VirtualBox

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1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
3"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd">
4<chapter id="AdvancedTopics">
5 <title>Advanced topics</title>
6
7 <sect1 id="vboxsdl">
8 <title>VBoxSDL, the simplified VM displayer</title>
9
10 <sect2>
11 <title>Introduction</title>
12
13 <para>VBoxSDL is a simple graphical user interface (GUI) that lacks the
14 nice point-and-click support which VirtualBox, our main GUI, provides.
15 VBoxSDL is currently primarily used internally for debugging VirtualBox
16 and therefore not officially supported. Still, you may find it useful
17 for environments where the virtual machines are not necessarily
18 controlled by the same person that uses the virtual machine.<note>
19 <para>VBoxSDL is not available on the Mac OS X host platform.</para>
20 </note></para>
21
22 <para>As you can see in the following screenshot, VBoxSDL does indeed
23 only provide a simple window that contains only the "pure" virtual
24 machine, without menus or other controls to click upon and no additional
25 indicators of virtual machine activity:</para>
26
27 <para><mediaobject>
28 <imageobject>
29 <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/vbox-sdl.png"
30 width="10cm" />
31 </imageobject>
32 </mediaobject></para>
33
34 <para>To start a virtual machine with VBoxSDL instead of the VirtualBox
35 GUI, enter the following on a command line:<screen>VBoxSDL --startvm &lt;vm&gt;</screen></para>
36
37 <para>where <computeroutput>&lt;vm&gt;</computeroutput> is, as usual
38 with VirtualBox command line parameters, the name or UUID of an existing
39 virtual machine.</para>
40 </sect2>
41
42 <sect2>
43 <title>Secure labeling with VBoxSDL</title>
44
45 <para>When running guest operating systems in full screen mode, the guest
46 operating system usually has control over the whole screen. This could
47 present a security risk as the guest operating system might fool the
48 user into thinking that it is either a different system (which might
49 have a higher security level) or it might present messages on the screen
50 that appear to stem from the host operating system.</para>
51
52 <para>In order to protect the user against the above mentioned security
53 risks, the secure labeling feature has been developed. Secure labeling
54 is currently available only for VBoxSDL. When enabled, a portion of the
55 display area is reserved for a label in which a user defined message is
56 displayed. The label height in set to 20 pixels in VBoxSDL. The label
57 font color and background color can be optionally set as hexadecimal RGB
58 color values. The following syntax is used to enable secure
59 labeling:</para>
60
61 <screen>VBoxSDL --startvm "VM name"
62 --securelabel --seclabelfnt ~/fonts/arial.ttf
63 --seclabelsiz 14 --seclabelfgcol 00FF00 --seclabelbgcol 00FFFF</screen>
64
65 <para>In addition to enabling secure labeling, a TrueType font has to be
66 supplied. To use another font size than 12 point use the parameter
67 <computeroutput>--seclabelsiz</computeroutput>.</para>
68
69 <para>The label text can be set with <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxSDL/SecureLabel" "The Label"</screen>
70 Changing this label will take effect immediately.</para>
71
72 <para>Typically, full screen resolutions are limited to certain
73 "standard" geometries such as 1024 x 768. Increasing this by twenty
74 lines is not usually feasible, so in most cases, VBoxSDL will chose the
75 next higher resolution, e.g. 1280 x 1024 and the guest's screen will not
76 cover the whole display surface. If VBoxSDL is unable to choose a higher
77 resolution, the secure label will be painted on top of the guest's
78 screen surface. In order to address the problem of the bottom part of
79 the guest screen being hidden, VBoxSDL can provide custom video modes to
80 the guest that are reduced by the height of the label. For Windows
81 guests and recent Solaris and Linux guests, the VirtualBox Guest
82 Additions automatically provide the reduced video modes. Additionally,
83 the VESA BIOS has been adjusted to duplicate its standard mode table
84 with adjusted resolutions. The adjusted mode IDs can be calculated using
85 the following formula:</para>
86
87 <screen>reduced_modeid = modeid + 0x30</screen>
88
89 <para>For example, in order to start Linux with 1024 x 748 x 16, the
90 standard mode 0x117 (1024 x 768 x 16) is used as a base. The Linux video
91 mode kernel parameter can then be calculated using:</para>
92
93 <screen>vga = 0x200 | 0x117 + 0x30
94vga = 839</screen>
95
96 <para>The reason for duplicating the standard modes instead of only
97 supplying the adjusted modes is that most guest operating systems
98 require the standard VESA modes to be fixed and refuse to start with
99 different modes.</para>
100
101 <para>When using the X.org VESA driver, custom modelines have to be
102 calculated and added to the configuration (usually in
103 <literal>/etc/X11/xorg.conf</literal>. A handy tool to determine
104 modeline entries can be found at <literal><ulink
105 url="http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/faq/vga2rgb/calc.html">http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/faq/vga2rgb/calc.html</ulink></literal>.)</para>
106 </sect2>
107
108 <sect2>
109 <title>Releasing modifiers with VBoxSDL on Linux</title>
110
111 <para>When switching from a X virtual terminal (VT) to another VT using
112 Ctrl-Alt-Fx while the VBoxSDL window has the input focus, the guest will
113 receive Ctrl and Alt keypress events without receiving the corresponding
114 key release events. This is an architectural limitation of Linux. In
115 order to reset the modifier keys, it is possible to send
116 <computeroutput>SIGUSR1</computeroutput> to the VBoxSDL main thread
117 (first entry in the <computeroutput>ps</computeroutput> list). For
118 example, when switching away to another VT and saving the virtual
119 machine from this terminal, the following sequence can be used to make
120 sure the VM is not saved with stuck modifiers:</para>
121
122 <para><screen>kill -usr1 &lt;pid&gt;
123VBoxManage controlvm "Windows 2000" savestate</screen></para>
124 </sect2>
125 </sect1>
126
127 <sect1 id="autologon">
128 <title>Automated guest logons</title>
129
130 <para>VirtualBox provides Guest Addition modules for Windows, Linux and
131 Solaris to enable automated logons on the guest.</para>
132
133 <para>When a guest operating system is running in a virtual machine, it
134 might be desirable to perform coordinated and automated logons using
135 credentials from a master logon system. (With "credentials", we are
136 referring to logon information consisting of user name, password and
137 domain name, where each value might be empty.)</para>
138
139 <sect2 id="autologon_win">
140 <title>Automated Windows guest logons</title>
141
142 <para>Since Windows NT, Windows has provided a modular system logon
143 subsystem ("Winlogon") which can be customized and extended by means of
144 so-called GINA modules (Graphical Identification and Authentication).
145 With Windows Vista and Windows 7, the GINA modules were replaced with a
146 new mechanism called "credential providers". The VirtualBox Guest
147 Additions for Windows come with both, a GINA and a credential provider
148 module, and therefore enable any Windows guest to perform automated
149 logons.</para>
150
151 <para>To activate the VirtualBox GINA or credential provider module,
152 install the Guest Additions with using the command line switch
153 <computeroutput>/with_autologon</computeroutput>. All the following
154 manual steps required for installing these modules will be then done by
155 the installer.</para>
156
157 <para>To manually install the VirtualBox GINA module, extract the Guest
158 Additions (see <xref linkend="windows-guest-file-extraction" />) and
159 copy the file <computeroutput>VBoxGINA.dll</computeroutput> to the
160 Windows <computeroutput>SYSTEM32</computeroutput> directory. Then, in
161 the registry, create the following key: <screen>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GinaDLL</screen>
162 with a value of <computeroutput>VBoxGINA.dll</computeroutput>.</para>
163
164 <note>
165 <para>The VirtualBox GINA module is implemented as a wrapper around
166 the standard Windows GINA module
167 (<computeroutput>MSGINA.DLL</computeroutput>). As a result, it will
168 most likely not work correctly with 3rd party GINA modules.</para>
169 </note>
170
171 <para>To manually install the VirtualBox credential provider module,
172 extract the Guest Additions (see <xref
173 linkend="windows-guest-file-extraction" />) and copy the file
174 <computeroutput>VBoxCredProv.dll</computeroutput> to the Windows
175 <computeroutput>SYSTEM32</computeroutput> directory. Then, in the
176 registry, create the following keys:<screen>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
177 Authentication\Credential Providers\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B}
178
179HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B}
180
181HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B}\InprocServer32</screen></para>
182
183 <para>with all default values (the key named
184 <computeroutput>(Default)</computeroutput> in each key) set to
185 <computeroutput>VBoxCredProv</computeroutput>. After that a new string
186 named <screen>HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{275D3BCC-22BB-4948-A7F6-3A3054EBA92B}\InprocServer32\ThreadingModel</screen>
187 with a value of <computeroutput>Apartment</computeroutput> has to be
188 created.</para>
189
190 <para>To set credentials, use the following command on a
191 <emphasis>running</emphasis> VM:</para>
192
193 <screen>VBoxManage controlvm "Windows XP" setcredentials "John Doe" "secretpassword" "DOMTEST"</screen>
194
195 <para>While the VM is running, the credentials can be queried by the
196 VirtualBox logon modules (GINA or credential provider) using the
197 VirtualBox Guest Additions device driver. When Windows is in "logged
198 out" mode, the logon modules will constantly poll for credentials and if
199 they are present, a logon will be attempted. After retrieving the
200 credentials, the logon modules will erase them so that the above command
201 will have to be repeated for subsequent logons.</para>
202
203 <para>For security reasons, credentials are not stored in any persistent
204 manner and will be lost when the VM is reset. Also, the credentials are
205 "write-only", i.e. there is no way to retrieve the credentials from the
206 host side. Credentials can be reset from the host side by setting empty
207 values.</para>
208
209 <para>Depending on the particular variant of the Windows guest, the
210 following restrictions apply: <orderedlist>
211 <listitem>
212 <para>For <emphasis role="bold">Windows XP guests,</emphasis> the
213 logon subsystem needs to be configured to use the classic logon
214 dialog as the VirtualBox GINA module does not support the XP-style
215 welcome dialog.</para>
216 </listitem>
217
218 <listitem>
219 <para>For <emphasis role="bold">Windows Vista, Windows 7
220 and Windows 8 guests,</emphasis> the logon subsystem does not support
221 the so-called Secure Attention Sequence
222 (<computeroutput>CTRL+ALT+DEL</computeroutput>). As a result, the
223 guest's group policy settings need to be changed to not use the
224 Secure Attention Sequence. Also, the user name given is only
225 compared to the true user name, not the user friendly name. This
226 means that when you rename a user, you still have to supply the
227 original user name (internally, Windows never renames user
228 accounts).</para>
229 </listitem>
230
231 <listitem>
232 <para>Auto-logon handling of the built-in Windows Remote Desktop
233 Service (formerly known as Terminal Services) is disabled by
234 default. To enable it, create the registry key <screen>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Oracle\VirtualBox Guest Additions\AutoLogon</screen>
235 with a <computeroutput>DWORD</computeroutput> value of
236 <computeroutput>1</computeroutput>.</para>
237 </listitem>
238 </orderedlist></para>
239
240 <para>The following command forces VirtualBox to keep the credentials
241 after they were read by the guest and on VM reset: <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "Windows XP" VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/KeepCredentials 1</screen>Note
242 that this is a potential security risk as a malicious application
243 running on the guest could request this information using the proper
244 interface.</para>
245 </sect2>
246
247 <sect2 id="autologon_unix">
248 <title>Automated Linux/Unix guest logons</title>
249
250 <para>Starting with version 3.2, VirtualBox provides a custom PAM module
251 (Pluggable Authentication Module) which can be used to perform automated
252 guest logons on platforms which support this framework. Virtually all
253 modern Linux/Unix distributions rely on PAM.</para>
254
255 <para>For automated logons on Ubuntu (or Ubuntu-derived) distributions
256 using LightDM as the display manager, please see
257 <xref linkend="autologon_unix_lightdm" />.</para>
258
259 <para>The <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput> module itself
260 <emphasis role="bold">does not</emphasis> do an actual verification of
261 the credentials passed to the guest OS; instead it relies on other
262 modules such as <computeroutput>pam_unix.so</computeroutput> or
263 <computeroutput>pam_unix2.so</computeroutput> down in the PAM stack to
264 do the actual validation using the credentials retrieved by
265 <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput>. Therefore
266 <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput> has to be on top of the
267 authentication PAM service list.</para>
268
269 <note>
270 <para>The <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput> only supports
271 the <computeroutput>auth</computeroutput> primitive. Other primitives
272 such as <computeroutput>account</computeroutput>,
273 <computeroutput>session</computeroutput> or
274 <computeroutput>password</computeroutput> are not supported.</para>
275 </note>
276
277 <para>The <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput> module is shipped
278 as part of the Guest Additions but it is not installed and/or activated
279 on the guest OS by default. In order to install it, it has to be copied
280 from
281 <computeroutput>/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-&lt;version&gt;/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/</computeroutput>
282 to the security modules directory, usually
283 <computeroutput>/lib/security/</computeroutput> on 32-bit guest Linuxes
284 or <computeroutput>/lib64/security/</computeroutput> on 64-bit ones.
285 Please refer to your guest OS documentation for the correct PAM module
286 directory.</para>
287
288 <para>For example, to use <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput>
289 with a Ubuntu Linux guest OS and GDM (the GNOME Desktop Manager) to
290 logon users automatically with the credentials passed by the host, the
291 guest OS has to be configured like the following:</para>
292
293 <orderedlist>
294 <listitem>
295 <para>The <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput> module has to
296 be copied to the security modules directory, in this case it is
297 <computeroutput>/lib/security</computeroutput>.</para>
298 </listitem>
299
300 <listitem>
301 <para>Edit the PAM configuration file for GDM found at
302 <computeroutput>/etc/pam.d/gdm</computeroutput>, adding the line
303 <computeroutput>auth requisite pam_vbox.so</computeroutput> at the
304 top. Additionaly, in most Linux distributions there is a file called
305 <computeroutput>/etc/pam.d/common-auth</computeroutput>. This file
306 is included in many other services (like the GDM file mentioned
307 above). There you also have to add the line <computeroutput>auth
308 requisite pam_vbox.so</computeroutput>.</para>
309 </listitem>
310
311 <listitem>
312 <para>If authentication against the shadow database using
313 <computeroutput>pam_unix.so</computeroutput> or
314 <computeroutput>pam_unix2.so</computeroutput> is desired, the
315 argument <computeroutput>try_first_pass</computeroutput> for
316 <computeroutput>pam_unix.so</computeroutput> or
317 <computeroutput>use_first_pass</computeroutput> for
318 <computeroutput>pam_unix2.so</computeroutput> is needed in order to
319 pass the credentials from the VirtualBox module to the shadow
320 database authentication module. For Ubuntu, this needs to be added
321 to <computeroutput>/etc/pam.d/common-auth</computeroutput>, to the
322 end of the line referencing
323 <computeroutput>pam_unix.so</computeroutput>. This argument tells
324 the PAM module to use credentials already present in the stack, i.e.
325 the ones provided by the VirtualBox PAM module.</para>
326 </listitem>
327 </orderedlist>
328
329 <para><warning>
330 <para>An incorrectly configured PAM stack can effectively prevent
331 you from logging into your guest system!</para>
332 </warning></para>
333
334 <para>To make deployment easier, you can pass the argument
335 <computeroutput>debug</computeroutput> right after the
336 <computeroutput>pam_vbox.so</computeroutput> statement. Debug log output
337 will then be recorded using syslog.</para>
338
339 <para><note>
340 <para>By default, pam_vbox will not wait for credentials to arrive
341 from the host, in other words: When a login prompt is shown (for
342 example by GDM/KDM or the text console) and pam_vbox does not yet
343 have credentials it does not wait until they arrive. Instead the
344 next module in the PAM stack (depending on the PAM configuration)
345 will have the chance for authentication.</para>
346 </note></para>
347
348 <para>Starting with VirtualBox 4.1.4 pam_vbox supports various guest
349 property parameters which all reside in
350 <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/PAM/</computeroutput>. These
351 parameters allow pam_vbox to wait for credentials to be provided by the
352 host and optionally can show a message while waiting for those. The
353 following guest properties can be set:</para>
354
355 <orderedlist>
356 <listitem>
357 <para><computeroutput>CredsWait</computeroutput>: Set to "1" if
358 pam_vbox should start waiting until credentials arrive from the
359 host. Until then no other authentication methods such as manually
360 logging in will be available. If this property is empty or get
361 deleted no waiting for credentials will be performed and pam_vbox
362 will act like before (see paragraph above). This property must be
363 set read-only for the guest
364 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
365 </listitem>
366
367 <listitem>
368 <para><computeroutput>CredsWaitAbort</computeroutput>: Aborts waiting
369 for credentials when set to any value. Can be set from host and the
370 guest.</para>
371 </listitem>
372
373 <listitem>
374 <para><computeroutput>CredsWaitTimeout</computeroutput>: Timeout (in
375 seconds) to let pam_vbox wait for credentials to arrive. When no
376 credentials arrive within this timeout, authentication of pam_vbox
377 will be set to failed and the next PAM module in chain will be
378 asked. If this property is not specified, set to "0" or an invalid
379 value, an infinite timeout will be used. This property must be set
380 read-only for the guest
381 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
382 </listitem>
383 </orderedlist>
384
385 <para>To customize pam_vbox further there are the following guest
386 properties:</para>
387
388 <orderedlist>
389 <listitem>
390 <para><computeroutput>CredsMsgWaiting</computeroutput>: Custom
391 message showed while pam_vbox is waiting for credentials from the
392 host. This property must be set read-only for the guest
393 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
394 </listitem>
395
396 <listitem>
397 <para><computeroutput>CredsMsgWaitTimeout</computeroutput>: Custom
398 message showed when waiting for credentials by pam_vbox timed out,
399 e.g. did not arrive within time. This property must be set read-only
400 for the guest (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
401 </listitem>
402 </orderedlist>
403
404 <para><note>
405 <para>If a pam_vbox guest property does not have set the right flags
406 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>) this property will be
407 ignored then and - depending on the property - a default value will
408 be set. This can result in pam_vbox not waiting for credentials.
409 Consult the appropriate syslog file for more information and use the
410 <computeroutput>debug</computeroutput> option.</para>
411 </note></para>
412
413 <sect3 id="autologon_unix_lightdm">
414 <title>VirtualBox Greeter for Ubuntu / LightDM</title>
415
416 <para>Starting with version 4.2.12, VirtualBox comes with an own greeter
417 module named vbox-greeter which can be used with LightDM 1.0.1 or later.
418 LightDM is the default display manager since Ubuntu 10.11 and therefore
419 also can be used for automated guest logons.</para>
420
421 <para>vbox-greeter does not need the pam_vbox module described above
422 in order to function -- it comes with its own authentication mechanism
423 provided by LightDM. However, to provide maximum of flexibility both
424 modules can be used together on the same guest.</para>
425
426 <para>As for the pam_vbox module, vbox-greeter is shipped as part of
427 the Guest Additions but it is not installed and/or activated on the
428 guest OS by default For installing vbox-greeter automatically upon
429 Guest Additions installation, use the
430 <computeroutput>--with-autologon</computeroutput> switch when starting
431 the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run file:</para><screen># ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run -- --with-autologon</screen>
432
433 <para>For manual or postponed installation, the
434 <computeroutput>vbox-greeter.desktop</computeroutput>
435 file has to be copied from
436 <computeroutput>/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-&lt;version&gt;/shared/VBoxGuestAdditions/</computeroutput>
437 to the <computeroutput>xgreeters</computeroutput> directory, usually
438 <computeroutput>/usr/share/xgreeters/</computeroutput>.
439 Please refer to your guest OS documentation for the correct LightDM
440 greeter directory.</para>
441
442 <para>The vbox-greeter module itself already was installed by the
443 VirtualBox Guest Additions installer and resides in
444 <computeroutput>/usr/sbin/</computeroutput>. To enable vbox-greeter as
445 the standard greeter module, the file
446 <computeroutput>/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf</computeroutput> needs to be
447 edited:</para>
448
449 <para><screen>[SeatDefaults]
450greeter-session=vbox-greeter</screen></para>
451
452 <note><para>The LightDM server needs to be fully restarted in order to
453 get vbox-greeter used as the default greeter. As root, do a
454 <computeroutput>service lightdm --full-restart</computeroutput> on
455 Ubuntu, or simply restart the guest.</para></note>
456
457 <note><para>vbox-greeter is independent of the graphical session chosen
458 by the user (like Gnome, KDE, Unity etc). However, it requires FLTK 1.3
459 for representing its own user interface.</para></note>
460
461 <para>There are numerous guest properties which can be used to further
462 customize the login experience. For automatically logging in users, the
463 same guest properties apply as for pam_vbox, see
464 <xref linkend="autologon_unix" />.</para>
465
466 <para>In addition to the above mentioned guest properties, vbox-greeter
467 allows further customization of its user interface. These special guest
468 properties all reside in
469 <computeroutput>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Greeter/</computeroutput>:</para>
470
471 <orderedlist>
472 <listitem>
473 <para><computeroutput>HideRestart</computeroutput>: Set to "1" if
474 vbox-greeter should hide the button to restart the guest. This
475 property must be set read-only for the guest
476 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
477 </listitem>
478
479 <listitem>
480 <para><computeroutput>HideShutdown</computeroutput>: Set to "1" if
481 vbox-greeter should hide the button to shutdown the guest. This
482 property must be set read-only for the guest
483 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
484 </listitem>
485
486 <listitem>
487 <para><computeroutput>BannerPath</computeroutput>: Path to a .PNG
488 file for using it as a banner on the top. The image size must be
489 460 x 90 pixels, any bit depth. This property must be
490 set read-only for the guest
491 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
492 </listitem>
493
494 <listitem>
495 <para><computeroutput>UseTheming</computeroutput>: Set to "1" for
496 turning on the following theming options. This property must be
497 set read-only for the guest
498 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
499 </listitem>
500
501 <listitem>
502 <para><computeroutput>Theme/BackgroundColor</computeroutput>:
503 Hexadecimal RRGGBB color for the background. This property must be
504 set read-only for the guest
505 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
506 </listitem>
507
508 <listitem>
509 <para><computeroutput>Theme/LogonDialog/HeaderColor</computeroutput>:
510 Hexadecimal RRGGBB foreground color for the header text. This
511 property must be set read-only for the guest
512 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
513 </listitem>
514
515 <listitem>
516 <para><computeroutput>Theme/LogonDialog/BackgroundColor</computeroutput>:
517 Hexadecimal RRGGBB color for the logon dialog background. This
518 property must be set read-only for the guest
519 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
520 </listitem>
521
522 <listitem>
523 <para><computeroutput>Theme/LogonDialog/ButtonColor</computeroutput>:
524 Hexadecimal RRGGBB background color for the logon dialog button. This
525 property must be set read-only for the guest
526 (<computeroutput>RDONLYGUEST</computeroutput>).</para>
527 </listitem>
528 </orderedlist>
529
530 <note><para>The same restrictions for the guest properties above apply
531 as for the ones specified in the pam_vbox section.</para></note>
532 </sect3>
533 </sect2>
534 </sect1>
535
536 <sect1>
537 <title>Advanced configuration for Windows guests</title>
538
539 <sect2 id="sysprep">
540 <title>Automated Windows system preparation</title>
541
542 <para>Beginning with Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft offers a "system
543 preparation" tool (in short: Sysprep) to prepare a Windows system for
544 deployment or redistribution. Whereas Windows 2000 and XP ship with
545 Sysprep on the installation medium, the tool also is available for
546 download on the Microsoft web site. In a standard installation of
547 Windows Vista and 7, Sysprep is already included. Sysprep mainly
548 consists of an executable called
549 <computeroutput>sysprep.exe</computeroutput> which is invoked by the
550 user to put the Windows installation into preparation mode.</para>
551
552 <para>Starting with VirtualBox 3.2.2, the Guest Additions offer a way to
553 launch a system preparation on the guest operating system in an
554 automated way, controlled from the host system. To achieve that, see
555 <xref linkend="guestadd-guestcontrol" /> for using the feature with the
556 special identifier <computeroutput>sysprep</computeroutput> as the
557 program to execute, along with the user name
558 <computeroutput>sysprep</computeroutput> and password
559 <computeroutput>sysprep</computeroutput> for the credentials. Sysprep
560 then gets launched with the required system rights.</para>
561
562 <note>
563 <para>Specifying the location of "sysprep.exe" is <emphasis
564 role="bold">not possible</emphasis> -- instead the following paths are
565 used (based on the operating system): <itemizedlist>
566 <listitem>
567 <para><computeroutput>C:\sysprep\sysprep.exe</computeroutput>
568 for Windows NT 4.0, 2000 and XP</para>
569 </listitem>
570
571 <listitem>
572 <para><computeroutput>%WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe</computeroutput>
573 for Windows Vista, 2008 Server and 7</para>
574 </listitem>
575 </itemizedlist> The Guest Additions will automatically use the
576 appropriate path to execute the system preparation tool.</para>
577 </note>
578 </sect2>
579 </sect1>
580
581 <sect1>
582 <title>Advanced configuration for Linux and Solaris guests</title>
583
584 <sect2>
585 <title>Manual setup of selected guest services on Linux</title>
586
587 <para>The VirtualBox Guest Additions contain several different drivers.
588 If for any reason you do not wish to set them all up, you can install
589 the Guest Additions using the following command:</para>
590
591 <screen> sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run no_setup</screen>
592
593 <para>After this, you will need to at least compile the kernel modules
594 by running the command <screen> /usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/vboxadd setup</screen>
595 as root (you will need to replace <emphasis>lib</emphasis> by
596 <emphasis>lib64</emphasis> on some 64bit guests), and on older guests
597 without the udev service you will need to add the
598 <emphasis>vboxadd</emphasis> service to the default runlevel to ensure
599 that the modules get loaded.</para>
600
601 <para>To setup the time synchronization service, run the command
602 <screen> /usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/vboxadd-service setup</screen> and
603 add the service vboxadd-service to the default runlevel. To set up the
604 X11 and OpenGL part of the Guest Additions, run the command <screen> /usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/vboxadd-x11 setup</screen>
605 (you do not need to enable any services for this).</para>
606
607 <para>To recompile the guest kernel modules, use this command: <screen> /usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/vboxadd setup</screen>
608 After compilation you should reboot your guest to ensure that the new
609 modules are actually used.</para>
610 </sect2>
611
612 <sect2 id="guestxorgsetup">
613 <title>Guest graphics and mouse driver setup in depth</title>
614
615 <para>This section assumes that you are familiar with configuring the
616 X.Org server using xorg.conf and optionally the newer mechanisms using
617 hal or udev and xorg.conf.d. If not you can learn about them by studying
618 the documentation which comes with X.Org.</para>
619
620 <para>The VirtualBox Guest Additions come with drivers for X.Org
621 versions <itemizedlist>
622 <listitem>
623 X11R6.8/X11R6.9 and XFree86 version 4.3 (vboxvideo_drv_68.o and vboxmouse_drv_68.o)
624 </listitem>
625
626 <listitem>
627 X11R7.0 (vboxvideo_drv_70.so and vboxmouse_drv_70.so)
628 </listitem>
629
630 <listitem>
631 X11R7.1 (vboxvideo_drv_71.so and vboxmouse_drv_71.so)
632 </listitem>
633
634 <listitem>
635 X.Org Server versions 1.3 and later (vboxvideo_drv_13.so and vboxmouse_drv_13.so and so on).
636 </listitem>
637 </itemizedlist> By default these drivers can be found in the
638 directory</para>
639
640 <para><computeroutput>/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-&lt;version&gt;/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions</computeroutput></para>
641
642 <para>and the correct versions for the X server are symbolically linked
643 into the X.Org driver directories.</para>
644
645 <para>For graphics integration to work correctly, the X server must load
646 the vboxvideo driver (many recent X server versions look for it
647 automatically if they see that they are running in VirtualBox) and for
648 an optimal user experience the guest kernel drivers must be loaded and
649 the Guest Additions tool VBoxClient must be running as a client in the X
650 session. For mouse integration to work correctly, the guest kernel
651 drivers must be loaded and in addition, in X servers from X.Org X11R6.8
652 to X11R7.1 and in XFree86 version 4.3 the right vboxmouse driver must be
653 loaded and associated with /dev/mouse or /dev/psaux; in X.Org server 1.3
654 or later a driver for a PS/2 mouse must be loaded and the right
655 vboxmouse driver must be associated with /dev/vboxguest.</para>
656
657 <para>The VirtualBox guest graphics driver can use any graphics
658 configuration for which the virtual resolution fits into the virtual
659 video memory allocated to the virtual machine (minus a small amount used
660 by the guest driver) as described in <xref
661 linkend="settings-display" />. The driver will offer a range of standard
662 modes at least up to the default guest resolution for all active guest
663 monitors. In X.Org Server 1.3 and later the default mode can be changed
664 by setting the output property VBOX_MODE to
665 "&lt;width&gt;x&lt;height&gt;" for any guest monitor. When VBoxClient
666 and the kernel drivers are active this is done automatically when the
667 host requests a mode change. The driver for older versions can only
668 receive new modes by querying the host for requests at regular
669 intervals.</para>
670
671 <para>With pre-1.3 X Servers you can also add your own modes to the X
672 server configuration file. You simply need to add them to the "Modes"
673 list in the "Display" subsection of the "Screen" section. For example,
674 the section shown here has a custom 2048x800 resolution mode
675 added:</para>
676
677 <screen>Section "Screen"
678 Identifier "Default Screen"
679 Device "VirtualBox graphics card"
680 Monitor "Generic Monitor"
681 DefaultDepth 24
682 SubSection "Display"
683 Depth 24
684 Modes "2048x800" "800x600" "640x480"
685 EndSubSection
686EndSection</screen>
687 </sect2>
688 </sect1>
689
690 <sect1 id="cpuhotplug">
691 <title>CPU hot-plugging</title>
692
693 <para>With virtual machines running modern server operating systems,
694 VirtualBox supports CPU hot-plugging.<footnote>
695 <para>Support for CPU hot-plugging was introduced with VirtualBox
696 3.2.</para>
697 </footnote> Whereas on a physical computer this would mean that a CPU
698 can be added or removed while the machine is running, VirtualBox supports
699 adding and removing virtual CPUs while a virtual machine is
700 running.</para>
701
702 <para>CPU hot-plugging works only with guest operating systems that
703 support it. So far this applies only to Linux and Windows Server 2008 x64
704 Data Center Edition. Windows supports only hot-add while Linux supports
705 hot-add and hot-remove but to use this feature with more than 8 CPUs a
706 64bit Linux guest is required.</para>
707
708 <para>At this time, CPU hot-plugging requires using the VBoxManage
709 command-line interface. First, hot-plugging needs to be enabled for a
710 virtual machine:<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --cpuhotplug on</screen></para>
711
712 <para>After that, the --cpus option specifies the maximum number of CPUs
713 that the virtual machine can have:<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --cpus 8</screen>When
714 the VM is off, you can then add and remove virtual CPUs with the modifyvm
715 --plugcpu and --unplugcpu subcommands, which take the number of the
716 virtual CPU as a parameter, like this:<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --plugcpu 3
717VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --unplugcpu 3</screen>Note that CPU 0 can never
718 be removed.</para>
719
720 <para>While the VM is running, CPUs can be added with the
721 <computeroutput>controlvm plugcpu/unplugcpu</computeroutput> commands
722 instead:<screen>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" plugcpu 3
723VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" unplugcpu 3</screen></para>
724
725 <para>See <xref linkend="vboxmanage-modifyvm" /> and <xref
726 linkend="vboxmanage-controlvm" /> for details.</para>
727
728 <para>With Linux guests, the following applies: To prevent ejection while
729 the CPU is still used it has to be ejected from within the guest before.
730 The Linux Guest Additions contain a service which receives hot-remove
731 events and ejects the CPU. Also, after a CPU is added to the VM it is not
732 automatically used by Linux. The Linux Guest Additions service will take
733 care of that if installed. If not a CPU can be started with the following
734 command:<screen>echo 1 &gt; /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu&lt;id&gt;/online</screen></para>
735 </sect1>
736
737 <sect1 id="pcipassthrough">
738 <title>PCI passthrough</title>
739
740 <para>When running on Linux hosts, with a recent enough kernel (at least
741 version <computeroutput>2.6.31</computeroutput>) experimental host PCI
742 devices passthrough is available.<footnote>
743 <para>Experimental support for PCI passthrough was introduced with
744 VirtualBox 4.1.</para>
745 </footnote></para>
746
747 <note>
748 <para>The PCI passthrough module is shipped as a VirtualBox extension
749 package, which must be installed separately. See <xref
750 linkend="intro-installing" /> for more information.</para>
751 </note>
752
753 <para>Essentially this feature allows to directly use physical PCI devices
754 on the host by the guest even if host doesn't have drivers for this
755 particular device. Both, regular PCI and some PCI Express cards, are
756 supported. AGP and certain PCI Express cards are not supported at the
757 moment if they rely on GART (Graphics Address Remapping Table) unit
758 programming for texture management as it does rather nontrivial operations
759 with pages remapping interfering with IOMMU. This limitation may be lifted
760 in future releases.</para>
761
762 <para>To be fully functional, PCI passthrough support in VirtualBox
763 depends upon an IOMMU hardware unit which is not yet too widely available.
764 If the device uses bus mastering (i.e. it performs DMA to the OS memory on
765 its own), then an IOMMU is required, otherwise such DMA transactions may
766 write to the wrong physical memory address as the device DMA engine is
767 programmed using a device-specific protocol to perform memory
768 transactions. The IOMMU functions as translation unit mapping physical
769 memory access requests from the device using knowledge of the guest
770 physical address to host physical addresses translation rules.</para>
771
772 <para>Intel's solution for IOMMU is marketed as "Intel Virtualization
773 Technology for Directed I/O" (VT-d), and AMD's one is called AMD-Vi. So
774 please check if your motherboard datasheet has appropriate technology.
775 Even if your hardware doesn't have a IOMMU, certain PCI cards may work
776 (such as serial PCI adapters), but the guest will show a warning on boot
777 and the VM execution will terminate if the guest driver will attempt to
778 enable card bus mastering.</para>
779
780 <para>It is very common that the BIOS or the host OS disables the IOMMU by
781 default. So before any attempt to use it please make sure that
782 <orderedlist>
783 <listitem>
784 <para>Your motherboard has an IOMMU unit.</para>
785 </listitem>
786
787 <listitem>
788 <para>Your CPU supports the IOMMU.</para>
789 </listitem>
790
791 <listitem>
792 <para>The IOMMU is enabled in the BIOS.</para>
793 </listitem>
794
795 <listitem>
796 <para>The VM must run with VT-x/AMD-V and nested paging
797 enabled.</para>
798 </listitem>
799
800 <listitem>
801 <para>Your Linux kernel was compiled with IOMMU support (including
802 DMA remapping, see <computeroutput>CONFIG_DMAR</computeroutput>
803 kernel compilation option). The PCI stub driver
804 (<computeroutput>CONFIG_PCI_STUB</computeroutput>) is required as
805 well.</para>
806 </listitem>
807
808 <listitem>
809 <para>Your Linux kernel recognizes and uses the IOMMU unit
810 (<computeroutput>intel_iommu=on</computeroutput> boot option could
811 be needed). Search for DMAR and PCI-DMA in kernel boot log.</para>
812 </listitem>
813 </orderedlist></para>
814
815 <para>Once you made sure that the host kernel supports the IOMMU, the next
816 step is to select the PCI card and attach it to the guest. To figure out
817 the list of available PCI devices, use the
818 <computeroutput>lspci</computeroutput> command. The output will look like
819 this:</para>
820 <screen>01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Cedar PRO [Radeon HD 5450]
82101:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan HDMI Audio [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series]
82202:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit
823 Ethernet controller (rev 03)
82403:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 03)
82503:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 03)
82606:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G86 [GeForce 8500 GT] (rev a1)</screen>
827 <para>The first column is a PCI address (in format
828 <computeroutput>bus:device.function</computeroutput>). This address could
829 be used to identify the device for further operations. For example, to
830 attach a PCI network controller on the system listed above to the second
831 PCI bus in the guest, as device 5, function 0, use the following command:
832 <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --pciattach 02:00.0@01:05.0</screen>
833 To detach same device, use <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --pcidetach 02:00.0</screen>
834 Please note that both host and guest could freely assign a different PCI
835 address to the card attached during runtime, so those addresses only apply
836 to the address of the card at the moment of attachment (host), and during
837 BIOS PCI init (guest).</para>
838
839 <para>If the virtual machine has a PCI device attached, certain
840 limitations apply: <orderedlist>
841 <listitem>
842 Only PCI cards with non-shared interrupts (such as using MSI on host) are supported at the moment.
843 </listitem>
844
845 <listitem>
846 No guest state can be reliably saved/restored (as the internal state of the PCI card could not be retrieved).
847 </listitem>
848
849 <listitem>
850 Teleportation (live migration) doesn't work (for the same reason).
851 </listitem>
852
853 <listitem>
854 No lazy physical memory allocation. The host will preallocate the whole RAM required for the VM on startup (as we cannot catch physical hardware accesses to the physical memory).
855 </listitem>
856 </orderedlist></para>
857 </sect1>
858
859 <sect1>
860 <title>Webcam passthrough</title>
861
862 <sect2 id="webcam-passthrough">
863 <title>Using a host webcam in the guest</title>
864
865 <para>VirtualBox 4.3 includes an experimental feature which allows a guest to use
866 a host webcam. This complements the general USB passthrough support which was the
867 typical way of using host webcams in earlier versions. The webcam passthrough support
868 can handle non-USB video sources in theory, but this is completely untested.</para>
869
870 <note>
871 <para>The webcam passthrough module is shipped as part of the Oracle VM VirtualBox
872 extension pack, which must be installed separately. See <xref
873 linkend="intro-installing" /> for more information.</para>
874 </note>
875
876 <para>The host webcam can be attached to the VM using "Devices" menu in the VM menu bar.
877 The "Webcams" menu contains a list of available video input devices on the host.
878 Clicking on a webcam name attaches or detaches the corresponding host device.</para>
879
880 <para>The VBoxManage command line tool can be used to enable webcam passthrough.
881 Please see the host-specific sections below for additional details.
882 The following commands are available:
883 <itemizedlist>
884 <listitem><para>Get a list of host webcams (or other video input devices):
885 <screen>VBoxManage list webcams</screen>
886 The output format:
887 <screen>alias "user friendly name"
888host path or identifier</screen>
889 The alias can be used as a shortcut in other commands. Alias '.0' means
890 default video input device on the host, '.1', '.2', etc mean first, second, etc
891 video input device. The device order is host-specific.
892 </para></listitem>
893 <listitem><para>Attach a webcam to a running VM:
894 <screen>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" webcam attach [host_path|alias [settings]]</screen>
895 This will attach a USB webcam device to the guest.</para>
896
897 <para>The <computeroutput>settings</computeroutput> parameter is a string
898 <computeroutput>Setting1=Value1;Setting2=Value2</computeroutput>, which allows to
899 configure the emulated webcam device. The following settings are supported:
900 <itemizedlist>
901 <listitem>
902 <computeroutput>MaxFramerate</computeroutput> The highest rate at which video frames
903 are sent to the guest. A higher frame rate requires more CPU power. Therefore sometimes
904 it is useful to set a lower limit. Default is no limit and allow the guest to use all
905 frame rates supported by the host webcam.
906 </listitem>
907 <listitem>
908 <computeroutput>MaxPayloadTransferSize</computeroutput> How many bytes the emulated
909 webcam can send to the guest at a time. Default value is 3060 bytes, which is used by
910 some webcams. Higher values can slightly reduce CPU load, if the guest is able to use
911 larger buffers. However, a high <computeroutput>MaxPayloadTransferSize</computeroutput>
912 might be not supported by some guests.
913 </listitem>
914 </itemizedlist>
915 </para></listitem>
916 <listitem><para>Detach a webcam from a running VM:
917 <screen>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" webcam detach [host_path|alias]</screen>
918 </para></listitem>
919 <listitem><para>List webcams attached to a running VM:
920 <screen>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" webcam list</screen>
921 The output contains path or alias which was used in 'webcam attach' command for
922 each attached webcam.
923 </para></listitem>
924 </itemizedlist>
925 </para>
926 </sect2>
927
928 <sect2>
929 <title>Windows hosts</title>
930
931 <para>When the webcam device is detached from the host, the emulated webcam device is
932 automatically detached from the guest.</para>
933 </sect2>
934
935 <sect2>
936 <title>Mac OS X hosts</title>
937
938 <para>OS X version 10.7 or newer is required.</para>
939
940 <para>When the webcam device is detached from the host, the emulated webcam device
941 remains attached to the guest and must be manually detached using the
942 <computeroutput>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" webcam detach ...</computeroutput> command.</para>
943 </sect2>
944
945 <sect2>
946 <title>Linux and Solaris hosts</title>
947
948 <para>When the webcam is detached from the host the emulated webcam device is
949 automatically detached from the guest only if the webcam is streaming video.
950 If the emulated webcam is inactive it should be manually detached using the
951 <computeroutput>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" webcam detach ...</computeroutput> command.</para>
952
953 <para>Aliases <computeroutput>.0</computeroutput> and <computeroutput>.1</computeroutput> are mapped
954 to <computeroutput>/dev/video0</computeroutput>, alias <computeroutput>.2</computeroutput> is mapped
955 to <computeroutput>/dev/video1</computeroutput> and so forth.</para>
956 </sect2>
957 </sect1>
958
959 <sect1>
960 <title>Advanced display configuration</title>
961
962 <sect2>
963 <title>Custom VESA resolutions</title>
964
965 <para>Apart from the standard VESA resolutions, the VirtualBox VESA BIOS
966 allows you to add up to 16 custom video modes which will be reported to
967 the guest operating system. When using Windows guests with the
968 VirtualBox Guest Additions, a custom graphics driver will be used
969 instead of the fallback VESA solution so this information does not
970 apply.</para>
971
972 <para>Additional video modes can be configured for each VM using the
973 extra data facility. The extra data key is called
974 <literal>CustomVideoMode&lt;x&gt;</literal> with <literal>x</literal>
975 being a number from 1 to 16. Please note that modes will be read from 1
976 until either the following number is not defined or 16 is reached. The
977 following example adds a video mode that corresponds to the native
978 display resolution of many notebook computers:</para>
979
980 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "CustomVideoMode1" "1400x1050x16"</screen>
981
982 <para>The VESA mode IDs for custom video modes start at
983 <literal>0x160</literal>. In order to use the above defined custom video
984 mode, the following command line has be supplied to Linux:</para>
985
986 <screen>vga = 0x200 | 0x160
987vga = 864</screen>
988
989 <para>For guest operating systems with VirtualBox Guest Additions, a
990 custom video mode can be set using the video mode hint feature.</para>
991 </sect2>
992
993 <sect2>
994 <title>Configuring the maximum resolution of guests when using the
995 graphical frontend</title>
996
997 <para>When guest systems with the Guest Additions installed are started
998 using the graphical frontend (the normal VirtualBox application), they
999 will not be allowed to use screen resolutions greater than the host's
1000 screen size unless the user manually resizes them by dragging the
1001 window, switching to full screen or seamless mode or sending a video mode
1002 hint using VBoxManage. This behavior is what most users will want, but
1003 if you have different needs, it is possible to change it by issuing one
1004 of the following commands from the command line:</para>
1005
1006 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution any</screen>
1007
1008 <para>will remove all limits on guest resolutions.</para>
1009
1010 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution &gt;width,height&lt;</screen>
1011
1012 <para>manually specifies a maximum resolution.</para>
1013
1014 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution auto</screen>
1015
1016 <para>restores the default settings. Note that these settings apply
1017 globally to all guest systems, not just to a single machine.</para>
1018 </sect2>
1019 </sect1>
1020
1021 <sect1>
1022 <title>Advanced storage configuration</title>
1023
1024 <sect2 id="rawdisk">
1025 <title>Using a raw host hard disk from a guest</title>
1026
1027 <para>Starting with version 1.4, as an alternative to using virtual disk
1028 images (as described in detail in <xref linkend="storage" />),
1029 VirtualBox can also present either entire physical hard disks or
1030 selected partitions thereof as virtual disks to virtual machines.</para>
1031
1032 <para>With VirtualBox, this type of access is called "raw hard disk
1033 access"; it allows a guest operating system to access its virtual hard
1034 disk without going through the host OS file system. The actual
1035 performance difference for image files vs. raw disk varies greatly
1036 depending on the overhead of the host file system, whether dynamically
1037 growing images are used, and on host OS caching strategies. The caching
1038 indirectly also affects other aspects such as failure behavior, i.e.
1039 whether the virtual disk contains all data written before a host OS
1040 crash. Consult your host OS documentation for details on this.</para>
1041
1042 <para><warning>
1043 <para>Raw hard disk access is for expert users only. Incorrect use
1044 or use of an outdated configuration can lead to <emphasis
1045 role="bold">total loss of data </emphasis>on the physical disk. Most
1046 importantly, <emphasis>do not</emphasis> attempt to boot the
1047 partition with the currently running host operating system in a
1048 guest. This will lead to severe data corruption.</para>
1049 </warning></para>
1050
1051 <para>Raw hard disk access -- both for entire disks and individual
1052 partitions -- is implemented as part of the VMDK image format support.
1053 As a result, you will need to create a special VMDK image file which
1054 defines where the data will be stored. After creating such a special
1055 VMDK image, you can use it like a regular virtual disk image. For
1056 example, you can use the VirtualBox Manager (<xref linkend="vdis" />)
1057 or <computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> to assign the image to a
1058 virtual machine.</para>
1059
1060 <sect3>
1061 <title>Access to entire physical hard disk</title>
1062
1063 <para>While this variant is the simplest to set up, you must be aware
1064 that this will give a guest operating system direct and full access to
1065 an <emphasis>entire physical disk</emphasis>. If your
1066 <emphasis>host</emphasis> operating system is also booted from this
1067 disk, please take special care to not access the partition from the
1068 guest at all. On the positive side, the physical disk can be
1069 repartitioned in arbitrary ways without having to recreate the image
1070 file that gives access to the raw disk.</para>
1071
1072 <para>To create an image that represents an entire physical hard disk
1073 (which will not contain any actual data, as this will all be stored on
1074 the physical disk), on a Linux host, use the command<screen>VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk
1075 -rawdisk /dev/sda</screen>This creates the image
1076 <code>/path/to/file.vmdk</code> (must be absolute), and all data will
1077 be read and written from <code>/dev/sda</code>.</para>
1078
1079 <para>On a Windows host, instead of the above device specification,
1080 use e.g. <code>\\.\PhysicalDrive0</code>. On a Mac OS X host, instead
1081 of the above device specification use e.g. <code>/dev/disk1</code>.
1082 Note that on OS X you can only get access to an entire disk if no
1083 volume is mounted from it.</para>
1084
1085 <para>Creating the image requires read/write access for the given
1086 device. Read/write access is also later needed when using the image
1087 from a virtual machine. On some host platforms (e.g. Windows Vista
1088 and later), raw disk access may be restricted and not permitted by
1089 the host OS in some situations.</para>
1090
1091 <para>Just like with regular disk images, this does not automatically
1092 attach the newly created image to a virtual machine. This can be done
1093 with e.g. <screen>VBoxManage storageattach WindowsXP --storagectl "IDE Controller"
1094 --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium /path/to/file.vmdk</screen>When
1095 this is done the selected virtual machine will boot from the specified
1096 physical disk.</para>
1097 </sect3>
1098
1099 <sect3>
1100 <title>Access to individual physical hard disk partitions</title>
1101
1102 <para>This "raw partition support" is quite similar to the "full hard
1103 disk" access described above. However, in this case, any partitioning
1104 information will be stored inside the VMDK image, so you can e.g.
1105 install a different boot loader in the virtual hard disk without
1106 affecting the host's partitioning information. While the guest will be
1107 able to <emphasis>see</emphasis> all partitions that exist on the
1108 physical disk, access will be filtered in that reading from partitions
1109 for which no access is allowed the partitions will only yield zeroes,
1110 and all writes to them are ignored.</para>
1111
1112 <para>To create a special image for raw partition support (which will
1113 contain a small amount of data, as already mentioned), on a Linux
1114 host, use the command<screen>VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk
1115 -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5</screen></para>
1116
1117 <para>As you can see, the command is identical to the one for "full
1118 hard disk" access, except for the additional
1119 <computeroutput>-partitions</computeroutput> parameter. This example
1120 would create the image <code>/path/to/file.vmdk</code> (which, again,
1121 must be absolute), and partitions 1 and 5 of <code>/dev/sda</code>
1122 would be made accessible to the guest.</para>
1123
1124 <para>VirtualBox uses the same partition numbering as your Linux host.
1125 As a result, the numbers given in the above example would refer to the
1126 first primary partition and the first logical drive in the extended
1127 partition, respectively.</para>
1128
1129 <para>On a Windows host, instead of the above device specification,
1130 use e.g. <code>\\.\PhysicalDrive0</code>. On a Mac OS X host, instead
1131 of the above device specification use e.g. <code>/dev/disk1</code>.
1132 Note that on OS X you can only use partitions which are not mounted
1133 (eject the respective volume first). Partition numbers are the same on
1134 Linux, Windows and Mac OS X hosts.</para>
1135
1136 <para>The numbers for the list of partitions can be taken from the
1137 output of<screen>VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk /dev/sda</screen>The
1138 output lists the partition types and sizes to give the user enough
1139 information to identify the partitions necessary for the guest.</para>
1140
1141 <para>Images which give access to individual partitions are specific
1142 to a particular host disk setup. You cannot transfer these images to
1143 another host; also, whenever the host partitioning changes, the image
1144 <emphasis>must be recreated</emphasis>.</para>
1145
1146 <para>Creating the image requires read/write access for the given
1147 device. Read/write access is also later needed when using the image
1148 from a virtual machine. If this is not feasible, there is a special
1149 variant for raw partition access (currently only available on Linux
1150 hosts) that avoids having to give the current user access to the
1151 entire disk. To set up such an image, use<screen>VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk
1152 -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 -relative</screen>When used from a
1153 virtual machine, the image will then refer not to the entire disk, but
1154 only to the individual partitions (in the example
1155 <code>/dev/sda1</code> and <code>/dev/sda5</code>). As a consequence,
1156 read/write access is only required for the affected partitions, not
1157 for the entire disk. During creation however, read-only access to the
1158 entire disk is required to obtain the partitioning information.</para>
1159
1160 <para>In some configurations it may be necessary to change the MBR
1161 code of the created image, e.g. to replace the Linux boot loader that
1162 is used on the host by another boot loader. This allows e.g. the guest
1163 to boot directly to Windows, while the host boots Linux from the
1164 "same" disk. For this purpose the
1165 <computeroutput>-mbr</computeroutput> parameter is provided. It
1166 specifies a file name from which to take the MBR code. The partition
1167 table is not modified at all, so a MBR file from a system with totally
1168 different partitioning can be used. An example of this is<screen>VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk
1169 -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5 -mbr winxp.mbr</screen>The modified
1170 MBR will be stored inside the image, not on the host disk.</para>
1171
1172 <para>The created image can be attached to a storage controller in a
1173 VM configuration as usual.</para>
1174 </sect3>
1175 </sect2>
1176
1177 <sect2 id="changevpd">
1178 <title>Configuring the hard disk vendor product data (VPD)</title>
1179
1180 <para>VirtualBox reports vendor product data for its virtual hard disks
1181 which consist of hard disk serial number, firmware revision and model
1182 number. These can be changed using the following commands:</para>
1183
1184 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1185 "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/SerialNumber" "serial"
1186VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1187 "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/FirmwareRevision" "firmware"
1188VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1189 "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ModelNumber" "model"</screen>
1190
1191 <para>The serial number is a 20 byte alphanumeric string, the firmware
1192 revision an 8 byte alphanumeric string and the model number a 40 byte
1193 alphanumeric string. Instead of "Port0" (referring to the first port),
1194 specify the desired SATA hard disk port.</para>
1195
1196 <para>The above commands apply to virtual machines with an AHCI (SATA)
1197 controller. The commands for virtual machines with an IDE controller
1198 are:</para>
1199
1200 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1201 "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/PrimaryMaster/SerialNumber" "serial"
1202VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1203 "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/PrimaryMaster/FirmwareRevision" "firmware"
1204VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1205 "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/PrimaryMaster/ModelNumber" "model"</screen>
1206
1207 <para>For hard disks it's also possible to mark the
1208 drive as having a non-rotational medium with:</para>
1209
1210 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1211 "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/NonRotational" "1"</screen>
1212
1213 <para>Additional three parameters are needed for CD/DVD drives to report
1214 the vendor product data:</para>
1215
1216 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1217 "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIVendorId" "vendor"
1218VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1219 "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIProductId" "product"
1220VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1221 "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/Config/Port0/ATAPIRevision" "revision"</screen>
1222
1223 <para>The vendor id is an 8 byte alphanumeric string, the product id an
1224 16 byte alphanumeric string and the revision a 4 byte alphanumeric
1225 string. Instead of "Port0" (referring to the first port), specify the
1226 desired SATA hard disk port.</para>
1227 </sect2>
1228
1229 <sect2 id="iscsi-intnet">
1230 <title>Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking</title>
1231
1232 <para>As an experimental feature, VirtualBox allows for accessing an
1233 iSCSI target running in a virtual machine which is configured for using
1234 Internal Networking mode. Please see <xref linkend="storage-iscsi" />;
1235 <xref linkend="network_internal" />; and <xref
1236 linkend="vboxmanage-storageattach" /> for additional information.</para>
1237
1238 <para>The IP stack accessing Internal Networking must be configured in
1239 the virtual machine which accesses the iSCSI target. A free static IP
1240 and a MAC address not used by other virtual machines must be chosen. In
1241 the example below, adapt the name of the virtual machine, the MAC
1242 address, the IP configuration and the Internal Networking name
1243 ("MyIntNet") according to your needs. The following eight commands must
1244 first be issued:<screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Trusted 1
1245VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/MAC 08:00:27:01:02:0f
1246VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/IP 10.0.9.1
1247VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/Config/Netmask 255.255.255.0
1248VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Driver IntNet
1249VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/Network MyIntNet
1250VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/TrunkType 2
1251VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal/Devices/IntNetIP/0/LUN#0/Config/IsService 1</screen></para>
1252
1253 <para>Finally the iSCSI disk must be attached with the
1254 <computeroutput>--intnet</computeroutput> option to tell the iSCSI
1255 initiator to use internal networking:<screen>VBoxManage storageattach ... --medium iscsi
1256 --server 10.0.9.30 --target iqn.2008-12.com.sun:sampletarget --intnet</screen></para>
1257
1258 <para>Compared to a "regular" iSCSI setup, IP address of the target
1259 <emphasis>must</emphasis> be specified as a numeric IP address, as there
1260 is no DNS resolver for internal networking.</para>
1261
1262 <para>The virtual machine with the iSCSI target should be started before
1263 the VM using it is powered on. If a virtual machine using an iSCSI disk
1264 is started without having the iSCSI target powered up, it can take up to
1265 200 seconds to detect this situation. The VM will fail to power
1266 up.</para>
1267 </sect2>
1268 </sect1>
1269
1270 <sect1>
1271 <title>Legacy commands for using serial ports</title>
1272
1273 <para>Starting with version 1.4, VirtualBox provided support for virtual
1274 serial ports, which, at the time, was rather complicated to set up with a
1275 sequence of <computeroutput>VBoxManage setextradata</computeroutput>
1276 statements. Since version 1.5, that way of setting up serial ports is no
1277 longer necessary and <emphasis>deprecated.</emphasis> To set up virtual
1278 serial ports, use the methods now described in <xref
1279 linkend="serialports" />.<note>
1280 <para>For backwards compatibility, the old
1281 <computeroutput>setextradata</computeroutput> statements, whose
1282 description is retained below from the old version of the manual, take
1283 <emphasis>precedence</emphasis> over the new way of configuring serial
1284 ports. As a result, if configuring serial ports the new way doesn't
1285 work, make sure the VM in question does not have old configuration
1286 data such as below still active.</para>
1287 </note></para>
1288
1289 <para>The old sequence of configuring a serial port used the following 6
1290 commands:</para>
1291
1292 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1293 "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/Config/IRQ" 4
1294VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1295 "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/Config/IOBase" 0x3f8
1296VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1297 "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/Driver" Char
1298VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1299 "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Driver" NamedPipe
1300VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1301 "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/Location" "\\.\pipe\vboxCOM1"
1302VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1303 "VBoxInternal/Devices/serial/0/LUN#0/AttachedDriver/Config/IsServer" 1</screen>
1304
1305 <para>This sets up a serial port in the guest with the default settings
1306 for COM1 (IRQ 4, I/O address 0x3f8) and the
1307 <computeroutput>Location</computeroutput> setting assumes that this
1308 configuration is used on a Windows host, because the Windows named pipe
1309 syntax is used. Keep in mind that on Windows hosts a named pipe must
1310 always start with <computeroutput>\\.\pipe\</computeroutput>. On Linux the
1311 same configuration settings apply, except that the path name for the
1312 <computeroutput>Location</computeroutput> can be chosen more freely. Local
1313 domain sockets can be placed anywhere, provided the user running
1314 VirtualBox has the permission to create a new file in the directory. The
1315 final command above defines that VirtualBox acts as a server, i.e. it
1316 creates the named pipe itself instead of connecting to an already existing
1317 one.</para>
1318 </sect1>
1319
1320 <sect1 id="changenat">
1321 <title>Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine</title>
1322
1323 <sect2>
1324 <title>Configuring the address of a NAT network interface</title>
1325
1326 <para>In NAT mode, the guest network interface is assigned to the IPv4
1327 range <computeroutput>10.0.x.0/24</computeroutput> by default where
1328 <computeroutput>x</computeroutput> corresponds to the instance of the
1329 NAT interface +2. So <computeroutput>x</computeroutput> is 2 when there
1330 is only one NAT instance active. In that case the guest is assigned to
1331 the address <computeroutput>10.0.2.15</computeroutput>, the gateway is
1332 set to <computeroutput>10.0.2.2</computeroutput> and the name server can
1333 be found at <computeroutput>10.0.2.3</computeroutput>.</para>
1334
1335 <para>If, for any reason, the NAT network needs to be changed, this can
1336 be achieved with the following command:</para>
1337
1338 <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --natnet1 "192.168/16"</screen>
1339
1340 <para>This command would reserve the network addresses from
1341 <computeroutput>192.168.0.0</computeroutput> to
1342 <computeroutput>192.168.254.254</computeroutput> for the first NAT
1343 network instance of "VM name". The guest IP would be assigned to
1344 <computeroutput>192.168.0.15</computeroutput> and the default gateway
1345 could be found at <computeroutput>192.168.0.2</computeroutput>.</para>
1346 </sect2>
1347
1348 <sect2 id="nat-adv-tftp">
1349 <title>Configuring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network
1350 interface</title>
1351
1352 <para>For network booting in NAT mode, by default VirtualBox uses a
1353 built-in TFTP server at the IP address 10.0.2.4. This default behavior
1354 should work fine for typical remote-booting scenarios. However, it is
1355 possible to change the boot server IP and the location of the boot image
1356 with the following commands: <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --nattftpserver1 10.0.2.2
1357VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --nattftpfile1 /srv/tftp/boot/MyPXEBoot.pxe</screen></para>
1358 </sect2>
1359
1360 <sect2 id="nat-adv-settings">
1361 <title>Tuning TCP/IP buffers for NAT</title>
1362
1363 <para>The VirtualBox NAT stack performance is often determined by its
1364 interaction with the host's TCP/IP stack and the size of several buffers
1365 (<computeroutput>SO_RCVBUF</computeroutput> and
1366 <computeroutput>SO_SNDBUF</computeroutput>). For certain setups users
1367 might want to adjust the buffer size for a better performance. This can
1368 by achieved using the following commands (values are in kilobytes and
1369 can range from 8 to 1024): <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --natsettings1 16000,128,128,0,0</screen>
1370 This example illustrates tuning the NAT settings. The first parameter is
1371 the MTU, then the size of the socket's send buffer and the size of the
1372 socket's receive buffer, the initial size of the TCP send window, and
1373 lastly the initial size of the TCP receive window. Note that specifying
1374 zero means fallback to the default value.</para>
1375
1376 <para>Each of these buffers has a default size of 64KB and default MTU
1377 is 1500.</para>
1378 </sect2>
1379
1380 <sect2>
1381 <title>Binding NAT sockets to a specific interface</title>
1382
1383 <para>By default, VirtualBox's NAT engine will route TCP/IP packets
1384 through the default interface assigned by the host's TCP/IP stack. (The
1385 technical reason for this is that the NAT engine uses sockets for
1386 communication.) If, for some reason, you want to change this behavior,
1387 you can tell the NAT engine to bind to a particular IP address instead.
1388 Use the following command: <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --natbindip1 "10.45.0.2"</screen></para>
1389
1390 <para>After this, all outgoing traffic will be sent through the
1391 interface with the IP address 10.45.0.2. Please make sure that this
1392 interface is up and running prior to this assignment.</para>
1393 </sect2>
1394
1395 <sect2 id="nat-adv-dns">
1396 <title>Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode</title>
1397
1398 <para>The NAT engine by default offers the same DNS servers to the guest
1399 that are configured on the host. In some scenarios, it can be desirable
1400 to hide the DNS server IPs from the guest, for example when this
1401 information can change on the host due to expiring DHCP leases. In this
1402 case, you can tell the NAT engine to act as DNS proxy using the
1403 following command: <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --natdnsproxy1 on</screen></para>
1404 </sect2>
1405
1406 <sect2 id="nat_host_resolver_proxy">
1407 <title>Using the host's resolver as a DNS proxy in NAT mode</title>
1408
1409 <para>For resolving network names, the DHCP server of the NAT engine
1410 offers a list of registered DNS servers of the host. If for some reason
1411 you need to hide this DNS server list and use the host's resolver
1412 settings, thereby forcing the VirtualBox NAT engine to intercept DNS
1413 requests and forward them to host's resolver, use the following command:
1414 <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --natdnshostresolver1 on</screen>
1415 Note that this setting is similar to the DNS proxy mode, however whereas
1416 the proxy mode just forwards DNS requests to the appropriate servers,
1417 the resolver mode will interpret the DNS requests and use the host's DNS
1418 API to query the information and return it to the guest.</para>
1419
1420 <sect3 id="nat_host_resolver_name_intercepting">
1421 <title>User-defined host name resolving</title>
1422 <para>In some cases it might be useful to intercept the name resolving mechanism,
1423 providing a user-defined IP address on a particular DNS request. The intercepting
1424 mechanism allows the user to map not only a single host but domains and even more
1425 complex namings conventions if required.</para>
1426 <para>
1427 The following command sets a rule for mapping a name to a specified IP:</para>
1428 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" \
1429 "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \
1430 &lt;uniq name of interception rule&gt;/HostIP" &lt;IPv4&gt;
1431VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" \
1432 "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \
1433 &lt;uniq name of interception rule&gt;/HostName" &lt;name of host&gt;</screen>
1434 <para>The following command sets a rule for mapping a pattern name to a specified IP:</para>
1435 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" \
1436 "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \
1437 &lt;uniq name of interception rule&gt;/HostIP" &lt;IPv4&gt;
1438VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" \
1439 "VBoxInternal/Devices/{pcnet,e1000}/0/LUN#0/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \
1440 &lt;uniq name of interception rule&gt;/HostNamePattern" &lt;hostpattern&gt;</screen>
1441 <para>The host pattern may include <computeroutput>"|", "?" and "*"</computeroutput>.</para>
1442 <para>This example demonstrates how to instruct the host-resolver mechanism to resolve
1443 all domain and probably some mirrors of www.blocked-site.info site with IP 127.0.0.1:</para>
1444 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" \
1445 "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \
1446 all_blocked_site/HostIP" 127.0.0.1
1447VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" \
1448 "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/HostResolverMappings/ \
1449 all_blocked_site/HostNamePattern" "*.blocked-site.*|*.fb.org"</screen>
1450 <note><para>The host resolver mechanism should be enabled to use user-defined
1451 mapping rules (please see
1452 <xref linkend="nat_host_resolver_proxy" /> for more details).</para></note>
1453 </sect3>
1454 </sect2>
1455
1456 <sect2 id="nat-adv-alias">
1457 <title>Configuring aliasing of the NAT engine</title>
1458
1459 <para>By default, the NAT core uses aliasing and uses random ports when
1460 generating an alias for a connection. This works well for the most
1461 protocols like SSH, FTP and so on. Though some protocols might need a
1462 more transparent behavior or may depend on the real port number the
1463 packet was sent from. It is possible to change the NAT mode via the
1464 VBoxManage frontend with the following commands: <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --nataliasmode1 proxyonly</screen>
1465 and <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "Linux Guest" --nataliasmode1 sameports</screen>
1466 The first example disables aliasing and switches NAT into transparent
1467 mode, the second example enforces preserving of port values. These modes
1468 can be combined if necessary.</para>
1469 </sect2>
1470 </sect1>
1471
1472 <sect1 id="changedmi">
1473 <title>Configuring the BIOS DMI information</title>
1474
1475 <para>The DMI data VirtualBox provides to guests can be changed for a
1476 specific VM. Use the following commands to configure the DMI BIOS
1477 information. In case your VM is configured to use EFI firmware you need to
1478 replace <code>pcbios</code> by <code>efi</code> in the keys.</para>
1479
1480 <sect2>
1481 <title>DMI BIOS information (type 0)</title>
1482 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1483 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSVendor" "BIOS Vendor"
1484VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1485 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSVersion" "BIOS Version"
1486VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1487 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseDate" "BIOS Release Date"
1488VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1489 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseMajor" 1
1490VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1491 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSReleaseMinor" 2
1492VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1493 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSFirmwareMajor" 3
1494VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1495 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBIOSFirmwareMinor" 4</screen>
1496 </sect2>
1497 <sect2>
1498 <title>DMI system information (type 1)</title>
1499 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1500 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemVendor" "System Vendor"
1501VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1502 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemProduct" "System Product"
1503VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1504 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemVersion" "System Version"
1505VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1506 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSerial" "System Serial"
1507VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1508 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSKU" "System SKU"
1509VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1510 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemFamily" "System Family"
1511VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1512 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemUuid"
1513 "9852bf98-b83c-49db-a8de-182c42c7226b"</screen>
1514 </sect2>
1515 <sect2>
1516 <title>DMI board information (type 2)</title>
1517 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1518 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardVendor" "Board Vendor"
1519VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1520 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardProduct" "Board Product"
1521VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1522 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardVersion" "Board Version"
1523VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1524 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardSerial" "Board Serial"
1525VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1526 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardAssetTag" "Board Tag"
1527VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1528 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardLocInChass" "Board Location"
1529VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1530 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiBoardBoardType" 10</screen>
1531 </sect2>
1532 <sect2>
1533 <title>DMI system enclosure or chassis (type 3)</title>
1534 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1535 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisVendor" "Chassis Vendor"
1536VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1537 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisType" 3
1538VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1539 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisVersion" "Chassis Version"
1540VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1541 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisSerial" "Chassis Serial"
1542VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1543 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiChassisAssetTag" "Chassis Tag"</screen>
1544 </sect2>
1545 <sect2>
1546 <title>DMI processor informatiion (type 4)</title>
1547 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1548 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiProcManufacturer" "GenuineIntel"
1549VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1550 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiProcVersion" "Pentium(R) III"</screen>
1551 </sect2>
1552 <sect2>
1553 <title>DMI OEM strings (type 11)</title>
1554 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1555 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiOEMVBoxVer" "vboxVer_1.2.3"
1556VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1557 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiOEMVBoxRev" "vboxRev_12345"</screen>
1558 </sect2>
1559 <para>If a DMI string is not set, the default value of VirtualBox is used.
1560 To set an empty string use
1561 <computeroutput>"&lt;EMPTY&gt;"</computeroutput>.</para>
1562
1563 <para>Note that in the above list, all quoted parameters (DmiBIOSVendor,
1564 DmiBIOSVersion but not DmiBIOSReleaseMajor) are expected to be strings. If
1565 such a string is a valid number, the parameter is treated as number and
1566 the VM will most probably refuse to start with an
1567 <computeroutput>VERR_CFGM_NOT_STRING</computeroutput> error. In that case,
1568 use <computeroutput>"string:&lt;value&gt;"</computeroutput>, for instance
1569 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1570 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSerial" "string:1234"</screen></para>
1571
1572 <para>Changing this information can be necessary to provide the DMI
1573 information of the host to the guest to prevent Windows from asking for a
1574 new product key. On Linux hosts the DMI BIOS information can be obtained
1575 with <screen>dmidecode -t0</screen>and the DMI system information can be
1576 obtained with <screen>dmidecode -t1</screen></para>
1577 </sect1>
1578
1579 <sect1 id="changeacpicust">
1580 <title>Configuring the custom ACPI table</title>
1581
1582 <para>VirtualBox can be configured to present an custom ACPI table to
1583 the guest. Use the following command to configure this:</para>
1584
1585 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
1586 "VBoxInternal/Devices/acpi/0/Config/CustomTable" "/path/to/table.bin"</screen>
1587
1588 <para>Configuring a custom ACPI table can prevent Windows
1589 Vista and Windows 7 from asking for a new product key. On Linux hosts,
1590 one of the host tables can be read from
1591 <filename>/sys/firmware/acpi/tables/</filename>.</para>
1592 </sect1>
1593
1594 <sect1>
1595 <title>Fine-tuning timers and time synchronization</title>
1596
1597 <sect2 id="changetscmode">
1598 <title>Configuring the guest time stamp counter (TSC) to reflect guest
1599 execution</title>
1600
1601 <para>By default, VirtualBox keeps all sources of time visible to the
1602 guest synchronized to a single time source, the monotonic host time.
1603 This reflects the assumptions of many guest operating systems, which
1604 expect all time sources to reflect "wall clock" time. In special
1605 circumstances it may be useful however to make the TSC (time stamp
1606 counter) in the guest reflect the time actually spent executing the
1607 guest.</para>
1608
1609 <para>This special TSC handling mode can be enabled on a per-VM basis,
1610 and for best results must be used only in combination with hardware
1611 virtualization. To enable this mode use the following command:</para>
1612
1613 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution" 1</screen>
1614
1615 <para>To revert to the default TSC handling mode use:</para>
1616
1617 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution"</screen>
1618
1619 <para>Note that if you use the special TSC handling mode with a guest
1620 operating system which is very strict about the consistency of time
1621 sources you may get a warning or error message about the timing
1622 inconsistency. It may also cause clocks to become unreliable with some
1623 guest operating systems depending on how they use the TSC.</para>
1624 </sect2>
1625
1626 <sect2 id="warpguest">
1627 <title>Accelerate or slow down the guest clock</title>
1628
1629 <para>For certain purposes it can be useful to accelerate or to slow
1630 down the (virtual) guest clock. This can be achieved as follows:</para>
1631
1632 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" 200</screen>
1633
1634 <para>The above example will double the speed of the guest clock
1635 while</para>
1636
1637 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" 50</screen>
1638
1639 <para>will halve the speed of the guest clock. Note that changing the
1640 rate of the virtual clock can confuse the guest and can even lead to
1641 abnormal guest behavior. For instance, a higher clock rate means shorter
1642 timeouts for virtual devices with the result that a slightly increased
1643 response time of a virtual device due to an increased host load can
1644 cause guest failures. Note further that any time synchronization
1645 mechanism will frequently try to resynchronize the guest clock with the
1646 reference clock (which is the host clock if the VirtualBox Guest
1647 Additions are active). Therefore any time synchronization should be
1648 disabled if the rate of the guest clock is changed as described above
1649 (see <xref linkend="changetimesync" />).</para>
1650 </sect2>
1651
1652 <sect2 id="changetimesync">
1653 <title>Tuning the Guest Additions time synchronization
1654 parameters</title>
1655
1656 <para>The VirtualBox Guest Additions ensure that the guest's system time
1657 is synchronized with the host time. There are several parameters which
1658 can be tuned. The parameters can be set for a specific VM using the
1659 following command:</para>
1660
1661 <screen>VBoxManage guestproperty set "VM name" "/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/VBoxService/PARAMETER" VALUE</screen>
1662
1663 <para>where <computeroutput>PARAMETER</computeroutput> is one of the
1664 following:</para>
1665
1666 <para><glosslist>
1667 <glossentry>
1668 <glossterm><computeroutput>--timesync-interval</computeroutput></glossterm>
1669 <glossdef>
1670 <para>Specifies the interval at which to synchronize the time
1671 with the host. The default is 10000 ms (10 seconds).</para>
1672 </glossdef>
1673 </glossentry>
1674
1675 <glossentry>
1676 <glossterm><computeroutput>--timesync-min-adjust</computeroutput></glossterm>
1677 <glossdef>
1678 <para>The minimum absolute drift value measured in milliseconds
1679 to make adjustments for. The default is 1000 ms on OS/2 and 100
1680 ms elsewhere.</para>
1681 </glossdef>
1682 </glossentry>
1683 <glossentry>
1684 <glossterm><computeroutput>--timesync-latency-factor</computeroutput></glossterm>
1685 <glossdef>
1686 <para>The factor to multiply the time query latency with to
1687 calculate the dynamic minimum adjust time. The default is 8
1688 times, that means in detail: Measure the time it takes to
1689 determine the host time (the guest has to contact the VM host
1690 service which may take some time), multiply this value by 8 and
1691 do an adjustment only if the time difference between host and
1692 guest is bigger than this value. Don't do any time adjustment
1693 otherwise.</para>
1694 </glossdef>
1695 </glossentry>
1696
1697 <glossentry>
1698 <glossterm><computeroutput>--timesync-max-latency</computeroutput></glossterm>
1699 <glossdef>
1700 <para>The max host timer query latency to accept. The default is
1701 250 ms.</para>
1702 </glossdef>
1703 </glossentry>
1704
1705 <glossentry>
1706 <glossterm><computeroutput>--timesync-set-threshold</computeroutput></glossterm>
1707 <glossdef>
1708 <para>The absolute drift threshold, given as milliseconds where
1709 to start setting the time instead of trying to smoothly adjust
1710 it. The default is 20 minutes.</para>
1711 </glossdef>
1712 </glossentry>
1713
1714 <glossentry>
1715 <glossterm><computeroutput>--timesync-set-start</computeroutput></glossterm>
1716 <glossdef>
1717 <para>Set the time when starting the time sync service.</para>
1718 </glossdef>
1719 </glossentry>
1720
1721 <glossentry>
1722 <glossterm><computeroutput>--timesync-set-on-restore
1723 0|1</computeroutput></glossterm>
1724 <glossdef>
1725 <para>Set the time after the VM was restored from a saved state
1726 when passing 1 as parameter (default). Disable by passing 0. In
1727 the latter case, the time will be adjusted smoothly which can
1728 take a long time.</para>
1729 </glossdef>
1730 </glossentry>
1731 </glosslist></para>
1732
1733 <para>All these parameters can be specified as command line parameters
1734 to VBoxService as well.</para>
1735 </sect2>
1736
1737 <sect2 id="disabletimesync">
1738
1739 <title>Disabling the Guest Additions time synchronization</title>
1740
1741 <para>Once installed and started, the VirtualBox Guest Additions will
1742 try to synchronize the guest time with the host time. This can be
1743 prevented by forbidding the guest service from reading the host
1744 clock:</para>
1745
1746 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled" 1</screen>
1747
1748 </sect2>
1749
1750 </sect1>
1751
1752 <sect1 id="vboxbowsolaris11">
1753 <title>Installing the alternate bridged networking driver on Solaris 11
1754 hosts</title>
1755
1756 <para>Starting with VirtualBox 4.1, VirtualBox ships a new network filter
1757 driver that utilizes Solaris 11's Crossbow functionality. By default, this
1758 new driver is installed for Solaris 11 hosts (builds 159 and above) that
1759 has support for it.</para>
1760
1761 <para>To force installation of the older STREAMS based network filter
1762 driver, execute as root the following command before installing the
1763 VirtualBox package:</para>
1764
1765 <screen>touch /etc/vboxinst_vboxflt</screen>
1766
1767 <para>To force installation of the Crossbow based network filter driver,
1768 execute as root the following command before installing the VirtualBox
1769 package:</para>
1770
1771 <screen>touch /etc/vboxinst_vboxbow</screen>
1772
1773 <para>To check which driver is currently being used by VirtualBox,
1774 execute:</para>
1775
1776 <screen>modinfo | grep vbox</screen>
1777
1778 <para>If the output contains "vboxbow", it indicates VirtualBox is using
1779 the Crossbow network filter driver, while the name "vboxflt" indicates
1780 usage of the older STREAMS network filter.</para>
1781 </sect1>
1782
1783 <sect1 id="vboxbowvnictemplates">
1784 <title>VirtualBox VNIC templates for VLANs on Solaris 11 hosts</title>
1785
1786 <para>VirtualBox supports VNIC (Virtual Network Interface) templates for
1787 configuring VMs over VLANs.<footnote>
1788 <para>Support for Crossbow based bridged networking was introduced
1789 with VirtualBox 4.1 and requires Solaris 11 build 159 or above.</para>
1790 </footnote> A VirtualBox VNIC template is a VNIC whose name starts with
1791 "vboxvnic_template" (case-sensitive).</para>
1792
1793 <para>Here is an example of how to use a VNIC template to configure a VLAN
1794 for VMs. Create a VirtualBox VNIC template, by executing as root:</para>
1795
1796 <screen>dladm create-vnic -t -l nge0 -v 23 vboxvnic_template0</screen>
1797
1798 <para>This will create a temporary VNIC over interface "nge0" with the
1799 VLAN ID 23. To create VNIC templates that are persistent across host
1800 reboots, skip the <computeroutput>-t</computeroutput> parameter in the
1801 above command. You may check the current state of links using:</para>
1802
1803 <para><screen>$ dladm show-link
1804LINK CLASS MTU STATE BRIDGE OVER
1805nge0 phys 1500 up -- --
1806nge1 phys 1500 down -- --
1807vboxvnic_template0 vnic 1500 up -- nge0
1808
1809$ dladm show-vnic
1810LINK OVER SPEED MACADDRESS MACADDRTYPE VID
1811vboxvnic_template0 nge0 1000 2:8:20:25:12:75 random 23</screen></para>
1812
1813 <para>Once the VNIC template is created, all VMs that need to be part of
1814 VLAN 23 over the physical interface "nge0" can use the same VNIC template.
1815 This makes managing VMs on VLANs simpler and efficient, as the VLAN
1816 details are not stored as part of every VM's configuration but rather
1817 picked from the VNIC template which can be modified anytime using
1818 <computeroutput>dladm</computeroutput>. Apart from the VLAN ID, VNIC
1819 templates can be created with additional properties such as bandwidth
1820 limits, CPU fanout etc. Refer to your Solaris network documentation on how
1821 to accomplish this. These additional properties, if any, are also applied
1822 to VMs which use the VNIC template.</para>
1823 </sect1>
1824
1825 <sect1 id="addhostonlysolaris">
1826 <title>Configuring multiple host-only network interfaces on Solaris
1827 hosts</title>
1828
1829 <para>By default VirtualBox provides you with one host-only network
1830 interface. Adding more host-only network interfaces on Solaris hosts
1831 requires manual configuration. Here's how to add two more host-only
1832 network interfaces.</para>
1833
1834 <para>You first need to stop all running VMs and unplumb all existing
1835 "vboxnet" interfaces. Execute the following commands as root:</para>
1836
1837 <screen>ifconfig vboxnet0 unplumb</screen>
1838
1839 <para>Once you make sure all vboxnet interfaces are unplumbed, remove the
1840 driver using:</para>
1841
1842 <para><screen>rem_drv vboxnet</screen>then edit the file
1843 <computeroutput>/platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/vboxnet.conf</computeroutput>
1844 and add a line for the new interfaces:</para>
1845
1846 <para><screen>name="vboxnet" parent="pseudo" instance=1;
1847name="vboxnet" parent="pseudo" instance=2;</screen>Add as many of these lines
1848 as required and make sure "instance" number is uniquely incremented. Next
1849 reload the vboxnet driver using:</para>
1850
1851 <para><screen>add_drv vboxnet</screen>Now plumb all the interfaces using
1852 <computeroutput>ifconfig vboxnetX plumb</computeroutput> (where X can be
1853 0, 1 or 2 in this case) and once plumbed you can then configure the
1854 interface like any other network interface.</para>
1855
1856 <para>To make your newly added interfaces' settings persistent across
1857 reboots you will need to edit the files
1858 <computeroutput>/etc/netmasks</computeroutput>, and if you are using NWAM
1859 <computeroutput>/etc/nwam/llp</computeroutput> and add the appropriate
1860 entries to set the netmask and static IP for each of those interfaces. The
1861 VirtualBox installer only updates these configuration files for the one
1862 "vboxnet0" interface it creates by default.</para>
1863 </sect1>
1864
1865 <sect1 id="solariscodedumper">
1866 <title>Configuring the VirtualBox CoreDumper on Solaris hosts</title>
1867
1868 <para>VirtualBox is capable of producing its own core files for extensive
1869 debugging when things go wrong. Currently this is only available on
1870 Solaris hosts.</para>
1871
1872 <para>The VirtualBox CoreDumper can be enabled using the following
1873 command:</para>
1874
1875 <para><screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpEnabled 1</screen></para>
1876
1877 <para>You can specify which directory to use for core dumps with this
1878 command:</para>
1879
1880 <para><screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpDir &lt;path-to-directory&gt;</screen>Make
1881 sure the directory you specify is on a volume with sufficient free space
1882 and that the VirtualBox process has sufficient permissions to write files
1883 to this directory. If you skip this command and don't specify any core
1884 dump directory, the current directory of the VirtualBox executable will be
1885 used (which would most likely fail when writing cores as they are
1886 protected with root permissions). It is recommended you explicitly set a
1887 core dump directory.</para>
1888
1889 <para>You must specify when the VirtualBox CoreDumper should be triggered.
1890 This is done using the following commands:</para>
1891
1892 <para><screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpReplaceSystemDump 1
1893VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/CoreDumpLive 1</screen>At
1894 least one of the above two commands will have to be provided if you have
1895 enabled the VirtualBox CoreDumper.</para>
1896
1897 <para>Setting <computeroutput>CoreDumpReplaceSystemDump</computeroutput>
1898 sets up the VM to override the host's core dumping mechanism and in the
1899 event of any crash only the VirtualBox CoreDumper would produce the core
1900 file.</para>
1901
1902 <para>Setting <computeroutput>CoreDumpLive</computeroutput> sets up the VM
1903 to produce cores whenever the VM process receives a
1904 <computeroutput>SIGUSR2</computeroutput> signal. After producing the core
1905 file, the VM will not be terminated and will continue to run. You can thus
1906 take cores of the VM process using:</para>
1907
1908 <para><screen>kill -s SIGUSR2 &lt;VM-process-id&gt;</screen></para>
1909
1910 <para>Core files produced by the VirtualBox CoreDumper are of the form
1911 <computeroutput>core.vb.&lt;ProcessName&gt;.&lt;ProcessID&gt;</computeroutput>,
1912 for example <computeroutput>core.vb.VBoxHeadless.11321</computeroutput>.</para>
1913 </sect1>
1914
1915 <sect1 id="guitweaks">
1916 <title>Locking down the VirtualBox manager GUI</title>
1917
1918 <sect2>
1919 <title>Customizing the VM manager</title>
1920
1921 <para>There are several advanced customization settings for locking down
1922 the VirtualBox manager, that is, removing some features that the user
1923 should not see.</para>
1924
1925 <para><screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen></para>
1926
1927 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
1928 following keywords:<glosslist>
1929 <glossentry>
1930 <glossterm><computeroutput>noSelector</computeroutput></glossterm>
1931 <glossdef>
1932 <para>Don't allow to start the VirtualBox manager. Trying to do so
1933 will show a window containing a proper error message.</para>
1934 </glossdef>
1935 </glossentry>
1936
1937 <glossentry>
1938 <glossterm><computeroutput>noMenuBar</computeroutput></glossterm>
1939 <glossdef>
1940 <para>VM windows will not contain a menu bar.</para>
1941 </glossdef>
1942 </glossentry>
1943
1944 <glossentry>
1945 <glossterm><computeroutput>noStatusBar</computeroutput></glossterm>
1946 <glossdef>
1947 <para>VM windows will not contain a status bar.</para>
1948 </glossdef>
1949 </glossentry>
1950 </glosslist></para>
1951
1952 <para>To disable any of these VM manager customizations do
1953 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations</screen></para>
1954
1955 </sect2>
1956 <sect2>
1957
1958 <title>VM selector customization</title>
1959 <para>The following per-machine VM extradata settings can be used to change the
1960 behavior of the VM selector window in respect of certain VMs:</para>
1961 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" true</screen>
1962 <para>where <computeroutput>SETTING</computeroutput> can be:</para>
1963 <glosslist>
1964 <glossentry>
1965 <glossterm><computeroutput>GUI/HideDetails</computeroutput></glossterm>
1966 <glossdef>
1967 <para>Don't show the VM configuration of a certain VM. The details
1968 window will remain just empty if this VM is selected.</para>
1969 </glossdef>
1970 </glossentry>
1971 <glossentry>
1972 <glossterm><computeroutput>GUI/PreventReconfiguration</computeroutput></glossterm>
1973 <glossdef>
1974 <para>Don't allow the user to open the settings dialog for a certain VM.</para>
1975 </glossdef>
1976 </glossentry>
1977 <glossentry>
1978 <glossterm><computeroutput>GUI/PreventSnapshotOperations</computeroutput></glossterm>
1979 <glossdef>
1980 <para>Prevent snapshot operations for a VM from the GUI, either at runtime or when
1981 the VM is powered off.</para>
1982 </glossdef>
1983 </glossentry>
1984 <glossentry>
1985 <glossterm><computeroutput>GUI/HideFromManager</computeroutput></glossterm>
1986 <glossdef>
1987 <para>Hide a certain VM in the VM selector window.</para>
1988 </glossdef>
1989 </glossentry>
1990 <glossentry>
1991 <glossterm><computeroutput>GUI/PreventApplicationUpdate</computeroutput></glossterm>
1992 <glossdef>
1993 <para>Disable the automatic update check and hide the corresponding menu item.</para>
1994 </glossdef>
1995 </glossentry>
1996 </glosslist>
1997 <para>Please note that these settings wouldn't prevent the user from
1998 reconfiguring the VM by <computeroutput>VBoxManage modifyvm</computeroutput>.</para>
1999
2000 </sect2>
2001
2002 <sect2>
2003 <title>Configure VM selector menu entries</title>
2004 <para>You can disable (i.e. black-list) certain entries in the global settings
2005 page of the VM selector:</para>
2006 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/RestrictedGlobalSettingsPages OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2007 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2008 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2009 <glossentry>
2010 <glossterm><computeroutput>General</computeroutput></glossterm>
2011 <glossdef>
2012 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>General</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2013 </glossdef>
2014 </glossentry>
2015
2016 <glossentry>
2017 <glossterm><computeroutput>Input</computeroutput></glossterm>
2018 <glossdef>
2019 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Input</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2020 </glossdef>
2021 </glossentry>
2022
2023 <glossentry>
2024 <glossterm><computeroutput>Update</computeroutput></glossterm>
2025 <glossdef>
2026 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Update</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2027 </glossdef>
2028 </glossentry>
2029
2030 <glossentry>
2031 <glossterm><computeroutput>Language</computeroutput></glossterm>
2032 <glossdef>
2033 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Language</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2034 </glossdef>
2035 </glossentry>
2036
2037 <glossentry>
2038 <glossterm><computeroutput>Display</computeroutput></glossterm>
2039 <glossdef>
2040 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Display</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2041 </glossdef>
2042 </glossentry>
2043
2044 <glossentry>
2045 <glossterm><computeroutput>Network</computeroutput></glossterm>
2046 <glossdef>
2047 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Network</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2048 </glossdef>
2049 </glossentry>
2050
2051 <glossentry>
2052 <glossterm><computeroutput>Extensions</computeroutput></glossterm>
2053 <glossdef>
2054 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Extensions</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2055 </glossdef>
2056 </glossentry>
2057
2058 <glossentry>
2059 <glossterm><computeroutput>Proxy</computeroutput></glossterm>
2060 <glossdef>
2061 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Proxy</emphasis> settings pane.</para>
2062 </glossdef>
2063 </glossentry>
2064
2065 </glosslist>
2066
2067 <para>This is a global setting. Any combination of the above is allowed.
2068 To restore the default behavior, use</para>
2069 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/RestrictedGlobalSettingsPages</screen>
2070
2071 </sect2>
2072
2073 <sect2>
2074 <title>Configure VM window menu entries</title>
2075 <para>You can disable (i.e. black-list) certain menu actions in the VM window:</para>
2076 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMenus OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2077
2078 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2079 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2080 <glossentry>
2081 <glossterm><computeroutput>All</computeroutput></glossterm>
2082 <glossdef>
2083 <para>Don't show any menu in the VM window.</para>
2084 </glossdef>
2085 </glossentry>
2086
2087 <glossentry>
2088 <glossterm><computeroutput>Machine</computeroutput></glossterm>
2089 <glossdef>
2090 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Machine</emphasis> menu in the VM window.</para>
2091 </glossdef>
2092 </glossentry>
2093
2094 <glossentry>
2095 <glossterm><computeroutput>View</computeroutput></glossterm>
2096 <glossdef>
2097 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>View</emphasis> menu in the VM window.</para>
2098 </glossdef>
2099 </glossentry>
2100
2101 <glossentry>
2102 <glossterm><computeroutput>Devices</computeroutput></glossterm>
2103 <glossdef>
2104 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Devices</emphasis> menu in the VM window.</para>
2105 </glossdef>
2106 </glossentry>
2107
2108 <glossentry>
2109 <glossterm><computeroutput>Help</computeroutput></glossterm>
2110 <glossdef>
2111 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Help</emphasis> menu in the VM window.</para>
2112 </glossdef>
2113 </glossentry>
2114
2115 <glossentry>
2116 <glossterm><computeroutput>Debug</computeroutput></glossterm>
2117 <glossdef>
2118 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Debug</emphasis> menu in the VM window. The debug
2119 menu is only visible if the GUI was started with special command line parameters
2120 or environment variable settings.</para>
2121 </glossdef>
2122 </glossentry>
2123
2124 </glosslist>
2125
2126 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2127 the default behavior, use</para>
2128 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMenus</screen>
2129
2130 <para>You can also disable (i.e. blacklist) certain menu actions of certain
2131 menus. Use the following command to disable certain actions of the
2132 <emphasis>Application</emphasis> menu (only available on Mac OS X hosts):</para>
2133 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeApplicationMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2134
2135 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2136 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2137 <glossentry>
2138 <glossterm><computeroutput>All</computeroutput></glossterm>
2139 <glossdef>
2140 <para>Don't show any menu item in this menu.</para>
2141 </glossdef>
2142 </glossentry>
2143 <glossentry>
2144 <glossterm><computeroutput>About</computeroutput></glossterm>
2145 <glossdef>
2146 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>About</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2147 </glossdef>
2148 </glossentry>
2149 </glosslist>
2150
2151 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2152 the default behavior, use</para>
2153 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMenus</screen>
2154
2155 <para>Use the following command to disable certain actions of the <emphasis>Machine</emphasis>
2156 menu:</para>
2157
2158 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeApplicationMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2159
2160 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2161 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2162 <glossentry>
2163 <glossterm><computeroutput>All</computeroutput></glossterm>
2164 <glossdef>
2165 <para>Don't show any menu item in this menu.</para>
2166 </glossdef>
2167 </glossentry>
2168 <glossentry>
2169 <glossterm><computeroutput>SettingsDialog</computeroutput></glossterm>
2170 <glossdef>
2171 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Settings</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2172 </glossdef>
2173 </glossentry>
2174 <glossentry>
2175 <glossterm><computeroutput>TakeSnapshot</computeroutput></glossterm>
2176 <glossdef>
2177 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Take Snapshot</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2178 </glossdef>
2179 </glossentry>
2180 <glossentry>
2181 <glossterm><computeroutput>TakeScreenshot</computeroutput></glossterm>
2182 <glossdef>
2183 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Take Screenshot</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2184 </glossdef>
2185 </glossentry>
2186 <glossentry>
2187 <glossterm><computeroutput>InformationDialog</computeroutput></glossterm>
2188 <glossdef>
2189 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Session Information</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2190 </glossdef>
2191 </glossentry>
2192 <glossentry>
2193 <glossterm><computeroutput>MouseIntegration</computeroutput></glossterm>
2194 <glossdef>
2195 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Disable Mouse Integration</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2196 </glossdef>
2197 </glossentry>
2198 <glossentry>
2199 <glossterm><computeroutput>TypeCAD</computeroutput></glossterm>
2200 <glossdef>
2201 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Insert Ctrl+Alt+Del</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2202 </glossdef>
2203 </glossentry>
2204 <glossentry>
2205 <glossterm><computeroutput>TypeCABS</computeroutput></glossterm>
2206 <glossdef>
2207 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Insert Ctrl+Alt+Backspace</emphasis> menu item in
2208 this menu (available on X11 hosts only).</para>
2209 </glossdef>
2210 </glossentry>
2211 <glossentry>
2212 <glossterm><computeroutput>Pause</computeroutput></glossterm>
2213 <glossdef>
2214 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Pause</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2215 </glossdef>
2216 </glossentry>
2217 <glossentry>
2218 <glossterm><computeroutput>Reset</computeroutput></glossterm>
2219 <glossdef>
2220 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Reset</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2221 </glossdef>
2222 </glossentry>
2223 <glossentry>
2224 <glossterm><computeroutput>SaveState</computeroutput></glossterm>
2225 <glossdef>
2226 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Save the machine state</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2227 </glossdef>
2228 </glossentry>
2229 <glossentry>
2230 <glossterm><computeroutput>Shutdown</computeroutput></glossterm>
2231 <glossdef>
2232 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>ACPI Shutdown</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2233 </glossdef>
2234 </glossentry>
2235 <glossentry>
2236 <glossterm><computeroutput>PowerOff</computeroutput></glossterm>
2237 <glossdef>
2238 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Power Off the machine</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2239 </glossdef>
2240 </glossentry>
2241 </glosslist>
2242
2243 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2244 the default behavior, use</para>
2245 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeApplicationMenuActions</screen>
2246
2247 <para>Use the following command to disable certain actions of the <emphasis>View</emphasis>
2248 menu:</para>
2249
2250 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeViewMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2251
2252 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2253 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2254 <glossentry>
2255 <glossterm><computeroutput>All</computeroutput></glossterm>
2256 <glossdef>
2257 <para>Don't show any menu item in this menu.</para>
2258 </glossdef>
2259 </glossentry>
2260 <glossentry>
2261 <glossterm><computeroutput>Fullscreen</computeroutput></glossterm>
2262 <glossdef>
2263 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Switch to Fullscreen</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2264 </glossdef>
2265 </glossentry>
2266 <glossentry>
2267 <glossterm><computeroutput>Seamless</computeroutput></glossterm>
2268 <glossdef>
2269 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Switch to Seamless Mode</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2270 </glossdef>
2271 </glossentry>
2272 <glossentry>
2273 <glossterm><computeroutput>Scale</computeroutput></glossterm>
2274 <glossdef>
2275 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Switch to Scaled Mode</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2276 </glossdef>
2277 </glossentry>
2278 <glossentry>
2279 <glossterm><computeroutput>GuestAutoresize</computeroutput></glossterm>
2280 <glossdef>
2281 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Auto-resize Guest Display</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2282 </glossdef>
2283 </glossentry>
2284 <glossentry>
2285 <glossterm><computeroutput>AdjustWindow</computeroutput></glossterm>
2286 <glossdef>
2287 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Adjust Window Size</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2288 </glossdef>
2289 </glossentry>
2290 <glossentry>
2291 <glossterm><computeroutput>Multiscreen</computeroutput></glossterm>
2292 <glossdef>
2293 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Multiscreen</emphasis> menu item in this menu (only visible in full screen / seamless mode).</para>
2294 </glossdef>
2295 </glossentry>
2296 </glosslist>
2297
2298 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2299 the default behavior, use</para>
2300 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeViewMenuActions</screen>
2301
2302 <para>Use the following command to disable certain actions of the <emphasis>View</emphasis>
2303 menu:</para>
2304
2305 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDevicesMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2306
2307 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2308 following keywords to disable actions in the <emphasis>Devices</emphasis> menu:</para><glosslist>
2309 <glossentry>
2310 <glossterm><computeroutput>All</computeroutput></glossterm>
2311 <glossdef>
2312 <para>Don't show any menu item in this menu.</para>
2313 </glossdef>
2314 </glossentry>
2315 <glossentry>
2316 <glossterm><computeroutput>OpticalDevices</computeroutput></glossterm>
2317 <glossdef>
2318 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>CD/DVD Devices</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2319 </glossdef>
2320 </glossentry>
2321 <glossentry>
2322 <glossterm><computeroutput>FloppyDevices</computeroutput></glossterm>
2323 <glossdef>
2324 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>FLoppy Devices</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2325 </glossdef>
2326 </glossentry>
2327 <glossentry>
2328 <glossterm><computeroutput>USBDevices</computeroutput></glossterm>
2329 <glossdef>
2330 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>USB Devices</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2331 </glossdef>
2332 </glossentry>
2333 <glossentry>
2334 <glossterm><computeroutput>SharedClipboard</computeroutput></glossterm>
2335 <glossdef>
2336 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Shared Clipboard</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2337 </glossdef>
2338 </glossentry>
2339 <glossentry>
2340 <glossterm><computeroutput>DragAndDrop</computeroutput></glossterm>
2341 <glossdef>
2342 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Drag'n'Drop</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2343 </glossdef>
2344 </glossentry>
2345 <glossentry>
2346 <glossterm><computeroutput>NetworkSettings</computeroutput></glossterm>
2347 <glossdef>
2348 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Network Settings...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2349 </glossdef>
2350 </glossentry>
2351 <glossentry>
2352 <glossterm><computeroutput>SharedFoldersSettings</computeroutput></glossterm>
2353 <glossdef>
2354 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Shared Folders Settings...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2355 </glossdef>
2356 </glossentry>
2357 <glossentry>
2358 <glossterm><computeroutput>VRDEServer</computeroutput></glossterm>
2359 <glossdef>
2360 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Remove Display</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2361 </glossdef>
2362 </glossentry>
2363 <glossentry>
2364 <glossterm><computeroutput>InstallGuestTools</computeroutput></glossterm>
2365 <glossdef>
2366 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Insert Guest Additions CD imnage...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2367 </glossdef>
2368 </glossentry>
2369 </glosslist>
2370
2371 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2372 the default behavior, use</para>
2373 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDevicesMenuActions</screen>
2374
2375 <para>Use the following command to disable certain actions of the <emphasis>View</emphasis>
2376 menu:</para>
2377
2378 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDebuggerMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2379
2380 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2381 following keywords to disable actions in the <emphasis>Debug</emphasis> menu (normally completely disabled):</para><glosslist>
2382 <glossentry>
2383 <glossterm><computeroutput>All</computeroutput></glossterm>
2384 <glossdef>
2385 <para>Don't show any menu item in this menu.</para>
2386 </glossdef>
2387 </glossentry>
2388 <glossentry>
2389 <glossterm><computeroutput>Statistics</computeroutput></glossterm>
2390 <glossdef>
2391 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Statistics...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2392 </glossdef>
2393 </glossentry>
2394 <glossentry>
2395 <glossterm><computeroutput>CommandLine</computeroutput></glossterm>
2396 <glossdef>
2397 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Command Line...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2398 </glossdef>
2399 </glossentry>
2400 <glossentry>
2401 <glossterm><computeroutput>Logging</computeroutput></glossterm>
2402 <glossdef>
2403 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Logging...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2404 </glossdef>
2405 </glossentry>
2406 <glossentry>
2407 <glossterm><computeroutput>LogDialog</computeroutput></glossterm>
2408 <glossdef>
2409 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Show Log...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2410 </glossdef>
2411 </glossentry>
2412 </glosslist>
2413
2414 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2415 the default behavior, use</para>
2416 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDebuggerMenuActions</screen>
2417
2418 <para>Use the following command to disable certain actions of the <emphasis>View</emphasis>
2419 menu:</para>
2420
2421 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeHelpMenuActions OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2422
2423 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2424 following keywords to disable actions in the <emphasis>Help</emphasis> menu (normally completely disabled):</para><glosslist>
2425 <glossentry>
2426 <glossterm><computeroutput>All</computeroutput></glossterm>
2427 <glossdef>
2428 <para>Don't show any menu item in this menu.</para>
2429 </glossdef>
2430 </glossentry>
2431 <glossentry>
2432 <glossterm><computeroutput>Contents</computeroutput></glossterm>
2433 <glossdef>
2434 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Contents...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2435 </glossdef>
2436 </glossentry>
2437 <glossentry>
2438 <glossterm><computeroutput>WebSite</computeroutput></glossterm>
2439 <glossdef>
2440 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>VirtualBox Web Site...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2441 </glossdef>
2442 </glossentry>
2443 <glossentry>
2444 <glossterm><computeroutput>ResetWarnings</computeroutput></glossterm>
2445 <glossdef>
2446 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Reset All Warnings</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2447 </glossdef>
2448 </glossentry>
2449 <glossentry>
2450 <glossterm><computeroutput>NetworkAccessManager</computeroutput></glossterm>
2451 <glossdef>
2452 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Network Operations Manager</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2453 </glossdef>
2454 </glossentry>
2455 <glossentry>
2456 <glossterm><computeroutput>About</computeroutput></glossterm>
2457 <glossdef>
2458 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>About</emphasis> menu item in this menu (only on non Mac OS X hosts).</para>
2459 </glossdef>
2460 </glossentry>
2461 <glossentry>
2462 <glossterm><computeroutput>Contents</computeroutput></glossterm>
2463 <glossdef>
2464 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Contents...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2465 </glossdef>
2466 </glossentry>
2467 <glossentry>
2468 <glossterm><computeroutput>Contents</computeroutput></glossterm>
2469 <glossdef>
2470 <para>Don't show the <emphasis>Contents...</emphasis> menu item in this menu.</para>
2471 </glossdef>
2472 </glossentry>
2473 </glosslist>
2474
2475 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2476 the default behavior, use</para>
2477 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeHelpMenuActions</screen>
2478
2479 </sect2>
2480
2481 <sect2>
2482
2483 <title>Configure VM window status bar entries</title>
2484
2485 <para>You can disable (i.e. black-list) certain status bar items:</para>
2486 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedStatusBarIndicators OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2487
2488 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2489 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2490 <glossentry>
2491 <glossterm><computeroutput>HardDisks</computeroutput></glossterm>
2492 <glossdef>
2493 <para>Don't show the hard disk icon in the VM window status bar. By default
2494 the hard disk icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one or
2495 more hard disks.</para>
2496 </glossdef>
2497 </glossentry>
2498
2499 <glossentry>
2500 <glossterm><computeroutput>OpticalDisks</computeroutput></glossterm>
2501 <glossdef>
2502 <para>Don't show the CD icon in the VM window status bar. By default the
2503 CD icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one or more CD
2504 drives.</para>
2505 </glossdef>
2506 </glossentry>
2507
2508 <glossentry>
2509 <glossterm><computeroutput>FloppyDisks</computeroutput></glossterm>
2510 <glossdef>
2511 <para>Don't show the floppy icon in the VM window status bar. By default the
2512 floppy icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one more
2513 more floppy drives.</para>
2514 </glossdef>
2515 </glossentry>
2516
2517 <glossentry>
2518 <glossterm><computeroutput>Network</computeroutput></glossterm>
2519 <glossdef>
2520 <para>Don't show the network icon in the VM window status bar. By default
2521 the network icon is only shown if the VM configuration contains one or more
2522 active network adapters.</para>
2523 </glossdef>
2524 </glossentry>
2525
2526 <glossentry>
2527 <glossterm><computeroutput>USB</computeroutput></glossterm>
2528 <glossdef>
2529 <para>Don't show the USB icon in the status bar. </para>
2530 </glossdef>
2531 </glossentry>
2532
2533 <glossentry>
2534 <glossterm><computeroutput>SharedFolders</computeroutput></glossterm>
2535 <glossdef>
2536 <para>Don't show the shared folders icon in the status bar.</para>
2537 </glossdef>
2538 </glossentry>
2539
2540 <glossentry>
2541 <glossterm><computeroutput>VideoCapture</computeroutput></glossterm>
2542 <glossdef>
2543 <para>Don't show the video capture icon in the status bar.</para>
2544 </glossdef>
2545 </glossentry>
2546
2547 <glossentry>
2548 <glossterm><computeroutput>Features</computeroutput></glossterm>
2549 <glossdef>
2550 <para>Don't show the CPU features icon in the status bar.</para>
2551 </glossdef>
2552 </glossentry>
2553
2554 <glossentry>
2555 <glossterm><computeroutput>Mouse</computeroutput></glossterm>
2556 <glossdef>
2557 <para>Don't show the mouse icon in the status bar.</para>
2558 </glossdef>
2559 </glossentry>
2560
2561 <glossentry>
2562 <glossterm><computeroutput>Keyboard</computeroutput></glossterm>
2563 <glossdef>
2564 <para>Don't show the keyboard icon in the status bar.</para>
2565 </glossdef>
2566 </glossentry>
2567
2568 </glosslist>
2569
2570 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. If all options
2571 are specified, no icons are displayed in the status bar of the VM window. To restore
2572 the default behavior, use</para>
2573
2574 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedStatusBarIndicators</screen>
2575
2576 </sect2>
2577
2578 <sect2>
2579 <title>Configure VM window visual modes</title>
2580
2581 <para>You can disable (i.e. black-list) certain VM visual modes:</para>
2582 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedVisualStates OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen>
2583
2584 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2585 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2586 <glossentry>
2587 <glossterm><computeroutput>Fullscreen</computeroutput></glossterm>
2588 <glossdef>
2589 <para>Don't allow to switch the VM into full screen mode.</para>
2590 </glossdef>
2591 </glossentry>
2592
2593 <glossentry>
2594 <glossterm><computeroutput>Seamless</computeroutput></glossterm>
2595 <glossdef>
2596 <para>Don't allow to switch the VM into seamless mode.</para>
2597 </glossdef>
2598 </glossentry>
2599
2600 <glossentry>
2601 <glossterm><computeroutput>Scale</computeroutput></glossterm>
2602 <glossdef>
2603 <para>Don't allow to switch the VM into scale mode.</para>
2604 </glossdef>
2605 </glossentry>
2606
2607 </glosslist>
2608
2609 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. To restore
2610 the default behavior, use</para>
2611
2612 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedVisualStates</screen>
2613
2614 </sect2>
2615
2616 <sect2>
2617 <title>Host Key customization</title>
2618
2619 <para>To disable all host key combinations, open the preferences and
2620 change the host key to <emphasis>None</emphasis>. This might be useful
2621 when using VirtualBox in a kiosk mode.</para>
2622
2623 <para>To redefine or disable certain host key actions, use the following command:</para>
2624
2625 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Input/MachineShortcuts "FullscreenMode=F,...."</screen>
2626
2627 <para>The following list shows the possible host key actions together with their default
2628 host key shortcut. Setting an action to <emphasis>None</emphasis> will disable
2629 that host key action.</para>
2630 <table>
2631 <title>Host Key customization</title>
2632 <tgroup cols="3">
2633 <thead>
2634 <row>
2635 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Action</emphasis></entry>
2636 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Default Key</emphasis></entry>
2637 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Action</emphasis></entry>
2638 </row>
2639 </thead>
2640 <tbody>
2641 <row>
2642 <entry><computeroutput>TakeSnapshot</computeroutput></entry>
2643 <entry>T</entry>
2644 <entry>take a snapshot</entry>
2645 </row>
2646 <row>
2647 <entry><computeroutput>TakeScreenshot</computeroutput></entry>
2648 <entry>E</entry>
2649 <entry>take a screenshot</entry>
2650 </row>
2651 <row>
2652 <entry><computeroutput>MouseIntegration</computeroutput></entry>
2653 <entry>I</entry>
2654 <entry>toggle mouse integration</entry>
2655 </row>
2656 <row>
2657 <entry><computeroutput>TypeCAD</computeroutput></entry>
2658 <entry>Del</entry>
2659 <entry>inject Ctrl+Alt+Del</entry>
2660 </row>
2661 <row>
2662 <entry><computeroutput>TypeCABS</computeroutput></entry>
2663 <entry>Backspace</entry>
2664 <entry>inject Ctrl+Alt+Backspace</entry>
2665 </row>
2666 <row>
2667 <entry><computeroutput>Pause</computeroutput></entry>
2668 <entry>P</entry>
2669 <entry>Pause the VM</entry>
2670 </row>
2671 <row>
2672 <entry><computeroutput>Reset</computeroutput></entry>
2673 <entry>R</entry>
2674 <entry>(hard) reset the guest</entry>
2675 </row>
2676 <row>
2677 <entry><computeroutput>SaveState</computeroutput></entry>
2678 <entry></entry>
2679 <entry>save the VM state and terminate the VM</entry>
2680 </row>
2681 <row>
2682 <entry><computeroutput>Shutdown</computeroutput></entry>
2683 <entry>H</entry>
2684 <entry>press the (virtual) ACPI power button</entry>
2685 </row>
2686 <row>
2687 <entry><computeroutput>PowerOff</computeroutput></entry>
2688 <entry></entry>
2689 <entry>power the VM off (without saving the state!)</entry>
2690 </row>
2691 <row>
2692 <entry><computeroutput>Close</computeroutput></entry>
2693 <entry>Q</entry>
2694 <entry>show the VM close dialog</entry>
2695 </row>
2696 <row>
2697 <entry><computeroutput>FullscreenMode</computeroutput></entry>
2698 <entry>F</entry>
2699 <entry>switch the VM into full screen</entry>
2700 </row>
2701 <row>
2702 <entry><computeroutput>SeamlessMode</computeroutput></entry>
2703 <entry>L</entry>
2704 <entry>switch the VM into seamless mode</entry>
2705 </row>
2706 <row>
2707 <entry><computeroutput>ScaleMode</computeroutput></entry>
2708 <entry>C</entry>
2709 <entry>switch the VM into scale mode</entry>
2710 </row>
2711 <row>
2712 <entry><computeroutput>GuestAutoResize</computeroutput></entry>
2713 <entry>G</entry>
2714 <entry>automatically resize the guest window</entry>
2715 </row>
2716 <row>
2717 <entry><computeroutput>WindowAdjust</computeroutput></entry>
2718 <entry>A</entry>
2719 <entry>immediately resize the guest window</entry>
2720 </row>
2721 <row>
2722 <entry><computeroutput>PopupMenu</computeroutput></entry>
2723 <entry>Home</entry>
2724 <entry>show popup menu in full screen / seaml. mode</entry>
2725 </row>
2726 <row>
2727 <entry><computeroutput>SettingsDialog</computeroutput></entry>
2728 <entry>S</entry>
2729 <entry>open the VM settings dialog</entry>
2730 </row>
2731 <row>
2732 <entry><computeroutput>InformationDialog</computeroutput></entry>
2733 <entry>N</entry>
2734 <entry>show the VM information window</entry>
2735 </row>
2736 <row>
2737 <entry><computeroutput>NetworkAdaptersDialog</computeroutput></entry>
2738 <entry></entry>
2739 <entry>show the VM network adapters dialog</entry>
2740 </row>
2741 <row>
2742 <entry><computeroutput>SharedFoldersDialog</computeroutput></entry>
2743 <entry></entry>
2744 <entry>show the VM shared folders dialog</entry>
2745 </row>
2746 <row>
2747 <entry><computeroutput>InstallGuestAdditions</computeroutput></entry>
2748 <entry>D</entry>
2749 <entry>mount the ISO containing the Guest Additions</entry>
2750 </row>
2751 </tbody>
2752 </tgroup>
2753 </table>
2754
2755 <para>To disable the full screen mode as well as the seamless mode, use the following command:
2756 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Input/MachineShortcuts "FullscreenMode=None,SeamlessMode=None"</screen>
2757 </para>
2758
2759 </sect2>
2760
2761 <sect2>
2762 <title>Action when terminating the VM</title>
2763
2764 <para>You can disallow (i.e. black-list) certain actions when terminating a VM.
2765 To disallow specific actions, type:</para>
2766
2767 <para><screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/RestrictedCloseActions OPTION[,OPTION...]</screen></para>
2768
2769 <para>where <computeroutput>OPTION</computeroutput> is one of the
2770 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2771 <glossentry>
2772 <glossterm><computeroutput>SaveState</computeroutput></glossterm>
2773 <glossdef>
2774 <para>Don't allow the user to save the VM state when terminating
2775 the VM.</para>
2776 </glossdef>
2777 </glossentry>
2778
2779 <glossentry>
2780 <glossterm><computeroutput>Shutdown</computeroutput></glossterm>
2781 <glossdef>
2782 <para>Don't allow the user to shutdown the VM by sending the ACPI
2783 power-off event to the guest.</para>
2784 </glossdef>
2785 </glossentry>
2786
2787 <glossentry>
2788 <glossterm><computeroutput>PowerOff</computeroutput></glossterm>
2789 <glossdef>
2790 <para>Don't allow the user to power off the VM.</para>
2791 </glossdef>
2792 </glossentry>
2793
2794 <glossentry>
2795 <glossterm><computeroutput>PowerOffRestoringSnapshot</computeroutput></glossterm>
2796 <glossdef>
2797 <para>Don't allow the user to return to the last snapshot when
2798 powering off the VM.</para>
2799 </glossdef>
2800 </glossentry>
2801 </glosslist>
2802
2803 <para>This is a per-VM setting. Any combination of the above is allowed. If all
2804 options are specified, the VM cannot be shut down at all.</para>
2805 </sect2>
2806
2807 <sect2>
2808 <title>Action for handling a Guru Meditation</title>
2809
2810 <para>A VM runs into a Guru Meditation if there is a problem which
2811 cannot be fixed by other means than terminating the process. The
2812 default is to show a message window which instructs the user to
2813 open a bug report.</para>
2814 <para>This behavior can be configured:</para>
2815
2816 <para><screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" GUI/GuruMeditationHandler MODE</screen></para>
2817
2818 <para>where <computeroutput>MODE</computeroutput> is one of the
2819 following keywords:</para><glosslist>
2820 <glossentry>
2821 <glossterm><computeroutput>Default</computeroutput></glossterm>
2822 <glossdef>
2823 <para>A message window is shown. After the user confirmed, the
2824 VM is terminated.</para>
2825 </glossdef>
2826 </glossentry>
2827
2828 <glossentry>
2829 <glossterm><computeroutput>PowerOff</computeroutput></glossterm>
2830 <glossdef>
2831 <para>The VM is immediately powered-off without showing any message
2832 window. The VM logfile will show information about what happend.</para>
2833 </glossdef>
2834 </glossentry>
2835
2836 <glossentry>
2837 <glossterm><computeroutput>Ignore</computeroutput></glossterm>
2838 <glossdef>
2839 <para>The VM is left in stuck mode. Execution is stopped but no
2840 message window is shown. The VM has to be powered off manually.</para>
2841 </glossdef>
2842 </glossentry>
2843 </glosslist>
2844
2845 <para>This is a per-VM setting.</para>
2846 </sect2>
2847 </sect1>
2848
2849 <sect1 id="vboxwebsrv-daemon">
2850 <title>Starting the VirtualBox web service automatically</title>
2851
2852 <para>The VirtualBox web service
2853 (<computeroutput>vboxwebsrv</computeroutput>) is used for controlling
2854 VirtualBox remotely. It is documented in detail in the VirtualBox Software
2855 Development Kit (SDK); please see <xref linkend="VirtualBoxAPI" />. As the
2856 client base using this interface is growing, we added start scripts for
2857 the various operation systems we support. The following sections describe
2858 how to use them. The VirtualBox web service is never started automatically
2859 as a result of a standard installation.</para>
2860
2861 <sect2 id="vboxwebsrv-linux">
2862 <title>Linux: starting the webservice via <computeroutput>init</computeroutput></title>
2863
2864 <para>On Linux, the web service can be automatically started during
2865 host boot by adding appropriate parameters to the file
2866 <computeroutput>/etc/default/virtualbox</computeroutput>.
2867 There is one mandatory parameter, <computeroutput>VBOXWEB_USER</computeroutput>,
2868 which must be set to the user which will later start the VMs. The
2869 parameters in the table below all start with <computeroutput>VBOXWEB_</computeroutput>
2870 (<computeroutput>VBOXWEB_HOST</computeroutput>,
2871 <computeroutput>VBOXWEB_PORT</computeroutput> etc.):
2872 <table>
2873 <title>Web service configuration parameters</title>
2874 <tgroup cols="3">
2875 <thead>
2876 <row>
2877 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Parameter</emphasis></entry>
2878 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Description</emphasis></entry>
2879 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Default</emphasis></entry>
2880 </row>
2881 </thead>
2882 <tbody>
2883 <row>
2884 <entry><computeroutput>USER</computeroutput></entry>
2885 <entry>The user as which the web service runs</entry>
2886 <entry></entry>
2887 </row>
2888 <row>
2889 <entry><computeroutput>HOST</computeroutput></entry>
2890 <entry>The host to bind the web service to</entry>
2891 <entry>localhost</entry>
2892 </row>
2893 <row>
2894 <entry><computeroutput>PORT</computeroutput></entry>
2895 <entry>The port to bind the web service to</entry>
2896 <entry>18083</entry>
2897 </row>
2898 <row>
2899 <entry><computeroutput>SSL_KEYFILE</computeroutput></entry>
2900 <entry>Server key and certificate file, PEM format</entry>
2901 <entry></entry>
2902 </row>
2903 <row>
2904 <entry><computeroutput>SSL_PASSWORDFILE</computeroutput></entry>
2905 <entry>File name for password to server key</entry>
2906 <entry></entry>
2907 </row>
2908 <row>
2909 <entry><computeroutput>SSL_CACERT</computeroutput></entry>
2910 <entry>CA certificate file, PEM format</entry>
2911 <entry></entry>
2912 </row>
2913 <row>
2914 <entry><computeroutput>SSL_CAPATH</computeroutput></entry>
2915 <entry>CA certificate path</entry>
2916 <entry></entry>
2917 </row>
2918 <row>
2919 <entry><computeroutput>SSL_DHFILE</computeroutput></entry>
2920 <entry>DH file name or DH key length in bits</entry>
2921 <entry></entry>
2922 </row>
2923 <row>
2924 <entry><computeroutput>SSL_RANDFILE</computeroutput></entry>
2925 <entry>File containing seed for random number generator</entry>
2926 <entry></entry>
2927 </row>
2928 <row>
2929 <entry><computeroutput>TIMEOUT</computeroutput></entry>
2930 <entry>Session timeout in seconds; 0 disables timeouts</entry>
2931 <entry>300</entry>
2932 </row>
2933 <row>
2934 <entry><computeroutput>CHECK_INTERVAL</computeroutput></entry>
2935 <entry>Frequency of timeout checks in seconds</entry>
2936 <entry>5</entry>
2937 </row>
2938 <row>
2939 <entry><computeroutput>THREADS</computeroutput></entry>
2940 <entry>Maximum number of worker threads to run in parallel</entry>
2941 <entry>100</entry>
2942 </row>
2943 <row>
2944 <entry><computeroutput>KEEPALIVE</computeroutput></entry>
2945 <entry>Maximum number of requests before a socket will be closed</entry>
2946 <entry>100</entry>
2947 </row>
2948 <row>
2949 <entry><computeroutput>ROTATE</computeroutput></entry>
2950 <entry>Number of log files; 0 disables log rotation</entry>
2951 <entry>10</entry>
2952 </row>
2953 <row>
2954 <entry><computeroutput>LOGSIZE</computeroutput></entry>
2955 <entry>Maximum size of a log file in bytes to trigger rotation</entry>
2956 <entry>1MB</entry>
2957 </row>
2958 <row>
2959 <entry><computeroutput>LOGINTERVAL</computeroutput></entry>
2960 <entry>Maximum time interval in seconds to trigger log rotation</entry>
2961 <entry>1 day</entry>
2962 </row>
2963 </tbody>
2964 </tgroup>
2965 </table>
2966 </para>
2967
2968 <para>Setting the parameter <computeroutput>SSL_KEYFILE</computeroutput>
2969 enables the SSL/TLS support. Using encryption is strongly encouraged, as
2970 otherwise everything (including passwords) is transferred in clear
2971 text.</para>
2972 </sect2>
2973
2974 <sect2 id="vboxwebsrv-solaris">
2975 <title>Solaris: starting the web service via SMF</title>
2976
2977 <para>On Solaris hosts, the VirtualBox web service daemon is
2978 integrated into the SMF framework. You can change the parameters, but
2979 don't have to if the defaults below already match your needs:<screen>svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/host=localhost
2980svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/port=18083
2981svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/user=root</screen></para>
2982
2983 <para>The table in the previous section showing the parameter names and
2984 defaults also applies to Solaris. The parameter names must be changed
2985 to lowercase and a prefix of <computeroutput>config/</computeroutput>
2986 has to be added, e.g. <computeroutput>config/user</computeroutput> or
2987 <computeroutput>config/ssl_keyfile</computeroutput>. If you made any
2988 change, don't forget to run the following command to put the changes into
2989 effect immediately:<screen>svcadm refresh svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default</screen></para>
2990
2991 <para>If you forget the above command then the previous settings will
2992 be used when enabling the service. Check the current property settings
2993 with:<screen>svcprop -p config svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default</screen></para>
2994
2995 <para>When everything is configured correctly you can start the
2996 VirtualBox web service with the following command:<screen>svcadm enable svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default</screen></para>
2997
2998 <para>For more information about SMF, please refer to the Solaris
2999 documentation.</para>
3000 </sect2>
3001
3002 <sect2 id="vboxwebsrv-osx">
3003 <title>Mac OS X: starting the webservice via launchd</title>
3004
3005 <para>On Mac OS X, launchd is used to start the VirtualBox webservice. An
3006 example configuration file can be found in
3007 <computeroutput>$HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist</computeroutput>.
3008 It can be enabled by changing the
3009 <computeroutput>Disabled</computeroutput> key from
3010 <computeroutput>true</computeroutput> to
3011 <computeroutput>false</computeroutput>. To manually start the
3012 service use the following command: <screen>launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist</screen>
3013 For additional information on how launchd services could be
3014 configured see <literal><ulink
3015 url="http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/BPSystemStartup.html">http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/BPSystemStartup.html</ulink></literal>.</para>
3016 </sect2>
3017 </sect1>
3018
3019 <sect1 id="vboxwatchdog">
3020 <title>VirtualBox Watchdog</title>
3021 <para>Starting with VirtualBox 4.2 the memory ballooning service formerly
3022 known as <computeroutput>VBoxBalloonCtrl</computeroutput> was renamed to
3023 VBoxWatchdog, which now incorporates several host services that are meant
3024 to be run in a server environment.</para>
3025
3026 <para>These services are: <itemizedlist>
3027 <listitem>
3028 <para>Memory ballooning control, which automatically takes care of
3029 a VM's configured memory balloon (see <xref linkend="guestadd-balloon" />
3030 for an introduction to memory ballooning). This especially is useful
3031 for server environments where VMs may dynamically require more or
3032 less memory during runtime.</para>
3033
3034 <para>The service periodically checks a VM's current memory balloon
3035 and its free guest RAM and automatically adjusts the current memory
3036 balloon by inflating or deflating it accordingly. This handling only
3037 applies to running VMs having recent Guest Additions installed.</para>
3038 </listitem>
3039 <listitem>
3040 <para>Host isolation detection, which provides a way to detect whether
3041 the host cannot reach the specific VirtualBox server instance anymore
3042 and take appropriate actions, such as shutting down, saving the
3043 current state or even powering down certain VMs.</para>
3044 </listitem>
3045 </itemizedlist></para>
3046
3047 <para>
3048 All configuration values can be either specified via command line or global
3049 extradata, whereas command line values always have a higher priority when set.
3050 Some of the configuration values also be be specified on a per-VM basis. So
3051 the overall lookup order is: command line, per-VM basis extradata (if available),
3052 global extradata.
3053 </para>
3054
3055 <sect2 id="vboxwatchdog-ballonctrl">
3056 <title>Memory ballooning control</title>
3057 <para>The memory ballooning control inflates and deflates the memory balloon
3058 of VMs based on the VMs free memory and the desired maximum balloon size.</para>
3059
3060 <para>To set up the memory ballooning control the maximum ballooning size a
3061 VM can reach needs to be set. This can be specified via command line with
3062 <screen>--balloon-max &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen>, on a per-VM basis extradata value with
3063 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata &lt;VM-Name&gt; VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonSizeMax &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen>
3064 or using a global extradata value with
3065 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonSizeMax &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen>
3066 <note><para>If no maximum ballooning size is specified by at least one of
3067 the parameters above, no ballooning will be performed at all.</para></note>
3068 </para>
3069
3070 <para>Setting the ballooning increment in MB can be either done via
3071 command line with
3072 <screen>--balloon-inc &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen> or using a global
3073 extradata value with
3074 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonIncrementMB &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen>
3075 Default ballooning increment is 256 MB if not specified.</para>
3076
3077 <para>Same goes with the ballooning decrement: Via command line with
3078 <screen>--balloon-dec &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen> or using a global
3079 extradata value with
3080 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonDecrementMB &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen>
3081 Default ballooning decrement is 128 MB if not specified.</para>
3082
3083 <para>To define the lower limit in MB a balloon can be the command line with
3084 <screen>--balloon-lower-limit &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen> can be used or using a global
3085 extradata value with
3086 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/BalloonCtrl/BalloonLowerLimitMB &lt;Size in MB&gt;</screen>
3087 is available. Default lower limit is 128 if not specified.</para>
3088 </sect2>
3089
3090 <sect2 id="vboxwatchdog-hostisln">
3091 <title>Host isolation detection</title>
3092 <para>To detect whether a host is being isolated, that is, the host cannot
3093 reach the VirtualBox server instance anymore, the host needs to set an
3094 alternating value to a global extradata value within a time period. If
3095 this value is not set within that time period a timeout occurred and the
3096 so-called host isolation response will be performed to the VMs handled.
3097 Which VMs are handled can be controlled by defining VM groups and assigning
3098 VMs to those groups. By default no groups are set, meaning that all VMs
3099 on the server will be handled when no host response is received within
3100 30 seconds.</para>
3101
3102 <para>To set the groups handled by the host isolation detection via
3103 command line:
3104 <screen>--apimon-groups=&lt;string[,stringN]&gt;</screen> or using a global
3105 extradata value with
3106 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/APIMonitor/Groups &lt;string[,stringN]&gt;</screen>
3107 </para>
3108
3109 <para>To set the host isolation timeout via command line:
3110 <screen>--apimon-isln-timeout=&lt;ms&gt;</screen> or using a global
3111 extradata value with
3112 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/APIMonitor/IsolationTimeoutMS &lt;ms&gt;</screen>
3113 </para>
3114
3115 <para>To set the actual host isolation response via command line:
3116 <screen>--apimon-isln-response=&lt;cmd&gt;</screen> or using a global
3117 extradata value with
3118 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Watchdog/APIMonitor/IsolationResponse &lt;cmd&gt;</screen>
3119 The following response commands are available:
3120 <itemizedlist>
3121 <listitem>
3122 <para><computeroutput>none</computeroutput>, which does nothing.</para>
3123 </listitem>
3124 <listitem>
3125 <para><computeroutput>pause</computeroutput>, which pauses the
3126 execution of a VM.</para>
3127 </listitem>
3128 <listitem>
3129 <para><computeroutput>poweroff</computeroutput>, which shuts down
3130 the VM by pressing the virtual power button. The VM will not have
3131 the chance of saving any data or veto the shutdown process.</para>
3132 </listitem>
3133 <listitem>
3134 <para><computeroutput>save</computeroutput>, which saves the current
3135 machine state and powers off the VM afterwards. If saving the machine
3136 state fails the VM will be paused.</para>
3137 </listitem>
3138 <listitem>
3139 <para><computeroutput>shutdown</computeroutput>, which shuts down
3140 the VM in a gentle way by sending an <computeroutput>ACPI</computeroutput>
3141 shutdown event to the VM's operating system. The OS then has the
3142 chance of doing a clean shutdown.</para>
3143 </listitem>
3144 </itemizedlist>
3145 </para>
3146 </sect2>
3147
3148 <sect2 id="vboxwatchdog-moreinfo">
3149 <title>More information</title>
3150 <para>For more advanced options and parameters like verbose logging check
3151 the built-in command line help accessible with
3152 <computeroutput>--help</computeroutput>.</para>
3153 </sect2>
3154
3155 <sect2 id="vboxwatchdog-linux">
3156 <title>Linux: starting the watchdog service via <computeroutput>init</computeroutput></title>
3157
3158 <para>On Linux, the watchdog service can be automatically started during
3159 host boot by adding appropriate parameters to the file
3160 <computeroutput>/etc/default/virtualbox</computeroutput>.
3161 There is one mandatory parameter, <computeroutput>VBOXWATCHDOG_USER</computeroutput>,
3162 which must be set to the user which will later start the VMs. For backward
3163 compatibility you can also specify <computeroutput>VBOXBALLOONCTRL_USER</computeroutput>The
3164 parameters in the table below all start with <computeroutput>VBOXWATCHDOG_</computeroutput>
3165 (<computeroutput>VBOXWATCHDOG_BALLOON_INTERVAL</computeroutput>,
3166 <computeroutput>VBOXWATCHDOG_LOGSIZE</computeroutput> etc., and for
3167 previously existing parameters the
3168 <computeroutput>VBOXBALLOONCTRL_INTERVAL</computeroutput> etc. parameters
3169 can still be used):
3170 <table>
3171 <title>VirtualBox watchdog configuration parameters</title>
3172 <tgroup cols="3">
3173 <thead>
3174 <row>
3175 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Parameter</emphasis></entry>
3176 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Description</emphasis></entry>
3177 <entry><emphasis role="bold">Default</emphasis></entry>
3178 </row>
3179 </thead>
3180 <tbody>
3181 <row>
3182 <entry><computeroutput>USER</computeroutput></entry>
3183 <entry>The user as which the watchdog service runs</entry>
3184 <entry></entry>
3185 </row>
3186 <row>
3187 <entry><computeroutput>ROTATE</computeroutput></entry>
3188 <entry>Number of log files; 0 disables log rotation</entry>
3189 <entry>10</entry>
3190 </row>
3191 <row>
3192 <entry><computeroutput>LOGSIZE</computeroutput></entry>
3193 <entry>Maximum size of a log file in bytes to trigger rotation</entry>
3194 <entry>1MB</entry>
3195 </row>
3196 <row>
3197 <entry><computeroutput>LOGINTERVAL</computeroutput></entry>
3198 <entry>Maximum time interval in seconds to trigger log rotation</entry>
3199 <entry>1 day</entry>
3200 </row>
3201 <row>
3202 <entry><computeroutput>BALLOON_INTERVAL</computeroutput></entry>
3203 <entry>Interval for checking the balloon size (msec)</entry>
3204 <entry>30000</entry>
3205 </row>
3206 <row>
3207 <entry><computeroutput>BALLOON_INCREMENT</computeroutput></entry>
3208 <entry>Balloon size increment (MByte)</entry>
3209 <entry>256</entry>
3210 </row>
3211 <row>
3212 <entry><computeroutput>BALLOON_DECREMENT</computeroutput></entry>
3213 <entry>Balloon size decrement (MByte)</entry>
3214 <entry>128</entry>
3215 </row>
3216 <row>
3217 <entry><computeroutput>BALLOON_LOWERLIMIT</computeroutput></entry>
3218 <entry>Balloon size lower limit (MByte)</entry>
3219 <entry>64</entry>
3220 </row>
3221 <row>
3222 <entry><computeroutput>BALLOON_SAFETYMARGIN</computeroutput></entry>
3223 <entry>Free memory required for decreasing the balloon size (MByte)</entry>
3224 <entry>1024</entry>
3225 </row>
3226 </tbody>
3227 </tgroup>
3228 </table>
3229 </para>
3230 </sect2>
3231
3232 <sect2 id="vboxwatchdog-solaris">
3233 <title>Solaris: starting the watchdog service via SMF</title>
3234
3235 <para>On Solaris hosts, the VirtualBox watchdog service daemon is
3236 integrated into the SMF framework. You can change the parameters, but
3237 don't have to if the defaults already match your needs:<screen>svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default setprop config/balloon_interval=10000
3238svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default setprop config/balloon_safetymargin=134217728</screen></para>
3239
3240 <para>The table in the previous section showing the parameter names and
3241 defaults also applies to Solaris. The parameter names must be changed
3242 to lowercase and a prefix of <computeroutput>config/</computeroutput>
3243 has to be added, e.g. <computeroutput>config/user</computeroutput> or
3244 <computeroutput>config/balloon_safetymargin</computeroutput>. If you made any
3245 change, don't forget to run the following command to put the changes into
3246 effect immediately:<screen>svcadm refresh svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default</screen></para>
3247
3248 <para>If you forget the above command then the previous settings will
3249 be used when enabling the service. Check the current property settings
3250 with:<screen>svcprop -p config svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default</screen></para>
3251
3252 <para>When everything is configured correctly you can start the
3253 VirtualBox watchdog service with the following command:<screen>svcadm enable svc:/application/virtualbox/balloonctrl:default</screen></para>
3254
3255 <para>For more information about SMF, please refer to the Solaris
3256 documentation.</para>
3257 </sect2>
3258
3259 </sect1>
3260
3261 <sect1 id="otherextpacks">
3262 <title>Other extension packs</title>
3263
3264 <para>Starting with VirtualBox 4.2.0 there is another extension pack,
3265 <code>VNC</code>, which is open source and replaces the previous
3266 integration of the VNC remote access protocol. This is experimental code,
3267 and will be initially available in the VirtualBox source code package only.
3268 It is to a large portion code contributed by users, and is not supported
3269 in any way by Oracle.</para>
3270
3271 <para>The keyboard handling is severely limited, and only the US keyboard
3272 layout works. Other keyboard layouts will have at least some keys which
3273 produce the wrong results (often quite surprising effects), and for layouts
3274 which have significant differences to the US keyboard layout it is most
3275 likely unusable.</para>
3276
3277 <para>It is possible to install both the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension
3278 Pack and VNC, but only one VRDE module can be active at any time. The
3279 following command switches to the VNC VRDE module in
3280 VNC:<screen>VBoxManage setproperty vrdeextpack VNC</screen></para>
3281
3282 <para>Configuring the remote access works very similarly to VRDP (see
3283 <xref linkend="vrde" />), with some limitations: VNC does not
3284 support specifying several port numbers, and the authentication is done
3285 differently. VNC can only deal with password authentication, and there
3286 is no option to use password hashes. This leaves no other choice than
3287 having a clear-text password in the VM configuration, which can be set with
3288 the following command:<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --vrdeproperty VNCPassword=secret</screen></para>
3289
3290 <para>The user is responsible for keeping this password secret, and it
3291 should be removed when a VM configuration is passed to another person,
3292 for whatever purpose. Some VNC servers claim to have "encrypted" passwords
3293 in the configuration. This is not true encryption, it is only concealing
3294 the passwords, which is exactly as secure as clear-text passwords.</para>
3295
3296 <para>The following command switches back to VRDP (if
3297 installed):<screen>VBoxManage setproperty vrdeextpack "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack"</screen></para>
3298 </sect1>
3299
3300 <sect1 id="autostart">
3301 <title>Starting virtual machines during system boot</title>
3302
3303 <para>Starting with VirtualBox 4.2.0 it is possible to start VMs automatically during
3304 system boot on Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X for all users. </para>
3305
3306 <sect2 id="autostart-linux">
3307 <title>Linux: starting the autostart service via <computeroutput>init</computeroutput></title>
3308
3309 <para>On Linux, the autostart service is activated by setting two variables in
3310 <computeroutput>/etc/default/virtualbox</computeroutput>.
3311 The first one is <computeroutput>VBOXAUTOSTART_DB</computeroutput> which
3312 contains an absolute path to the autostart database directory.
3313 The directory should have write access for every user who should be able to
3314 start virtual machines automatically. Furthermore the directory should have the
3315 sticky bit set.
3316 The second variable is <computeroutput>VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG</computeroutput>
3317 which points the service to the autostart configuration file which is used
3318 during boot to determine whether to allow individual users to start a VM
3319 automatically and configure startup delays.
3320 The configuration file can be placed in <computeroutput>/etc/vbox</computeroutput>
3321 and contains several options. One is <computeroutput>default_policy</computeroutput>
3322 which controls whether the autostart service allows or denies to start a VM
3323 for users which are not in the exception list.
3324 The exception list starts with <computeroutput>exception_list</computeroutput>
3325 and contains a comma separated list with usernames. Furthermore a separate
3326 startup delay can be configured for every user to avoid overloading the host.
3327 A sample configuration is given below:</para>
3328
3329 <para><screen>
3330# Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
3331default_policy = deny
3332
3333# Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them
3334# will be delayed for 10 seconds
3335bob = {
3336 allow = true
3337 startup_delay = 10
3338}
3339
3340# Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users
3341# if the default policy is set to allow.
3342alice = {
3343 allow = false
3344}
3345 </screen></para>
3346
3347 <para>Every user who wants to enable autostart for individual machines
3348 has to set the path to the autostart database directory with
3349 <screen>VBoxManage setproperty autostartdbpath &lt;Autostart directory&gt;</screen>
3350 </para>
3351 </sect2>
3352
3353 <sect2 id="autostart-solaris">
3354 <title>Solaris: starting the autostart service via SMF</title>
3355
3356 <para>On Solaris hosts, the VirtualBox autostart daemon is
3357 integrated into the SMF framework. To enable it you have to point the service
3358 to an existing configuration file which has the same format as on Linux (see <xref linkend="autostart-linux" />):
3359 <screen>svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/autostart:default setprop config/config=/etc/vbox/autostart.cfg</screen>
3360 </para>
3361
3362 <para>When everything is configured correctly you can start the
3363 VirtualBox autostart service with the following command:<screen>svcadm enable svc:/application/virtualbox/autostart:default</screen></para>
3364
3365 <para>For more information about SMF, please refer to the Solaris
3366 documentation.</para>
3367 </sect2>
3368
3369 <sect2 id="autostart-osx">
3370 <title>Mac OS X: starting the autostart service via launchd</title>
3371
3372 <para>On Mac OS X, launchd is used to start the VirtualBox autostart service. An
3373 example configuration file can be found in
3374 <computeroutput>/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist</computeroutput>.
3375 To enable the service copy the file to <computeroutput>/Library/LaunchDaemons</computeroutput> and change the
3376 <computeroutput>Disabled</computeroutput> key from
3377 <computeroutput>true</computeroutput> to
3378 <computeroutput>false</computeroutput>. Furthermore replace the second parameter
3379 to an existing configuration file which has the same format as on Linux (see <xref linkend="autostart-linux" />).
3380 To manually start the service use the following command:
3381 <screen>launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist</screen>
3382 For additional information on how launchd services could be
3383 configured see <literal><ulink
3384 url="http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/BPSystemStartup.html">http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/BPSystemStartup.html</ulink></literal>.</para>
3385 </sect2>
3386 </sect1>
3387
3388 <sect1 id="vboxexpertstoragemgmt">
3389 <title>VirtualBox expert storage management</title>
3390
3391 <para>In case the snapshot model of VirtualBox is not sufficient
3392 it is possible to enable a special mode which makes it possible to
3393 reconfigure storage attachments while the VM is paused.
3394 The user has to make sure that the disk data stays consistent to the guest
3395 because unlike with hotplugging the guest is not informed about detached
3396 or newly attached media.</para>
3397
3398 <para>The expert storage management mode can be enabled per VM executing:</para>
3399
3400 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal2/SilentReconfigureWhilePaused" 1</screen>
3401
3402 <para>Storage attachments can be reconfigured while the VM is paused afterwards using:</para>
3403 <screen>VBoxManage storageattach ...</screen>
3404 </sect1>
3405
3406 <sect1 id="hostpowertweaks">
3407 <title>Handling of host power management events</title>
3408
3409 <para>Some host power management events are handled by VirtualBox. The
3410 actual behavior depends on the platform:</para>
3411
3412 <para>
3413 <glosslist>
3414 <glossentry>
3415 <glossterm>Host Suspends</glossterm>
3416 <glossdef>
3417 <para>
3418 This event is generated when the host is about to suspend, that is,
3419 the host saves the state to some non-volatile storage and powers off.
3420 </para>
3421 <para>
3422 This event is currently only handled on Windows hosts and Mac OS X hosts.
3423 When this event is generated, VirtualBox will pause all running VMs.
3424 </para>
3425 </glossdef>
3426 </glossentry>
3427 <glossentry>
3428 <glossterm>Host Resumes</glossterm>
3429 <glossdef>
3430 <para>
3431 This event is generated when the host woke up from the suspended
3432 state.
3433 </para>
3434 <para>
3435 This event is currently only handled on Windows hosts and Mac OS X hosts.
3436 When this event is generated, VirtualBox will resume all VMs which
3437 are where paused before.
3438 </para>
3439 </glossdef>
3440 </glossentry>
3441 <glossentry>
3442 <glossterm>Battery Low</glossterm>
3443 <glossdef>
3444 <para>
3445 The battery level reached a critical level (usually less than 5
3446 percent charged).
3447 </para>
3448 <para>
3449 This event is currently only handled on Windows hosts and Mac OS X hosts.
3450 When this event is generated, VirtualBox will save the state and
3451 terminate all VMs in preperation of a potential host powerdown.
3452 </para>
3453 <para>The behavior can be configured. By executing the following command,
3454 no VM is saved:</para>
3455 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 0</screen>
3456 <para>This is a global setting as well as a per-VM setting. The per-VM
3457 value has higher precedence than the global value. The following command
3458 will save the state of all VMs but will not save the state of VM "foo":</para>
3459 <screen>VBoxManage setextradata global "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 1
3460VBoxManage setextradata "foo" "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 0</screen>
3461 <para>The first line is actually not required as by default the savestate
3462 action is performed.</para>
3463 </glossdef>
3464 </glossentry>
3465 </glosslist>
3466 </para>
3467
3468 </sect1>
3469
3470</chapter>
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