Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0

Et voilà une toute nouvelle version pour le virtualisateur de systèmes d'exploitation d'Oracle alias Virtualbox qui arrive dans une version majeure... la 4.0.

Au sommaire des nouveautés de cette version on pourra noter la réorganisation complète du logiciel. Tout d'abord, le logiciel principal s'appelle Virtualbox Manager et n'offre plus par défaut le support des ports USB 2.0, pour cela il faut télécharger (gratuitement) l'Extension Pack qui ajoute donc le support des ports USB 2.0, du RDP et du boot PXE pour les cartes Intel.

Changement également au niveau l'interface du logiciel qui affiche désormais une miniature du système d'exploitation en cours de fonctionnement, la possibilité de créer un raccourci .vbox pour pouvoir démarrer directement une machine virtuelle en double-cliquant sur son icône, la liste des systèmes d'exploitation peut être triée et la suppression de celles-ci ne laisse plus aucune trace sur le disque dur (suppression des disques et images)

Virtualbox peut maintenant gérer 1,5 à 2 Go de RAM sur les machines 32bits, inclus de nouvelles référence de matériel virtuels, améliore l'exportation vers les fichiers OVF et permet de contrôler l'utilisation des ressources utilisées par la machine virtuelle (processeurs, lecture/écriture disque dur) sans oublier naturellement toutes les corrections de bugs qui sont naturellement listés dans le changelog complet ci-dessous :

VirtualBox 4.0.0 (released 2010-12-22)

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

• Reorganization of VirtualBox into a base package and Extension Packs; see chapter 1.5, Installing VirtualBox and extension packs, see the manual for more information
• New settings/disk file layout for VM portability; see chapter 10.1, Where VirtualBox stores its files, see the manual for more information
• Major rework of the GUI (now called “VirtualBox Manager”):
  • Redesigned user interface with guest window preview (also for screenshots)
  • New “scale” display mode with scaled guest display; see chapter 1.8.5, Resizing the machine’s window, see the manual for more information
  • Support for creating and starting .vbox desktop shortcuts (bug #1889)
  • The VM list is now sortable
  • Machines can now be deleted easily without a trace including snapshots and saved states, and optionally including attached disk images (bug #5511; also, VBoxManage unregistervm --delete can do the same now)
  • Built-in creation of desktop file shortcuts to start VMs on double click (bug #2322)
• VMM: support more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts
• New virtual hardware:
  • Intel ICH9 chipset with three PCI buses, PCI Express and Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI); see chapter 3.4.1, “Motherboard” tab, see the manual for more information
  • Intel HD Audio, for better support of modern guest operating systems (e.g. 64-bit Windows; bug #2785)
• Improvements to OVF support (see chapter 1.12, Importing and exporting virtual machines, see the manual for more information):
  • Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA) support
  • Significant performance improvements during export and import
  • Creation of the manifest file on export is optional now
  • Imported disks can have formats other than VMDK
• Resource control: added support for limiting a VM’s CPU time and IO bandwidth; see chapter 5.8, Limiting bandwidth for disk images, see the manual for more information
• Storage: support asynchronous I/O for iSCSI, VMDK, VHD and Parallels images
• Storage: support for resizing VDI and VHD images; see chapter 8.21, VBoxManage modifyhd, see the manual for more information.
• Guest Additions: support for multiple virtual screens in Linux and Solaris guests using X.Org server 1.3 and later
• Language bindings: uniform Java bindings for both local (COM/XPCOM) and remote (SOAP) invocation APIs

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

• VMM: Enable large page support by default on 64-bit hosts (applies to nested paging only)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation when running Minix (VT-x only; bug #6557)
• VMM: fixed crash under certain circumstances (Linux hosts only, non VT-x/AMD-V mode only; bugs #4529 and #7819)
• GUI: add configuration dialog for port forwarding in NAT mode (bug #1657)
• GUI: show the guest window content on save and restore
• GUI: certain GUI warnings don’t stop the VM output anymore
• GUI: fixed black fullscreen minitoolbar on KDE4 hosts (Linux hosts only; bug #5449)
• BIOS: implemented multi-sector reading to speed up booting of certain guests (e.g. Solaris)
• Bridged networking: improved throughput by filtering out outgoing packets intended for the host before they reach the physical network (Linux hosts only; bug #7792)
• 3D support: allow use of CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH again (bug #6864)
• 3D support: fixed various clipping/visibility issues (bugs #5659, #5794, #5848, #6018, #6187, #6570)
• 3D support: guest application stack corruption when using glGetVertexAttrib[ifd]v (bug #7395)
• 3D support: fixed OpenGL support for libMesa 7.9
• 3D support: fixed Unity/Compiz crashes on natty
• 2D Video acceleration: multimonitor support
• VRDP: fixed rare crash in multimonitor configuration
• VRDP: support for upstream audio
• Display: fixed occasional guest resize crash
• NAT: port forwarding rules can be applied at runtime
• SATA: allow to attach CD/DVD-ROM drives including passthrough (bug #7058)
• Floppy: support readonly image files, taking this as the criteria for making the medium readonly (bug #5651)
• Audio: fixed memory corruption during playback under rare circumstances
• Audio: the DirectSound backend now allows VMs to be audible when another DirectSound application is active, including another VM (bug #5578)
• EFI: support for SATA disks and CDROMs
• BIOS: reduce the stack usage of the VESA BIOS function #4F01 (Quake fix)
• OVF/OVA: fixed export of VMs with iSCSI disks
• Storage: Apple DMG image support for the virtual CD/DVD (bug #6760)
• Linux host USB support: introduced a less invasive way of accessing raw USB devices (bugs #1093, #5345, #7759)
• Linux hosts: support recent Linux kernels with CONFIG_DEBUG_SET_MODULE_RONX set
• Guest Additions: Shared Folders now can be marked as being auto-mounted on Windows, Linux and Solaris guests
• Linux Additions: Shared Folders now support symbolic links (bug #818)
• Linux Additions: combined 32-bit and 64-bit additions into one file
• Windows Additions: automatic logon on Windows Vista/Windows 7 is now able to handle renamed user accounts; added various bugfixes