This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:
- Support for cloning of VMs (bug #5853, see the manual for more information): full clones can be created through the GUI and VBoxManage, linked clones only through VBoxManage
- GUI: enhanced wizard for creating new virtual disks
- GUI: new wizard for copying virtual disks
- GUI: keep the aspect ratio in scale mode (Windows and OSX hosts only; bug #7822)
- VMM: raised the memory limit for 64-bit hosts to 1TB
- Experimental support for PCI passthrough for Linux hosts, see the manual for more information
- Windows guests: Experimental WDDM graphics driver, supporting Windows Aero (bug #4607) and providing Direct3D support using a cleaner approach (no need to install the guest drivers in Safe Mode anymore)
- Guest Additions: status of modules and features can now be queried separately by the frontends
- Networking: new network attachment mode "Generic Driver", which offers an open plugin architecture for arbitrary and separately distributable virtual network implementations
- Host-only Networking: fixed host crash in kernels prior to 2.6.29
- New Networking Mode UDP Tunnel: allows to interconnect VMs running on different hosts easily and transparently, see the manual for more information
- Experimental support for SATA hard disk hotplugging available with VBoxManage
- Solaris hosts: New Crossbow based bridged networking driver for Solaris 11 build 159 and above
In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
- VMM: more SMP timer fixes
- VMM: fixed sporadic recompiler crashes with SMP guests
- VMM: many small fixes
- GUI: when reverting to a snapshot, ask for taking a snapshot of the current state
- GUI: added a View menu
- GUI: added a setting for the promiscuous mode policy for internal networks, bridged networks and host-only networks
- GUI: added slider for setting the CPU execution cap allowing to limit the amount of CPU time spent for the execution of the guest, see the manual for more information.
- GUI: the VM description is editable during the runtime of a VM (bug #1551)
- GUI: added proxy settings (bug #2870)
- GUI: made the number of SATA ports configurable
- GUI: decrease time before showing the VM configuration dialog
- VBoxManage: more convenient configuration of storage controller attachments by automatically determining the port or device parameter when a storage controller has only one port or device per port
- VBoxManage: changed syntax of the guestcontrol command group, fixed various bugs, removed obsolete options
- VBoxBalloonCtrl: new service for automatic dynamic adjustment of the balloon size for running VMs
- Settings: machine names and snapshot names are not allowed to be a valid UUID
- Settings: provide better diagnostics if a single medium is used twice in a VM configuration
- Settings: provide better diagnostics for errors in medium create/merge/clone operations, and fix memory leaks in error cases
- Storage: ATA/SATA drives can be marked as non-rotational, i.e. the guest OS will detect them as a SSD if supported, which can improve performance
- Storage: virtual CD/DVD images will be detached if the guest ejects the medium, unless the drive is marked to handle ejects only on a temporary basis
- Storage: the medium UUID can be changed again when attaching a medium for the first time, which allows using images which are exact duplicates including the UUID
- Storage: fixed possible data corruption under certain circumstances with VHD and Parallels images (bug #9150)
- Storage: fixed unnecessary expansion when cloning differential images in VDI format
- Storage: fixed detection code to handle empty files for VDI and VMDK format
- Storage: fixed access to CD/DVD images beyond 4GB when using the SATA controller (bug #8592)
- Floppy: several bugs have been fixed
- Floppy: make it possible to unmount a host floppy disk (bug #6651)
- BIOS: disk-related structures are now checksummed correctly (bug #8739)
- USB: many fixes for the Windows USB host driver
- NAT: reduced memory footprint
- Networking: fixed the problem with segmentation offloading when several VMs are transmitting in parallel
- Networking: workaround for a bug in wireshark when operating directly on a capture file created by VirtualBox
- Serial: announce the serial devices in the ACPI tables to make Windows guests find the virtual hardware (bug #7411)
- VRDP: support for TLS connections (see the manual for more information)
- VRDP: support for multimonitor client configurations with MS RDP clients
- VRDP: fixed a rare screen corruption
- 3D support: fixed GL_VERSION string for different locales (bug #8916)
- Webservice: fixed timeout handling with HTTP 1.1 keepalive, and be more robust when connections fail
- VBoxSVC: fixed regression when several clients trigger autostart simultaneously
- Main: fixed incorrect handling of the medium location for media which are not file based (e.g. iSCSI), which resulted in confusing location values in many places
- JAX-WS client bindings: fixed resource leak
- Sources: fixed USB 2.0 support using extension packs for non-official builds
- Mac OS X hosts: fixed non-VT-x mode on Lion hosts
- Windows hosts: fixed copy'n'paste in the GUI and for the VM window (bug #4491)
- Windows hosts (64-bit only): enabled removing of all mediums when removing a VM
- Windows hosts (64-bit only): enabled live snapshot deletion
- Windows hosts: use native controls in the installer (bug #5520)
- Solaris hosts: fixed preemption issue with Solaris 11 hosts (builds 166 and above)
- Solaris hosts: better control of USB device access on Solaris 11 hosts
- Guest Additions: improved driver installation on Windows guests
- Guest Additions: fixed high CPU usage while executing guest programs from the host
- Solaris Additions: fixed automounting of shared folders (bug #8014)
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