Download VirtualBox 4.0.2

Oracle has released version 4.0.2 of VirtualBox. This program can be used to install other operating systems on a computer in a virtual environment. In this way it is possible to use different OS’s on the same hardware. VirtualBox is available for Windows XP and above, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris, and is capable of many guest operating systems to turn.

VirtualBox is available in two versions. The full version has additional functionality, such as support for USB ports and the remote display protocol, but is only free for private use and evaluation purposes. The extra functionality is closed source and is therefore not present in the open source version. It may, however, be used in commercial environments, provided you install it yourself on the PC. New in version 4.0 is, among other things, that the program is now offered as a basic package and that it contains extra functionality in separate extension packs. The following improvements have been made in this first update:

The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: don’t crash if a removable host drive referenced from the VM settings vanished
• GUI: fixed a crash when using the KDE4 Oxygen theme and clicked on the settings button (4.0 regression; bug #7875)
• GUI: properly warn if the machine folder cannot be created (bug #8031)
• GUI: several fixes for multimonitor X11 guests
• ExtPack: don’t make the installer helper application suid root (Linux .deb/.rpm packages only)
• ExtPack: improved user experience on Vista / Windows 7 when installing an extension pack
• ExtPack: fixed issue with non-ascii characters in the path name during installing an extension pack (bug #7917)
• ExtPack: fixed SELinux issues on 32-bit Linux hosts
• VBoxManage: Host-only interface creation and removal is now supported for all platforms except Solaris (bug #7741)
• VBoxManage: fixed segmentation fault when removing non-existent host-only interface
• Storage: fixed possible crashes with VMDK/VHD images with snapshots and async I/O (4.0 regression)
• Storage: don’t eject the physical medium if a DVD/CDROM/floppy drive is detached from a VM (bug #5825)
• Storage: be more robust when a faulty guest sends ATA commands to an ATAPI device (bug #6597)
• Parallels: fixed deletion of the image during suspend, pause or power off (4.0 regression)
• Bridged networking: fixed host kernel panic when bridging to devices with no TX queue (4.0 regression; Linux hosts only; bug #7908)
• NAT: port-forwarding rule registration respects protocol parameter (bug #8094)
• E1000: fixed PXE boot issues with WDS (bug #6330)
• Virtio-net: fixed the issue with TX performance in some Linux guests
• ICH9: fixed VM crash (software virtualization only; bug #7885)
• VGA: fixed VESA screen issue (4.0 regression; bug #7986)
• Shared Folders: fixed parameter parsing when creating symbolic links, fixes 32-bit/64-bit bitness issue (bug #818)
• Main: fixed crash under rare circumstances due to an invalid logging string (4.0 regression)
• Main: improve error information propagation for errors preventing a VM start
• Main: fixed problems with snapshots and non-ASCII characters in machine paths (bug #8024)
• Webservice: now listens to localhost by default as documented (bug #6067)
• Settings: do not fail loading machine settings if removeable drive attachment (host drive or image) cannot be found; with 4.0 this is much more likely when machines are moved from one host to another
• Settings: fixed issue that changing a snapshot name or description was not saved to machine XML
• OVF/OVA: fixed import of files created by other OVF tools (bug #7983)
• rdesktop-vrdp: fix a crash during USB device enumeration (bug #7981)
• Linux hosts: fixed a crash during USB device enumeration.
• Linux hosts: try a bit harder to allocate memory (bug #8035; 4.0 regression)
• Guest Additions: fixed parsing of parameters for guest control in VBoxService (4.0 regression; bug #8010)
• Windows Guest Additions: automatic logon on Windows Vista/Windows 7 now supports unlocking previously locked workstations

VirtualBox 4.0.0 screenshot, click on the image for a larger version.