this menu. InformationDialog Do not show the Session Information... menu item in this menu. FileManagerDialog Do not show the File Manager... menu item in this menu. Pause Do not show the Pause menu item in this menu. Reset Do not show the Reset menu item in this menu. Shutdown Do not show the ACPI Shutdown menu item in this menu. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMachineMenuActions Use the following command to disable certain actions of the View menu: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeViewMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords: All Do not show any menu item in this menu. Fullscreen Do not show the Full-screen Mode menu item in this menu. Seamless Do not show the Seamless Mode menu item in this menu. Scale Do not show the Scaled Mode menu item in this menu. GuestAutoresize Do not show the Auto-resize Guest Display menu item in this menu. AdjustWindow Do not show the Adjust Window Size menu item in this menu. TakeScreenshot Do not show the Take Screenshot... menu item in this menu. Recording Do not show the Recording menu item in this menu. VRDEServer Do not show the Remote Display menu item in this menu. MenuBar Do not show the Menu Bar menu item in this menu. MenuBarSettings Do not show the Menu Bar Settings... menu item in this menu. StatusBar Do not show the Status Bar menu item in this menu. StatusbarSettings Do not show the Statusbar Settings... menu item in this menu. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeViewMenuActions Use the following command to disable certain actions of the Input menu: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeInputMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords: All Do not show any menu item in this menu. Keyboard Do not show the Keyboard menu item in this menu. KeyboardSettings Do not show the Keyboard Settings... menu item in this menu. SoftKeyboard Do not show the Soft Keyboard... menu item in this menu. TypeCAD Do not show the Insert Ctrl-Alt-Del menu item in this menu. TypeCABS Do not show the Insert Ctrl-Alt-Backspace menu item in this menu. TypeCtrlBreak Do not show the Insert Ctrl-Break menu item in this menu. TypeInsert Do not show the Insert Insert menu item in this menu. TypePrintScreen Do not show the Insert Print Screen menu item in this menu. TypeAltPrintScreen Do not show the Insert Alt Print Screen menu item in this menu. TypeHostKeyCombo Do not show the Insert Host Key Combo menu item in this menu. MouseIntegration Do not show the MouseIntegration menu item in this menu. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeInputMenuActions Use the following command to disable certain actions of the Devices menu: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDevicesMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords to disable actions in the Devices menu: All Do not show any menu item in this menu. HardDrives Do not show the Hard Disks menu item in this menu. OpticalDevices Do not show the Optical Devices menu item in this menu. FloppyDevices Do not show the Floppy Drives menu item in this menu. Audio Do not show the Audio menu item in this menu. Network Do not show the Network menu item in this menu. NetworkSettings Do not show the Network Settings menu item in this menu. USBDevices Do not show the USB menu item in this menu. WebCams Do not show the WebCams menu item in this menu. SharedFolders Do not show the Shared Folders menu item in this menu. SharedFoldersSettings Do not show the Shared Folders Settings... menu item in this menu. SharedClipboard Do not show the Shared Clipboard menu item in this menu. DragAndDrop Do not show the Drag and Drop menu item in this menu. InstallGuestTools Do not show the Insert Guest Additions CD image... menu item in this menu. This is a per-VM or global or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDevicesMenuActions Use the following command to disable certain actions of the Debug menu: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDebuggerMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords to disable actions in the Debug menu, which is normally completely disabled: All Do not show any menu item in this menu. Statistics Do not show the Statistics... menu item in this menu. CommandLine Do not show the Command Line... menu item in this menu. Logging Do not show the Logging... menu item in this menu. LogDialog Do not show the Show Log... menu item in this menu. GuestControlConsole Do not show the Guest Control Terminal... menu item in this menu. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDebuggerMenuActions Use the following command to disable certain actions of the View menu: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeHelpMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords to disable actions in the Help menu, which is normally completely disabled: All Do not show any menu item in this menu. Contents Do not show the Contents... menu item in this menu. WebSite Do not show the VirtualBox Web Site... menu item in this menu. BugTracker Do not show the VirtualBox Bug Tracker... menu item in this menu. Forums Do not show the VirtualBox Forums... menu item in this menu. Oracle Do not show the Oracle Web Site... menu item in this menu. About Do not show the About VirtualBox... menu item in this menu. Only for non-Mac OS X hosts. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore the default behavior, use VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedRuntimeHelpMenuActions You can disable certain status bar items: VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedStatusBarIndicators OPTION[,OPTION...] where OPTION is one of the following keywords: HardDisks Do not show the hard disk icon in the VM window status bar. By default the hard disk icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one or more hard disks. OpticalDisks Do not show the CD icon in the VM window status bar. By default the CD icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one or more CD drives. FloppyDisks Do not show the floppy icon in the VM window status bar. By default the floppy icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one or more floppy drives. Network Do not show the network icon in the VM window status bar. By default the network icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one or more active network adapters. USB Do not show the USB icon in the status bar. SharedFolders Do not show the shared folders icon in the status bar. Capture Do not show the capture icon in the status bar. Features Do not show the CPU features icon in the status bar. Mouse Do not show the mouse icon in the status bar. Keyboard Do not show the keyboard icon in the status bar. This is a per-VM or global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. If all options are specified, no icons are displayed in the status bar of the VM window. To restore the default behavior, use VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"|global GUI/RestrictedStatusBarIndicators You can disable certain VM visual modes: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name GUI/RestrictedVisualStates property[,property...] property is one of the following: Fullscreen Do not allow to switch the VM into full screen mode. Seamless Do not allow to switch the VM into seamless mode. Scale Do not allow to switch the VM into scale mode. This is a per-VM setting. You can specify any combination of properties. To restore the default behavior, use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name GUI/RestrictedVisualStates To disable all Host key combinations, open the preferences and change the Host key to None. This might be useful when using &product-name; in a kiosk mode. To redefine or disable certain Host key actions, use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Input/MachineShortcuts "FullscreenMode=F,...." The following table shows the possible Host key actions, together with their default Host key shortcut. Setting an action to None will disable that Host key action. Action Default Key Action TakeSnapshot T Take a snapshot TakeScreenshot E Take a screenshot MouseIntegration I Toggle mouse integration TypeCAD Del Inject Ctrl+Alt+Del TypeCABS Backspace Inject Ctrl+Alt+Backspace Pause P Pause the VM Reset R Hard reset the guest SaveState Save the VM state and terminate the VM Shutdown H Press the virtual ACPI power button PowerOff Power off the VM without saving the state Close Q Show the Close VM dialog FullscreenMode F Switch the VM into full screen mode SeamlessMode L Switch the VM into seamless mode ScaleMode C Switch the VM into scaled mode GuestAutoResize G Automatically resize the guest window WindowAdjust A Immediately resize the guest window PopupMenu Home Show the popup menu in full screen mode and seamless mode SettingsDialog S Open the VM Settings dialog InformationDialog N Show the VM Session Information window NetworkAdaptersDialog Show the VM Network Adapters dialog SharedFoldersDialog Show the VM Shared Folders dialog InstallGuestAdditions D Mount the ISO containing the Guest Additions To disable full screen mode and seamless mode, use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Input/MachineShortcuts "FullscreenMode=None,SeamlessMode=None" You can disallow certain actions when terminating a VM. To disallow specific actions, use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name GUI/RestrictedCloseActions property[,property...] property is one of the following: SaveState Do not allow the user to save the VM state when terminating the VM. Shutdown Do not allow the user to shutdown the VM by sending the ACPI power-off event to the guest. PowerOff Do not allow the user to power off the VM. PowerOffRestoringSnapshot Do not allow the user to return to the last snapshot when powering off the VM. Detach Do not allow the user to detach from the VM process if the VM was started in separate mode. This is a per-VM setting. You can specify any combination of properties. If all properties are specified, the VM cannot be shut down. You can define a specific action for terminating a VM. In contrast to the setting decribed in the previous section, this setting allows only one action when the user terminates the VM. No exit menu is shown. Use the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name GUI/DefaultCloseAction action action is one of the following: SaveState Save the VM state before terminating the VM process. Shutdown The VM is shut down by sending the ACPI power-off event to the guest. PowerOff The VM is powered off. PowerOffRestoringSnapshot The VM is powered off and the saved state returns to the last snapshot. Detach Terminate the frontend but leave the VM process running. This is a per-VM setting. You can specify any combination of properties. If all properties are specified, the VM cannot be shut down. A VM runs into a Guru Meditation if there is a problem which cannot be fixed by other means than terminating the process. The default is to show a message window which instructs the user to open a bug report. This behavior can be configured as follows: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name GUI/GuruMeditationHandler mode mode is one of the following: Default A message window is shown. After the user confirmed, the VM is terminated. PowerOff The VM is immediately powered-off without showing any message window. The VM logfile will show information about what happened. Ignore The VM is left in stuck mode. Execution is stopped but no message window is shown. The VM has to be powered off manually. This is a per-VM setting. By default, the mouse is captured if the user clicks on the guest window and the guest expects relative mouse coordinates at this time. This happens if the pointing device is configured as PS/2 mouse and the guest has not yet started the &product-name; Guest Additions. For instance, the guest is booting or the Guest Additions are not installed, or if the pointing device is configured as a USB tablet but the guest has no USB driver loaded yet. Once the Guest Additions become active or the USB guest driver is started, the mouse capture is automatically released. The default behavior is sometimes not desired. Therefore it can be configured as follows: VBoxManage setextradata VM-name GUI/MouseCapturePolicy mode mode is one of the following: Default The default behavior as described above. HostComboOnly The mouse is only captured if the Host Key is toggled. Disabled The mouse is never captured, also not by toggling the Host Key This is a per-VM setting. &product-name; uses special window manager facilities to switch a multi-screen machine to full-screen on a multi-monitor host system. However, not all window managers provide these facilities correctly. &product-name; can be configured to use a legacy method of switching to full-screen mode instead, by using the command: VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Fullscreen/LegacyMode true You can go back to the default method by using the following command: VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Fullscreen/LegacyMode This is a global setting. It is possible to remove networking modes from &product-name; GUI. To do this, use the following command: VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/RestrictedNetworkAttachmentTypes property[,property...] property is one of the following: NAT Remove the NAT option from the GUI. NATNetwork Remove the NAT network option from the GUI. BridgedAdapter Remove the Bridged networking option from the GUI. InternalNetwork Remove the Internal networking option from the GUI. HostOnlyAdapter Remove the Host Only networking option from the GUI. GenericDriver Remove the Generic networking option from the GUI. This is a global setting. You can specify any combination of properties. To restore the default behavior, use the following command: VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/RestrictedNetworkAttachmentTypes The &product-name; web service, vboxwebsrv, is used for controlling &product-name; remotely. It is documented in detail in the &product-name; Software Development Kit (SDK). See . Web service start scripts are available for supported host operating systems. The following sections describe how to use the scripts. The &product-name; web service is never started automatically as a result of a standard installation. On Linux, the web service can be automatically started during host boot by adding appropriate parameters to the file /etc/default/virtualbox. There is one mandatory parameter, VBOXWEB_USER, which must be set to the user which will later start the VMs. The parameters in the following table all start with the VBOXWEB_ prefix string. For example: VBOXWEB_HOST and VBOXWEB_PORT. Parameter Description Default USER The user which the web service runs as HOST The host to bind the web service to localhost PORT The port to bind the web service to 18083 SSL_KEYFILE Server key and certificate file, in PEM format SSL_PASSWORDFILE File name for password to server key SSL_CACERT CA certificate file, in PEM format SSL_CAPATH CA certificate path SSL_DHFILE DH file name or DH key length in bits SSL_RANDFILE File containing seed for random number generator TIMEOUT Session timeout in seconds, 0 disables timeouts 300 CHECK_INTERVAL Frequency of timeout checks in seconds 5 THREADS Maximum number of worker threads to run in parallel 100 KEEPALIVE Maximum number of requests before a socket will be closed 100 ROTATE Number of log files, 0 disables log rotation 10 LOGSIZE Maximum log file size to trigger rotation, in bytes 1MB LOGINTERVAL Maximum time interval to trigger log rotation, in seconds 1 day Setting the parameter SSL_KEYFILE enables the SSL/TLS support. Using encryption is strongly encouraged, as otherwise everything, including passwords, is transferred in clear text. On Oracle Solaris hosts, the &product-name; web service daemon is integrated into the SMF framework. You can change the parameters, but do not have to if the defaults below already match your needs: svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/host=localhost svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/port=18083 svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/user=root The table in showing the parameter names and defaults also applies for Oracle Solaris. The parameter names must be changed to lowercase and a prefix of config/ has to be added. For example: config/user or config/ssl_keyfile. If you make any change, do not forget to run the following command to put the changes into effect immediately: svcadm refresh svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default If you forget the above command then the previous settings are used when enabling the service. Check the current property settings as follows: svcprop -p config svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default When everything is configured correctly you can start the &product-name; web service with the following command: svcadm enable svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default For more information about SMF, please refer to the Oracle Solaris documentation. On Mac OS X, launchd is used to start the &product-name; webservice. An example configuration file can be found in $HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist. It can be enabled by changing the Disabled key from true to false. To manually start the service use the following command: launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist For additional information on how launchd services could be configured see: . The memory ballooning service, formerly known as VBoxBalloonCtrl, was renamed to VBoxWatchdog. This service now incorporates the following host services that are meant to be run in a server environment: Memory ballooning control. This service automatically takes care of a VM's configured memory balloon. See . This service is useful for server environments where VMs may dynamically require more or less memory during runtime. The service periodically checks a VM's current memory balloon and its free guest RAM and automatically adjusts the current memory balloon by inflating or deflating it accordingly. This handling only applies to running VMs having recent Guest Additions installed. Host isolation detection. This service provides a way to detect whether the host cannot reach the specific &product-name; server instance anymore and take appropriate actions, such as shutting down, saving the current state or even powering down certain VMs. All configuration values can be either specified using the command line or global extradata, whereas command line values always have a higher priority when set. Some of the configuration values also be specified on a per-VM basis. So the overall lookup order is: command line, per-VM basis extradata if available, global extradata. The memory ballooning control inflates and deflates the memory balloon of VMs based on the VMs free memory and the desired maximum balloon size. To set up the memory ballooning control the maximum ballooning size a VM can reach needs to be set. This can be specified using the command line, as follows: --balloon-max <Size in MB> Using a per-VM basis extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata <VM-Name> VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonSizeMax <Size in MB> Using a global extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonSizeMax <Size in MB> If no maximum ballooning size is specified by at least one of the parameters above, no ballooning will be performed at all. Setting the ballooning increment in MB can be either done using command line, as follows: --balloon-inc <Size in MB> Using a global extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonIncrementMB <Size in MB> The default ballooning increment is 256 MB if not specified. The same options apply for a ballooning decrement. Using the command line, as follows: --balloon-dec <Size in MB> Using a global extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonDecrementMB <Size in MB> The default ballooning decrement is 128 MB if not specified. The lower limit in MB for a balloon can be defined using the command line, as follows: --balloon-lower-limit <Size in MB> Using a global extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonLowerLimitMB <Size in MB> The default lower limit is 128 MB if not specified. To detect whether a host is being isolated, that is, the host cannot reach the &product-name; server instance anymore, the host needs to set an alternating value to a global extradata value within a time period. If this value is not set within that time period a timeout occurred and the so-called host isolation response will be performed to the VMs handled. Which VMs are handled can be controlled by defining VM groups and assigning VMs to those groups. By default no groups are set, meaning that all VMs on the server will be handled when no host response is received within 30 seconds. Set the groups handled by the host isolation detection using the following command line: --apimon-groups=<string[,stringN]> Using a global extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/APIMonitor/Groups <string[,stringN]> Set the host isolation timeout using the following command line: --apimon-isln-timeout=<ms> Using a global extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/APIMonitor/IsolationTimeoutMS <ms> Set the actual host isolation response using the following command line: --apimon-isln-response=<cmd> Using a global extradata value, as follows: VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/APIMonitor/IsolationResponse <cmd> The following response commands are available: none. This has no effect. pause. Pauses the execution of a VM. poweroff. Shuts down the VM by pressing the virtual power button. The VM will not have the chance of saving any data or veto the shutdown process. save. Saves the current machine state and powers off the VM afterwards. If saving the machine state fails the VM will be paused. shutdown. Shuts down the VM in a gentle way by sending an ACPI shutdown event to the VM's operating system. The OS then has the chance of doing a clean shutdown. For more advanced options and parameters like verbose logging check the built-in command line help accessible with --help. On Linux, the watchdog service can be automatically started during host boot by adding appropriate parameters to the file /etc/default/virtualbox. There is one mandatory parameter, VBOXWATCHDOG_USER, which must be set to the user which will later start the VMs. For backward compatibility you can also specify VBOXBALLOONCTRL_USER. The parameters in the following table all start with the VBOXWATCHDOG_ prefix string. For example: VBOXWATCHDOG_BALLOON_INTERVAL and VBOXWATCHDOG_LOGSIZE. Legacy parameters such as VBOXBALLOONCTRL_INTERVAL can still be used. Parameter Description Default USER The user which the watchdog service runs as ROTATE Number of log files, 0 disables log rotation 10 LOGSIZE Maximum log file size to trigger rotation, in bytes 1MB LOGINTERVAL Maximum time interval to trigger log rotation, in seconds 1 day BALLOON_INTERVAL Interval for checking the balloon size, in milliseconds 30000 BALLOON_INCREMENT Balloon size increment, in megabytes 256 BALLOON_DECREMENT Balloon size decrement, in megabytes 128 BALLOON_LOWERLIMIT Balloon size lower limit, in megabytes 64 BALLOON_SAFETYMARGIN Free memory required for decreasing the balloon size, in megabytes 1024 On Oracle Solaris hosts, the &product-name; watchdog service daemon is integrated into the SMF framework. You can change the parameters, but do not have to if the defaults already match your needs: svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default setprop \ config/balloon_interval=10000 svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default setprop \ config/balloon_safetymargin=134217728 also applies for Oracle Solaris. The parameter names must be changed to lowercase and a prefix of config/ has to be added. For example: config/user or config/balloon_safetymargin. If you made any change, do not forget to run the following command to put the changes into effect immediately: svcadm refresh svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default If you forget the above command then the previous settings will be used when enabling the service. Check the current property settings with the following command: svcprop -p config svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default When everything is configured correctly you can start the &product-name; watchdog service with the following command: svcadm enable svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default For more information about SMF, please refer to the Oracle Solaris documentation. Another extension pack called VNC is available. This extension pack is open source and replaces the previous integration of the VNC remote access protocol. This is experimental code, and is initially available in the &product-name; source code package only. It is to a large portion code contributed by users, and is not supported in any way by Oracle. The keyboard handling is severely limited, and only the US keyboard layout works. Other keyboard layouts will have at least some keys which produce the wrong results, often with quite surprising effects, and for layouts which have significant differences to the US keyboard layout it is most likely unusable. It is possible to install both the &product-name; Extension Pack and VNC, but only one VRDE module can be active at any time. The following command switches to the VNC VRDE module in VNC: VBoxManage setproperty vrdeextpack VNC Configuring the remote access works very similarly to VRDP, see , with some limitations. VNC does not support specifying several port numbers, and the authentication is done differently. VNC can only deal with password authentication, and there is no option to use password hashes. This leaves no other choice than having a clear-text password in the VM configuration, which can be set with the following command: VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --vrdeproperty VNCPassword=secret The user is responsible for keeping this password secret, and it should be removed when a VM configuration is passed to another person, for whatever purpose. Some VNC servers claim to have encrypted passwords in the configuration. This is not true encryption, it is only concealing the passwords, which is only as secure as using clear-text passwords. The following command switches back to VRDP, if installed: VBoxManage setproperty vrdeextpack "&product-name; Extension Pack" You can start VMs automatically during system boot on Linux, Oracle Solaris, and Mac OS X platforms for all users. On Linux, the autostart service is activated by setting two variables in /etc/default/virtualbox. The first one is VBOXAUTOSTART_DB which contains an absolute path to the autostart database directory. The directory should have write access for every user who should be able to start virtual machines automatically. Furthermore the directory should have the sticky bit set. The second variable is VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG which points the service to the autostart configuration file which is used during boot to determine whether to allow individual users to start a VM automatically and configure startup delays. The configuration file can be placed in /etc/vbox and contains several options. One is default_policy which controls whether the autostart service allows or denies to start a VM for users which are not in the exception list. The exception list starts with exception_list and contains a comma separated list with usernames. Furthermore a separate startup delay can be configured for every user to avoid overloading the host. A sample configuration is given below: # Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow". default_policy = deny # Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them # will be delayed for 10 seconds bob = { allow = true startup_delay = 10 } # Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users # if the default policy is set to allow. alice = { allow = false } Any user who wants to enable autostart for individual machines must set the path to the autostart database directory with the following command: VBoxManage setproperty autostartdbpath autostart-directory On Oracle Solaris hosts, the &product-name; autostart daemon is integrated into the SMF framework. To enable it you must point the service to an existing configuration file which has the same format as on Linux, see . For example: # svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/autostart:default setprop \ config/config=/etc/vbox/autostart.cfg When everything is configured correctly you can start the &product-name; autostart service with the following command: # svcadm enable svc:/application/virtualbox/autostart:default For more information about SMF, see the Oracle Solaris documentation. On Mac OS X, launchd is used to start the &product-name; autostart service. An example configuration file can be found in /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist. To enable the service copy the file to /Library/LaunchDaemons and change the Disabled key from true to false. Furthermore replace the second parameter to an existing configuration file which has the same format as on Linux, see . To manually start the service use the following command: # launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist For additional information on how launchd services can be configured see: . On Windows, autostart functionality consist of two components. The first component is a configuration file where the administrator can both set a delayed start for the VMs and temporarily disable autostarting for a particular user. The configuration file should be located in a folder accessible by all required users but it should have permissions allowing only reading by everyone but administrators. The configuration file contains several options. The default_policy controls whether the autostart service allows or denies starting of a VM for users that are not in the exception list. The exception list starts with exception_list and contains a comma separated list with usernames. Furthermore, a separate startup delay can be configured for every user to avoid overloading the host. A sample configuration is given below: # Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow". default_policy = deny # Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them # will be delayed for 10 seconds bob = { allow = true startup_delay = 10 } # Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users # if the default policy is set to allow. alice = { allow = false } The user name can be specified using the following forms: "user", "domain\user", ".\user" and "user@domain". An administrator must add the VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG environment variable into system variables containing the path to the configuration file described above. The environment variable tells the autostart services which configuration file is used. The second component of autostart functionality is a Windows service. Every instance of this works on behalf of a particular user using their credentials. To enable autostarting for a particular user, a member of the administrators group must run the following command: VBoxAutostartSvc install --user=user [--password-file=password_file] The password file should contain the password followed by a line break. The rest of the file is ignored. The user will be asked for a password if the password file is not specified. To disable autostarting for particular user, a member of the administrators group must run the following command: VBoxAutostartSvc delete --user=user If a user has changed their password then a member of the administrators group must either reinstall the service or change the service credentials using Windows Service Manager. Due to Windows security policies, the autostart service cannot be installed for users with empty passwords. Finally, the user should define which VMs should be started at boot. The user should run the following command for every VM they wish to start at boot: VBoxManage modifyvm VM name or UUID --autostart-enabled on The user can remove a particular VM from the VMs starting at boot by running the following command: VBoxManage modifyvm VM name or UUID --autostart-enabled off In case the snapshot model of &product-name; is not sufficient it is possible to enable a special mode which makes it possible to reconfigure storage attachments while the VM is paused. The user has to make sure that the disk data stays consistent to the guest because unlike with hotplugging the guest is not informed about detached or newly attached media. The expert storage management mode can be enabled per VM executing: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal2/SilentReconfigureWhilePaused" 1 You can reconfigure storage attachments later while the VM is paused by using the VBoxManage storageattach command. Some host power management events are handled by &product-name;. The actual behavior depends on the platform: Host Suspends. This event is generated when the host is about to suspend, that is, the host saves the state to some non-volatile storage and powers off. This event is currently only handled on Windows hosts and Mac OS X hosts. When this event is generated, &product-name; will pause all running VMs. Host Resumes. This event is generated when the host woke up from the suspended state. This event is currently only handled on Windows hosts and Mac OS X hosts. When this event is generated, &product-name; will resume all VMs which are where paused before. Battery Low. The battery level reached a critical level, usually less than 5 percent charged. This event is currently only handled on Windows hosts and Mac OS X hosts. When this event is generated, &product-name; will save the state and terminate all VMs in preparation of a potential host powerdown. The behavior can be configured. By executing the following command, no VM is saved: $ VBoxManage setextradata global "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 0 This is a global setting as well as a per-VM setting. The per-VM value has higher precedence than the global value. The following command will save the state of all VMs but will not save the state of VM "foo": $ VBoxManage setextradata global "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 1 $ VBoxManage setextradata "foo" "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 0 The first line is actually not required as by default the savestate action is performed. To provide SSE 4.1/SSE 4.2 support to guests, the host CPU has to implement these instruction sets. The instruction sets are exposed to guests by default, but it is possible to disable the instructions for certain guests by using the following commands: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/CPUM/IsaExts/SSE4.1 0 $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/CPUM/IsaExts/SSE4.2 0 These are per-VM settings which are enabled by default. This feature makes the host keyboard indicators (LEDs) match those of the VM's emulated keyboard when the machine window is active. It is currently implemented for Mac OS X and Windows hosts. This feature is enabled by default on supported host OSes. You can disable this feature by running the following command: $ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name GUI/HidLedsSync 0 This is a per-VM setting that is enabled by default. You can capture USB traffic for single USB devices or on the root hub level, which captures the traffic of all USB devices attached to the root hub. &product-name; stores the traffic in a format which is compatible with Wireshark. To capture the traffic of a specific USB device it must be attached to the VM with VBoxManage using the following command: VBoxManage controlvm VM-name usbattach device uuid|address --capturefile filename In order to enable capturing on the root hub use the following command while the VM is not running: VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/usb-ehci/0/LUN#0/Config/CaptureFilename filename The command above enables capturing on the root hub attached to the EHCI controller. To enable it for the OHCI or XHCI controller replace usb-ehci with usb-ohci or usb-xhci, respectively. &product-name; ships a simple heartbeat service. Once the Guest Additions are active, the guest sends frequent heartbeat pings to the host. If the guest stops sending the heartbeat pings without properly terminating the service, the VM process will log this event in the VBox.log file. In the future it might be possible to configure dedicated actions but for now there is only a warning in the log file. There are two parameters to configure. The heartbeat interval defines the time between two heartbeat pings. The default value is 2 seconds, that is, the heartbeat service of the &product-name; Guest Additions will send a heartbeat ping every two seconds. The value in nanoseconds can be configured like this: VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/HeartbeatInterval 2000000000 The heartbeat timeout defines the time the host waits starting from the last heartbeat ping before it defines the guest as unresponsive. The default value is 2 times the heartbeat interval (4 seconds) and can be configured as following, in nanoseconds: VBoxManage setextradata VM-name \ VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/HeartbeatTimeout 4000000000 If the heartbeat timeout expires, there will be a log message like VMMDev: HeartBeatCheckTimer: Guest seems to be unresponsive. Last heartbeat received 5 seconds ago. If another heartbeat ping arrives after this warning, there will be a log message like VMMDev: GuestHeartBeat: Guest is alive. &product-name; enables you to transparently encrypt the data stored in hard disk images for the guest. It does not depend on a specific image format to be used. Images which have the data encrypted are not portable between &product-name; and other virtualization software. &product-name; uses the AES algorithm in XTS mode and supports 128-bit or 256-bit data encryption keys (DEK). The DEK is stored encrypted in the medium properties and is decrypted during VM startup by entering a password which was chosen when the image was encrypted. Since the DEK is stored as part of the VM configuration file, it is important that it is kept safe. Losing the DEK means that the data stored in the disk images is lost irrecoverably. Having complete and up to date backups of all data related to the VM is the responsibility of the user. There are some limitations the user needs to be aware of when using this feature: This feature is part of the &product-name; Extension Pack, which needs to be installed. Otherwise disk encryption is unavailable. Since encryption works only on the stored user data, it is currently not possible to check for metadata integrity of the disk image. Attackers might destroy data by removing or changing blocks of data in the image or change metadata items such as the disk size. Exporting appliances which contain encrypted disk images is not possible because the OVF specification does not support this. All images are therefore decrypted during export. The DEK is kept in memory while the VM is running to be able to decrypt data read and encrypt data written by the guest. While this should be obvious the user needs to be aware of this because an attacker might be able to extract the key on a compromised host and decrypt the data. When encrypting or decrypting the images, the password is passed in clear text using the &product-name; API. This needs to be kept in mind, especially when using third party API clients which make use of the webservice where the password might be transmitted over the network. The use of HTTPS is mandatory in such a case. Encrypting images with differencing images is only possible if there are no snapshots or a linear chain of snapshots. This limitation may be addressed in a future &product-name; version. The disk encryption feature can protect the content of the disks configured for a VM only. It does not cover any other data related to a VM, including saved state or the configuration file itself. Encrypting disk images can be done either using the GUI or VBoxManage. While the GUI is easier to use, it works on a per VM basis and encrypts all disk images attached to the specific VM. With VBoxManage one can encrypt individual images, including all differencing images. To encrypt an unencrypted medium with VBoxManage, use: VBoxManage encryptmedium uuid|filename \ --newpassword filename|- --cipher cipher-ID --newpasswordid "ID To supply the encryption password point VBoxManage to the file where the password is stored or specify - to let VBoxManage ask you for the password on the command line. The cipher parameter specifies the cipher to use for encryption and can be either AES-XTS128-PLAIN64 or AES-XTS256-PLAIN64. The specified password identifier can be freely chosen by the user and is used for correct identification when supplying multiple passwords during VM startup. If the user uses the same password when encrypting multiple images and also the same password identifier, the user needs to supply the password only once during VM startup. When a VM is started using the GUI, a dialog will open where the user needs to enter all passwords for all encrypted images attached to the VM. If another frontend like VBoxHeadless is used, the VM will be paused as soon as the guest tries to access an encrypted disk. The user needs to provide the passwords through VBoxManage using the following command: VBoxManage controlvm uuid|vmname addencpassword ID password [--removeonsuspend yes|no] ID must be the same as the password identifier supplied when encrypting the images. password is the password used when encrypting the images. Optionally, you can specify --removeonsuspend yes|no to specify whether to remove the password from VM memory when the VM is suspended. Before the VM can be resumed, the user needs to supply the passwords again. This is useful when a VM is suspended by a host suspend event and the user does not want the password to remain in memory. In some circumstances it might be required to decrypt previously encrypted images. This can be done in the GUI for a complete VM or using VBoxManage with the following command: VBoxManage encryptmedium uuid|filename --oldpassword file|- The only required parameter is the password the image was encrypted with. The options are the same as for encrypting images. This section covers debugging of guest operating systems using interfaces supported by paravirtualization providers. Paravirtualized debugging significantly alter guest operating system behaviour and should only be used by expert users for debugging and diagnostics. These debug options are specified as a string of key-value pairs separated by commas. An empty string disables paravirtualized debugging. All of the options listed below are optional, and thus the default value specified will be used when the corresponding key-value pair is not specified. Key: enabled Value: 0 or 1 Default: 0 Specify 1 to enable the Hyper-V debug interface. If this key-value pair is not specified or the value is not 1, the Hyper-V debug interface is disabled regardless of other key-value pairs being present. Key: address Value: IPv4 address Default: 127.0.0.1 Specify the IPv4 address where the remote debugger is connected. Key: port Value: UDP port number Default: 50000 Specify the UDP port number where the remote debugger is connected. Key: vendor Value: Hyper-V vendor signature reported by CPUID to the guest Default: When debugging is enabled: Microsoft Hv, otherwise: VBoxVBoxVBox Specify the Hyper-V vendor signature which is exposed to the guest by CPUID. For debugging Microsoft Windows guests, it is required the hypervisor reports the Microsoft vendor. Key: hypercallinterface Value: 0 or 1 Default: 0 Specify whether hypercalls should be suggested for initiating debug data transfers between host and guest rather than MSRs when requested by the guest. Key: vsinterface Value: 0 or 1 Default: When debugging is enabled, 1, otherwise 0 Specify whether to expose the VS#1 virtualization service interface to the guest. This interface is required for debugging Microsoft Windows 10 32-bit guests, but is optional for other Windows versions. Windows supports debugging over a serial cable, USB, IEEE 1394 Firewire, and Ethernet. USB and IEEE 1394 are not applicable for virtual machines, and Ethernet requires Windows 8 or later. While a serial connection is universally usable, it is slow. Debugging using the Hyper-V debug transport, supported on Windows Vista and later, offers significant benefits. It provides excellent performance due to direct host-to-guest transfers, it is easy to set up and requires minimal support from the hypervisor. It can be used with the debugger running on the same host as the VM or with the debugger and VM on separate machines connected over a network. Prerequisites A VM configured for Hyper-V paravirtualization running a Windows Vista or newer Windows guest. You can check the effective paravirtualization provider for your VM with the output of the following VBoxManage command: $ VBoxManage showvminfo VM-name A sufficiently up-to-date version of the Microsoft WinDbg debugger required to debug the version of Windows in your VM. While Windows 8 and newer Windows guests ship with Hyper-V debug support, Windows 7 and Vista do not. To use Hyper-V debugging with a Windows 7 or Vista guest, copy the file kdvm.dll from a Windows 8.0 installation. This file is typically located in C:\Windows\System32. Copy it to the same location in your Windows 7/Vista guest. Make sure you copy the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the DLL which matches your guest OS. Only Windows 8.0 ships kdvm.dll. Windows 8.1 and newer Windows versions do not. VM and Guest Configuration Power off the VM. Enable the debug options with the following VBoxManage command: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name --paravirtdebug "enabled=1" The above command assumes your debugger will connect to your host machine on UDP port 50000. However, if you need to run the debugger on a remote machine you may specify the remote address and port here. For example: $ VBoxManage modifyvm VM-name \ --paravirtdebug "enabled=1,address=192.168.32.1,port=55000" See for the complete set of options. Start the VM. In the guest, start an elevated command prompt and execute the following commands: For a Windows 8 or newer Windows guest: bcdedit /dbgsettings net hostip:5.5.5.5 port:50000 key:1.2.3.4 For a Windows 7 or Vista guest: bcdedit /set loadoptions host_ip=5.5.5.5,host_port=50000,encryption_key=1.2.3.4 bcdedit /set dbgtransport kdvm.dll The IP address and port in the bcdedit command are ignored when using the Hyper-V debug transport. Any valid IP and a port number greater than 49151 and lower than 65536 can be entered. The encryption key in the bcdedit command is relevant and must be valid. The key "1.2.3.4" used in the above example is valid and may be used if security is not a concern. If you do not specify any encryption key, bcdedit will generate one for you and you will need to copy this key to later enter in Microsoft WinDbg on the remote end. This encryption key is used to encrypt the debug data exchanged between Windows and the debugger. Run one or more of the following commands to enable debugging for the appropriate phase or component of your Windows guest: bcdedit /set debug on bcdedit /set bootdebug on bcdedit /set {bootmgr} bootdebug on Please note that the bootdebug options are only effective on Windows 8 or newer when using the Hyper-V debug transport. Refer to Microsoft Windows documentation for detailed explanation of bcdedit options. Start Microsoft WinDbg on your host machine or remote host. From the File menu, select Kernel Debug. On the NET tab, specify the UDP port number you used in the paravirtdebug options. If you did not specify any, leave it as 50000. Ensure that the UDP port is not blocked by a firewall or other security software. In the Key field, enter 1.2.3.4 or the encryption key from the bcdedit command in your Windows guest. Click OK to start listening for connections. Microsoft WinDbg typically shows a Waiting to Reconnect message during this phase. Alternatively, to directly start a debug session, run WinDbg from the command line as follows : windbg.exe -k net:port=50000,key=1.2.3.4 See the WinDbg documentation for the complete command line syntax. Reboot your Windows guest and it should then connect as a debuggee with Microsoft WinDbg. As an experimental feature, primarily due to being limited to Linux host only and unknown Linux distribution coverage, &product-name; supports passing through the PC speaker to the host. The PC speaker, sometimes called the system speaker, is a way to produce audible feedback such as beeps without the need for regular audio and sound card support. The PC speaker passthrough feature in &product-name; handles beeps only. Advanced PC speaker use by the VM, such as PCM audio, will not work, resulting in undefined host behavior. Producing beeps on Linux is a very complex topic. &product-name; offers a collection of options, in an attempt to make this work deterministically and reliably on as many Linux distributions and system configurations as possible. These are summarized in the following table. Code Device Notes 1 /dev/input/by-path/platform-pcspkr-event-spkr Direct host PC speaker use. 2 /dev/tty Uses the terminal association of the VM process. VM needs to be started on a virtual console. 3 /dev/tty0 or /dev/vc/0 Can only be used by user root or users with cap_sys_tty_config capability. 9 A user-specified console or evdev device path. As for codes 1 to 3, but with a custom device path. 70 /dev/tty Standard beep only. Loses frequency and length. See code 2. 79 A user-specified terminal device path. As for code 70, but with a custom device path. 100 All of the above. Tries all the available codes. To enable PC speaker passthrough use the following command: VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/Devices/i8254/0/Config/PassthroughSpeaker" N Replace N with the code representing the case you want to use. Changing this setting takes effect when you next start the VM. It is safe to enable PC speaker passthrough on all host OSes. It will only have an effect on Linux. The VM log file, VBox.log, contains lines with the prefix PIT: speaker: showing the PC speaker passthrough setup activities. It gives hints which device it picked or why it failed. Enabling PC speaker passthrough for the VM is usually the simple part. The real difficulty is making sure that &product-name; can access the necessary device, because in a typical Linux install most of them can only be accessed by user root. You should follow the preferred way to persistently change this, such as by referring to your distribution's documentation. Since there are countless Linux distribution variants, we can only give the general hints that there is often a way to give the X11 session user access to additional devices, or you need to find a working solution using a udev configuration file. If everything fails you might try setting the permissions using a script which is run late enough in the host system startup. Sometimes additional rules are applied by the kernel to limit access. For example, that the VM process must have the same controlling terminal as the device configured to be used for beeping, something which is often very difficult to achieve for GUI applications such as &product-name;. The table above contains some hints, but in general refer to the Linux documentation. If you have trouble getting any beeps even if the device permissions are set up and VBox.log confirms that it uses evdev or console for the PC speaker control, check if your system has a PC speaker. Some systems do not have one. Other complications can arise from Linux rerouting the PC speaker output to a sound card. Check if the beeps are audible if you connect speakers to your sound card. Today almost all systems have one. Finally, check if the audio mixer control has a channel named "beep", which could be hidden in the mixer settings, and that it is not muted. &product-name; supports passing through USB devices which are exposed over the network using the USB over IP protocol without the need to configure the client side provided by the kernel and usbip tools. Furthermore, this feature works with &product-name; running on any supported host, rather than just Linux alone, as is the case with the official client. To enable support for passing through USB/IP devices, use the following command to add the device server that exports the devices: VBoxManage usbdevsource add unique-name --backend USB-IP --address device-server[:port] USB devices exported on the device server are then accessible through the GUI or VBoxManage, like any USB devices attached locally. This can be used multiple times to access different device servers. To remove a device server, the following command can be used: $ VBoxManage usbdevsource remove unique-name This section gives a brief overview on how to set up a Linux based system to act as a USB device server. The system on the server requires that the usbip-core.ko and usbip-host.ko kernel drivers are available, and that the USB/IP tools package is installed. The particular installation method for the necessary tools depends on which distribution is used. For example, for Debian based systems, use the following command to install the required tools: $ apt-get install usbip-utils To check whether the necessary tools are already installed use the following command: $ usbip list -l This should produce output similar to that shown in the example below: - busid 4-2 (0bda:0301) Realtek Semiconductor Corp. : multicard reader (0bda:0301) - busid 5-1 (046d:c52b) Logitech, Inc. : Unifying Receiver (046d:c52b) If everything is installed, the USB/IP server needs to be started as root using the following command: # usbipd -D See the documentation for the installed distribution to determine how to start the service when the system boots. By default, no device on the server is exported. This must be done manually for each device. To export a device use the following command: # usbip bind -b "bus identifier" To export the multicard reader in the previous example: # usbip bind -b 4-2 The communication between the server and client is unencrypted and there is no authorization required to access exported devices. An attacker might sniff sensitive data or gain control over a device. To mitigate this risk, the device should be exposed over a local network to which only trusted clients have access. To access the device remotely over a public network, a VPN solution should be used to provide the required level of security protection. &product-name; can be used on a Windows host where Hyper-V is running. This is an experimental feature. No configuration is required. &product-name; detects Hyper-V automatically and uses Hyper-V as the virtualization engine for the host system. The CPU icon in the VM window status bar indicates that Hyper-V is being used. When using this feature, some host systems might experience significant &product-name; performance degradation. &product-name; supports nested virtualization. This feature enables the passthrough of hardware virtualization functions to the guest VM. That means that you can install a hypervisor, such as &product-name;, Oracle VM Server or KVM, on an &product-name; guest. You can then create and run VMs within the guest VM. Hardware virtualization features not present on the host CPU will not be exposed to the guest. In addition, some features such as nested paging are not yet supported for passthrough to the guest. You can enable the nested virtualization feature in one of the following ways: From the VirtualBox Manager, select the Enable Nested VT-x/AMD-V check box on the Processor tab. To disable the feature, deselect the check box. Use the --nested-hw-virt option of the VBoxManage modifyvm command to enable or disable nested virtualization. See .