Oracle® VM VirtualBox

Administrator's Guide for Release 6.0

Oracle Legal Notices
Oracle Documentation License

February 2020

F12469-04


Table of Contents

Preface
1 Remote Virtual Machines
1.1 Remote Display (VRDP Support)
1.1.1 Common Third-Party RDP Viewers
1.1.2 VBoxHeadless, the Remote Desktop Server
1.1.3 Step by Step: Creating a Virtual Machine on a Headless Server
1.1.4 Remote USB
1.1.5 RDP Authentication
1.1.6 RDP Encryption
1.1.7 Multiple Connections to the VRDP Server
1.1.8 Multiple Remote Monitors
1.1.9 VRDP Video Redirection
1.1.10 VRDP Customization
1.2 Teleporting
2 Advanced Topics
2.1 Automated Guest Logins
2.1.1 Automated Windows Guest Logins
2.1.2 Automated Linux and UNIX Guest Logins
2.2 Advanced Configuration for Windows Guests
2.2.1 Automated Windows System Preparation
2.3 Advanced Configuration for Linux and Oracle Solaris Guests
2.3.1 Manual Setup of Selected Guest Services on Linux
2.3.2 Guest Graphics and Mouse Driver Setup in Depth
2.4 CPU Hot-Plugging
2.5 PCI Passthrough
2.6 Webcam Passthrough
2.6.1 Using a Host Webcam in the Guest
2.6.2 Windows Hosts
2.6.3 Mac OS X Hosts
2.6.4 Linux and Oracle Solaris Hosts
2.7 Advanced Display Configuration
2.7.1 Custom VESA Resolutions
2.7.2 Configuring the Maximum Resolution of Guests When Using the Graphical Frontend
2.8 Advanced Storage Configuration
2.8.1 Using a Raw Host Hard Disk From a Guest
2.8.2 Configuring the Hard Disk Vendor Product Data (VPD)
2.8.3 Access iSCSI Targets Using Internal Networking
2.9 Fine Tuning the Oracle VM VirtualBox NAT Engine
2.9.1 Configuring the Address of a NAT Network Interface
2.9.2 Configuring the Boot Server (Next Server) of a NAT Network Interface
2.9.3 Tuning TCP/IP Buffers for NAT
2.9.4 Binding NAT Sockets to a Specific Interface
2.9.5 Enabling DNS Proxy in NAT Mode
2.9.6 Using the Host's Resolver as a DNS Proxy in NAT Mode
2.9.7 Configuring Aliasing of the NAT Engine
2.10 Configuring the BIOS DMI Information
2.11 Configuring Custom ACPI Tables
2.12 Fine Tuning Timers and Time Synchronization
2.12.1 Configuring the Guest Time Stamp Counter (TSC) to Reflect Guest Execution
2.12.2 Accelerate or Slow Down the Guest Clock
2.12.3 Tuning the Guest Additions Time Synchronization Parameters
2.12.4 Disabling the Guest Additions Time Synchronization
2.13 Installing the Alternate Bridged Networking Driver on Oracle Solaris 11 Hosts
2.14 Oracle VM VirtualBox VNIC Templates for VLANs on Oracle Solaris 11 Hosts
2.15 Configuring Multiple Host-Only Network Interfaces on Oracle Solaris Hosts
2.16 Configuring the Oracle VM VirtualBox CoreDumper on Oracle Solaris Hosts
2.17 Oracle VM VirtualBox and Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones
2.18 Locking Down the Oracle VM VirtualBox GUI
2.18.1 Customizing the VirtualBox Manager
2.18.2 VM Selector Customization
2.18.3 Configure VM Selector Menu Entries
2.18.4 Configure VM Window Menu Entries
2.18.5 Configure VM Window Status Bar Entries
2.18.6 Configure VM Window Visual Modes
2.18.7 Host Key Customization
2.18.8 Action when Terminating the VM
2.18.9 Default Action when Terminating the VM
2.18.10 Action for Handling a Guru Meditation
2.18.11 Configuring Automatic Mouse Capturing
2.18.12 Requesting Legacy Full-Screen Mode
2.18.13 Removing Certain Modes of Networking From the GUI
2.19 Starting the Oracle VM VirtualBox Web Service Automatically
2.19.1 Linux: Starting the Web Service With init
2.19.2 Oracle Solaris: Starting the Web Service With SMF
2.19.3 Mac OS X: Starting the Web Service With launchd
2.20 Oracle VM VirtualBox Watchdog
2.20.1 Memory Ballooning Control
2.20.2 Host Isolation Detection
2.20.3 More Information
2.20.4 Linux: Starting the Watchdog Service With init
2.20.5 Oracle Solaris: Starting the Watchdog Service With SMF
2.21 Other Extension Packs
2.22 Starting Virtual Machines During System Boot
2.22.1 Linux: Starting the Autostart Service With init
2.22.2 Oracle Solaris: Starting the Autostart Service With SMF
2.22.3 Mac OS X: Starting the Autostart Service With launchd
2.22.4 Windows: Starting the Autostart Service With a Windows service
2.23 Oracle VM VirtualBox Expert Storage Management
2.24 Handling of Host Power Management Events
2.25 Passing Through SSE4.1/SSE4.2 Instructions
2.26 Support for Keyboard Indicator Synchronization
2.27 Capturing USB Traffic for Selected Devices
2.28 Configuring the Heartbeat Service
2.29 Encryption of Disk Images
2.29.1 Limitations of Disk Encryption
2.29.2 Encrypting Disk Images
2.29.3 Starting a VM with Encrypted Images
2.29.4 Decrypting Encrypted Images
2.30 Paravirtualized Debugging
2.30.1 Hyper-V Debug Options
2.31 PC Speaker Passthrough
2.32 Accessing USB devices Exposed Over the Network with USB/IP
2.32.1 Setting up USB/IP Support on a Linux System
2.32.2 Security Considerations
2.33 Using Hyper-V with Oracle VM VirtualBox
2.34 Nested Virtualization
2.35 VISO file format / RTIsoMaker
2.35.1 Synopsis
2.35.2 Description
2.35.3 Options
3 Technical Background
3.1 Where Oracle VM VirtualBox Stores its Files
3.1.1 The Machine Folder
3.1.2 Global Settings
3.1.3 Summary of Configuration Data Locations
3.1.4 Oracle VM VirtualBox XML Files
3.2 Oracle VM VirtualBox Executables and Components
3.3 Hardware vs. Software Virtualization
3.4 Paravirtualization Providers
3.5 Details About Software Virtualization
3.6 Details About Hardware Virtualization
3.7 Nested Paging and VPIDs
4 Oracle VM VirtualBox Programming Interfaces
5 Troubleshooting
5.1 Procedures and Tools
5.1.1 Categorizing and Isolating Problems
5.1.2 Collecting Debugging Information
5.1.3 Using the VBoxBugReport Command to Collect Debug Information Automatically
5.1.4 The Built-In VM Debugger
5.1.5 VM Core Format
5.2 General Troubleshooting
5.2.1 Guest Shows IDE/SATA Errors for File-Based Images on Slow Host File System
5.2.2 Responding to Guest IDE/SATA Flush Requests
5.2.3 Performance Variation with Frequency Boosting
5.2.4 Frequency Scaling Effect on CPU Usage
5.2.5 Inaccurate Windows CPU Usage Reporting
5.2.6 Poor Performance Caused by Host Power Management
5.2.7 GUI: 2D Video Acceleration Option is Grayed Out
5.3 Windows Guests
5.3.1 No USB 3.0 Support in Windows 7 Guests
5.3.2 Windows Bluescreens After Changing VM Configuration
5.3.3 Windows 0x101 Bluescreens with SMP Enabled (IPI Timeout)
5.3.4 Windows 2000 Installation Failures
5.3.5 How to Record Bluescreen Information from Windows Guests
5.3.6 No Networking in Windows Vista Guests
5.3.7 Windows Guests may Cause a High CPU Load
5.3.8 Long Delays When Accessing Shared Folders
5.3.9 USB Tablet Coordinates Wrong in Windows 98 Guests
5.3.10 Windows Guests are Removed From an Active Directory Domain After Restoring a Snapshot
5.3.11 Windows 3.x Limited to 64 MB RAM
5.4 Linux and X11 Guests
5.4.1 Linux Guests May Cause a High CPU load
5.4.2 Buggy Linux 2.6 Kernel Versions
5.4.3 Shared Clipboard, Auto-Resizing, and Seamless Desktop in X11 Guests
5.5 Oracle Solaris Guests
5.5.1 Certain Oracle Solaris 10 Releases May Take a Long Time to Boot with SMP
5.6 Windows Hosts
5.6.1 VBoxSVC Out-of-Process COM Server Issues
5.6.2 CD and DVD Changes Not Recognized
5.6.3 Sluggish Response When Using Microsoft RDP Client
5.6.4 Running an iSCSI Initiator and Target on a Single System
5.6.5 Bridged Networking Adapters Missing
5.6.6 Host-Only Networking Adapters Cannot be Created
5.7 Linux Hosts
5.7.1 Linux Kernel Module Refuses to Load
5.7.2 Linux Host CD or DVD Drive Not Found
5.7.3 Linux Host CD or DVD Drive Not Found (Older Distributions)
5.7.4 Linux Host Floppy Not Found
5.7.5 Strange Guest IDE Error Messages When Writing to CD or DVD
5.7.6 VBoxSVC IPC Issues
5.7.7 USB Not Working
5.7.8 PAX/grsec Kernels
5.7.9 Linux Kernel vmalloc Pool Exhausted
5.8 Oracle Solaris Hosts
5.8.1 Cannot Start VM, Not Enough Contiguous Memory
6 Security Guide
6.1 General Security Principles
6.2 Secure Installation and Configuration
6.2.1 Installation Overview
6.2.2 Post Installation Configuration
6.3 Security Features
6.3.1 The Security Model
6.3.2 Secure Configuration of Virtual Machines
6.3.3 Configuring and Using Authentication
6.3.4 Potentially Insecure Operations
6.3.5 Encryption
6.4 Security Recommendations
6.4.1 CVE-2018-3646
6.4.2 CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, CVE-2018-12130, CVE-2019-11091
7 Known Limitations
7.1 Experimental Features
7.2 Known Issues
A Third-Party Materials and Licenses
A.1 Third-Party Materials
A.2 Third-Party Licenses
A.2.1 GNU General Public License (GPL)
A.2.2 GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
A.2.3 Mozilla Public License (MPL)
A.2.4 MIT License
A.2.5 X Consortium License (X11)
A.2.6 zlib License
A.2.7 OpenSSL License
A.2.8 Slirp License
A.2.9 liblzf License
A.2.10 libpng License
A.2.11 lwIP License
A.2.12 libxml License
A.2.13 libxslt Licenses
A.2.14 gSOAP Public License Version 1.3a
A.2.15 Chromium Licenses
A.2.16 curl License
A.2.17 libgd License
A.2.18 BSD License from Intel
A.2.19 libjpeg License
A.2.20 x86 SIMD Extension for IJG JPEG Library License
A.2.21 FreeBSD License
A.2.22 NetBSD License
A.2.23 PCRE License
A.2.24 libffi License
A.2.25 FLTK License
A.2.26 Expat License
A.2.27 Fontconfig License
A.2.28 Freetype License
A.2.29 VPX License
A.2.30 Opus License
A.2.31 FUSE for macOS License
B Oracle VM VirtualBox Privacy Information