Download VirtualBox 2.2 Beta 2

Sun Microsystems released the second beta release of version 2.2 of VirtualBox on Friday. This program can be used to install another operating system in a virtual environment. VirtualBox runs on Windows 2000 and above, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris and can handle a wide range of guest operating systems.

The software is available in two versions. The full version has more functionality, such as support for USB ports and the remote display protocol, but is only free for private use and evaluation purposes. This extra functionality is closed source and is missing in the other version, namely the open source version. Version 2.2 contains a number of important improvements. For example, support for Open Virtualization Format has been added and there is, among other things, USB support on OpenSolaris, just like OpenGL for Linux. Here’s what’s changed since the first beta:

Added / fixed since VirtualBox 2.2.0 Beta 1:

• Raised the memory limit for VMs on 64-bit hosts to 16GB
• Many fixes for OVF import/export
• VMM: properly emulate RDMSR from the TSC MSR, should fix some NetBSD guests
• IDE: fixed hard disk upgrade from XML-1.2 settings
• Hard disks: refuse to start the VM if a disk image is not writable
• USB: Fixed BSOD on the host with certain USB devices (Windows hosts only)
• E1000: properly handle cable disconnects
• X11 guests: prevented setting the locale in vboxmouse, as this caused problems with Turkish locales
• Linux additions: fixed typo when detecting Xorg 1.6
• Windows guests: bind the VBoxMouse.sys filter driver to the correct guest pointing device
• Windows hosts: fixed BSOD when starting a VM with enabled host interface
• Linux hosts: don’t leave zombies of VBoxSysInfo.sh
• VBoxManage: controlvm dvdattach did not work if the image was attached before
• VBoxManage showvminfo: don’t spam the release log if the additions don’t support statistics information
• GUI: fail with an appropriate error message when trying to boot a read-only disk image
• LsiLogic: fixed problems with Solaris guests