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News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

VirtualBox 1.6

How to … spend your weekend

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Virtualization is obviously becoming a better and better documented topic.

Over at UbuntuGeek.com is a fresh HOWTO on installing VirtualBox 1.6 in ad Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron setup, including USB Support.

Over at the other side of the Linux Distribution Spectrum, Falko Timme at How to Forge documents how to install and use OpenVZ on Centos 5.2.

So if you don’t feel like playing outside this weekend, you know what to do 🙂

Sun Releases VirtualBox 1.6.0

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The folks at Sun Microsystems didn’t hesitate all too long to start fiddling around with VirtualBox after their acquisition of its maker innotek about 3 months ago. The company has just released version 1.6.0, and its changelog neatly tracks what’s new.

VirtualBox innotek

The following major new features were added:

  • Solaris and Mac OS X host support
  • Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
  • Guest Additions for Solaris
  • A webservice API
  • SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller
  • Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support

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

  • GUI: added accessibility support (508)
  • GUI: VM session information dialog
  • VBoxHeadless: renamed from VBoxVRDP
  • VMM: reduced host CPU load of idle guests
  • VMM: many ?xes for VT-x/SVM hardware-supported virtualization
  • ATA/IDE: better disk geometry compatibility with VMware images
  • ATA/IDE: virtualize an AHCI controller
  • Storage: better write optimization, prevent images from growing unnecessarily.
  • Network: support PXE booting with NAT
  • Network: ?xed the Am79C973 PCNet emulation for Nexenta guests
  • NAT: improved builtin DHCP server (implemented DHCPNAK response)
  • NAT: port forwarding stopped when restoring the VM from a saved state
  • NAT: make subnet con?gurable
  • XPCOM: moved to libxml2
  • XPCOM: ?xed VBoxSVC autostart race
  • Audio: SoundBlaster 16 emulation
  • USB: ?xed problems with USB 2.0 devices
  • MacOS X: ?xed seamless mode
  • MacOS X: better desktop integration, several look’n’feel ?xes
  • MacOS X: switched to Quartz2D framebuffer
  • MacOS X: added support for shared folders
  • MacOS X: added support for clipboard integration
  • Solaris: added host audio playback support (experimental)
  • Solaris: made it possible to run VirtualBox from non-global zones
  • Shared Folders: made them work for NT4 guests
  • Shared Folders: many bug?xes to improve stability
  • Seamless windows: added support for Linux guests
  • Linux installer: support DKMS for compiling the kernel module
  • Linux host: compatibility ?xes with Linux 2.6.25
  • Windows host: support for USB devices has been signi?cantly improved; many additional USB devices now work
  • Windows Additions: automatically install AMD PCNet drivers on Vista guests
  • Linux additions: several ?xes, experimental support for RandR 1.2
  • Linux additions: compatibility ?xes with Linux 2.6.25

You can download VirtualBox 1.6.0 free of charge here.

[Source: Virtualization.info]