VirtualBox 3.1.0 Final

[Airbot]

   Information

Version 3.1 will be a major update. The following major new features were added:

• Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one machine to another
• VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well (aka branched snapshots)
• 2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and colour conversion
• The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
• Experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher.
• Significant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging)
• Experimental support for EFI (Extended Firmware Interface)
• VirtIO network device support

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

• VMM: reduced IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 guests; requires 64 bits support (VT-x only; bug #4392)
• VMM: fixed double timer interrupt delivery on old Linux kernels using IO-APIC (caused guest time to run at double speed; bug #3135)
• VMM: reinit VT-x and AMD-V after host suspend or hibernate; some BIOSes forget this (Windows hosts only; bug #5421)
• GUI: prevent starting a VM with a single mouse click (bug #2676)
• 3D support: major performance improvement in VBO processing
• 3D support: added GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array support
• 3D support: fix crashes in FarCry, SecondLife, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online (bugs #2801, #2791)
• 3D support: fix graphics corruption in World of Warcraft (#2816)
• iSCSI: support iSCSI targets with more than 2TiB capacity
• VRDP: fixed occasional VRDP server crash (bug #5424)
• Network: fixed the E1000 emulation for QNX (and probably other) guests (bug #3206)
• Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, some guests were able to send / receive packets (E1000; bug #5366)
• Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, the PCNet card received some spurious packets which might confuse the guest (bug #4496)
• VMDK: fixed handling of split image variants
• VHD: fixed incompatibility with Hyper-V
• OVF: create manifest files on export and verify the content of an optional manifest file on import
• X11 based hosts: allow the user to specify their own scan code layout (bug #2302)
• Mac OS X hosts: don't auto show the menu and dock in fullscreen (#bug 4866)
• Solaris hosts: combined the kernel interface package into the VirtualBox main package
• Solaris hosts: support for OpenSolaris Boomer architecture (with OSS audio backend).
• Shared folders: fixed changing case of file names (bug #2520)
• Shared folders: VBOXSVR is visible in Network folder (bug #4842)
• Windows and Linux Additions: added balloon tip notifier if VirtualBox host version was updated and Additions are out of date
• Solaris Additions: fixed as_pagelock() failed errors affecting guest properties (bug #5337)
• Windows Additions: added automatic logon support for Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Windows Additions: fix crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)
• Linux Additions: added support for uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions (bug #4039)
• SDK: added object-oriented web service bindings for PHP5

source

3.1.0 final

 

[Dinesh]

Thanks for the info. BTW, Virtualbox updates very frequently. That's nice

 

[Zidane24]

Does VirtualBox have 3-D acceleration for Linux Guests?

 

[Dinesh]

Yes but that's in experimental mode.

 

[Airbot]

3.1.0 Beta 2 available

Changelog from Beta 1 -

Notable changes since VirtualBox 3.1.0 Beta 1:

• Fixed snapshots of VMs with empty DVD attachments (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
• Fixed snapshots of VMs with multiple attached disk drives (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
• GUI: fixed a crash in the snapshots widget
• VMM: guest SMP fixes in rare cases
• VMM: fixed kernel panic with older Linux kernels, e.g. CentOS 5.3 (APIC; 3.0.12 + 3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
• 3D support: fixed Final frame of Compiz animation not updated to the screen (public ticket #4653, partly fixed, needs more work)
• 2D/3D support, Windows: fix gl support test failure when VBox installation path contains spaces
• 2D support: fix saved state restore failure when 2D is active and used by the guest (Playing a Video)
• Creating a new VM sometimes failed (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
• VBoxManage clonehd was broken if the same image was cloned concurrently
• added VBoxManage usage information for Floppy/DVD images
• Linux Additions: properly disable the seamless mode if the guest doesn't support it
• Windows Additions: fixed high usage of VBoxService on Windows guests (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
• Windows Additions: VBox Credential Provider fixes
• Windows guests: fixed invisible mouse pointer when VM was restored from a saved state.
• VirtIO: performance improvements
• EFI: 32-bpp VGA driver was added.

source

 

[Win7User512]

Sounds good. Can't wait to download it.

 

[Airbot]

Virtualbox 3.1.0 Beta 3


Notable changes since VirtualBox 3.1.0 Beta 2:

VMM: fixes slow OpenSolaris booting (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
GUI: prevent hints being send for guest-initiated resizes
GUI: fix for saved mouse shape data which was incorrectly updated
Xml compatibility fixes with 3.0.x (CpuIdTree element)
Storage/VMDK: fix buffers for really huge VMDK files split into 2G pieces
EFI: added 64-bit firmware
2D support: Saved state save/restore fixes
2D support: fixed VM reset issues
Snapshots: suppresses the automatic resetting of immutable disk images on VM power-up if the machine has snapshots AND the current snapshot is an online snapshot, to avoid data corruption (the machine would otherwise be reset to a state which is equivalent of a poweroff of a running machine without a proper shutdown)
Guest Additions: fixed a rare guest crash with 2 or more guest CPUs
Windows Additions: improved file version lookup for guest OS information
Windows Additions: disabled some debug output
Linux Additions: fixed guests with Linux 2.4 kernels
Linux Additions: removed debugging symbols to save space (3.1.0 Beta 2 regression)
X11 Additions: fixed a bug which re-enabled the graphics (and dynamic resizing) capability when disabling seamless
X11 Additions: added more default resolutions for old guests
X11 Additions: workaround a bug in X.Org 1.3 which caused dynamic resizing to fail

Virtualbox 3.1.0 Final -


Notable changes since VirtualBox 3.1.0 Beta 3:

• GUI: the a log window grabbed all key events from other GUI windows
• GUI: show a warning when the last CD/DVD-ROM device should be removed
• GUI: fixed black screen when color depth was not 32bpp in Windows guests (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
• SATA: fixed using of VMDK images with the SATA controller
• VBoxSDL: fixed a crash on termination (Windows hosts only)
• Mac OS X hosts (64 bit): don't interpret mouse wheel events as left click (bug #5049)
• Linux Additions: work around mounts failing if a file of the same name as the share exists in the current directory
• Linux Additions: some message fixes in the installer
• Linux Additions: some Fedora 7 and 8 guest SELinux fixes in the installer
• Linux Additions: a 64-bit guest fix in the installer
• Linux Additions: fix installation on guests with non-sys-V-style init
• Linux Additions: use the newer (X.Org server 1.5) mouse driver with X.Org server 1.3 and 1.4 on Linux, as Fedora 8 didn't want to load the old one.
• Windows Additions: VBoxTray writes build version and revision to the release log
• Windows Additions: fixed runtime OS detection on Windows 7 for session information
• VBoxManage modifyvm: allow negative offsets for --biossystemtimeoffset (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
• VBoxManage: fix a few bugs in the output of VBoxManage showinfo (mostly in the machinereadable output)
• Main/NetworkAdapter: fix return value if NATNetwork attribute is not set

source

 

[pparks1]

Going to have to try this out. I'm particularly interested in the live migration feature and the multiple snapshots..

 

[Win7User512]

Why doesn't it find the update when I go to Help and check for updates? I have 3.0.12.

 

[Win7User512]

When I run the install, I keep getting an error about a corrupt cabinet file. Anyone else able to install it with no issues?

 

[HughShaw]

I'm really impressed how much VirtualBox is updated. I wonder if Windows XPM will ever get updated or just WYSIWYG.