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25<!ENTITY % all.entities SYSTEM "all-entities.ent">
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27]>
28<chapter id="guestadditions">
29
30 <title>Guest Additions</title>
31
32 <para>
33 The previous chapter covered getting started with &product-name; and
34 installing operating systems in a virtual machine. For any serious
35 and interactive use, the &product-name; Guest Additions will make
36 your life much easier by providing closer integration between host
37 and guest and improving the interactive performance of guest
38 systems. This chapter describes the Guest Additions in detail.
39 </para>
40
41 <sect1 id="guestadd-intro">
42
43 <title>Introduction to Guest Additions</title>
44
45 <para>
46 As mentioned in <xref linkend="virtintro" />, the Guest Additions
47 are designed to be installed <emphasis>inside</emphasis> a virtual
48 machine after the guest operating system has been installed. They
49 consist of device drivers and system applications that optimize
50 the guest operating system for better performance and usability.
51 See <xref linkend="guestossupport" /> for details on what guest
52 operating systems are fully supported with Guest Additions by
53 &product-name;.
54 </para>
55
56 <para>
57 The &product-name; Guest Additions for all supported guest
58 operating systems are provided as a single CD-ROM image file which
59 is called <filename>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</filename>. This image
60 file is located in the installation directory of &product-name;.
61 To install the Guest Additions for a particular VM, you mount this
62 ISO file in your VM as a virtual CD-ROM and install from there.
63 </para>
64
65 <para>
66 The Guest Additions offer the following features:
67 </para>
68
69 <itemizedlist>
70
71 <listitem>
72 <para>
73 <emphasis role="bold">Mouse pointer integration</emphasis>. To
74 overcome the limitations for mouse support described in
75 <xref linkend="keyb_mouse_normal" />, this feature provides
76 you with seamless mouse support. You will only have one mouse
77 pointer and pressing the Host key is no longer required to
78 <emphasis>free</emphasis> the mouse from being captured by the
79 guest OS. To make this work, a special mouse driver is
80 installed in the guest that communicates with the physical
81 mouse driver on your host and moves the guest mouse pointer
82 accordingly.
83 </para>
84 </listitem>
85
86 <listitem>
87 <para>
88 <emphasis role="bold">Shared folders.</emphasis> These provide
89 an easy way to exchange files between the host and the guest.
90 Much like ordinary Windows network shares, you can tell
91 &product-name; to treat a certain host directory as a shared
92 folder, and &product-name; will make it available to the guest
93 operating system as a network share, irrespective of whether
94 the guest actually has a network. See
95 <xref linkend="sharedfolders" />.
96 </para>
97 </listitem>
98
99 <listitem>
100 <para>
101 <emphasis role="bold">Better video support.</emphasis> While
102 the virtual graphics card which &product-name; emulates for
103 any guest operating system provides all the basic features,
104 the custom video drivers that are installed with the Guest
105 Additions provide you with extra high and non-standard video
106 modes, as well as accelerated video performance.
107 </para>
108
109 <para>
110 In addition, with Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests,
111 you can resize the virtual machine's window if the Guest
112 Additions are installed. The video resolution in the guest
113 will be automatically adjusted, as if you had manually entered
114 an arbitrary resolution in the guest's
115 <emphasis role="bold">Display</emphasis> settings. See
116 <xref linkend="intro-resize-window" />.
117 </para>
118
119 <para>
120 If the Guest Additions are installed, 3D graphics and 2D video
121 for guest applications can be accelerated. See
122 <xref linkend="guestadd-video" />.
123 </para>
124 </listitem>
125
126 <listitem>
127 <para>
128 <emphasis role="bold">Seamless windows.</emphasis> With this
129 feature, the individual windows that are displayed on the
130 desktop of the virtual machine can be mapped on the host's
131 desktop, as if the underlying application was actually running
132 on the host. See <xref linkend="seamlesswindows" />.
133 </para>
134 </listitem>
135
136 <listitem>
137 <para>
138 <emphasis role="bold">Generic host/guest communication
139 channels.</emphasis> The Guest Additions enable you to control
140 and monitor guest execution. The <emphasis>guest
141 properties</emphasis> provide a generic string-based mechanism
142 to exchange data bits between a guest and a host, some of
143 which have special meanings for controlling and monitoring the
144 guest. See <xref linkend="guestadd-guestprops" />.
145 </para>
146
147 <para>
148 Additionally, applications can be started in a guest from the
149 host. See <xref linkend="guestadd-guestcontrol" />.
150 </para>
151 </listitem>
152
153 <listitem>
154 <para>
155 <emphasis role="bold">Time synchronization.</emphasis> With
156 the Guest Additions installed, &product-name; can ensure that
157 the guest's system time is better synchronized with that of
158 the host.
159 </para>
160
161 <para>
162 For various reasons, the time in the guest might run at a
163 slightly different rate than the time on the host. The host
164 could be receiving updates through NTP and its own time might
165 not run linearly. A VM could also be paused, which stops the
166 flow of time in the guest for a shorter or longer period of
167 time. When the wall clock time between the guest and host only
168 differs slightly, the time synchronization service attempts to
169 gradually and smoothly adjust the guest time in small
170 increments to either catch up or lose time. When the
171 difference is too great, for example if a VM paused for hours
172 or restored from saved state, the guest time is changed
173 immediately, without a gradual adjustment.
174 </para>
175
176 <para>
177 The Guest Additions will resynchronize the time regularly. See
178 <xref linkend="changetimesync" /> for how to configure the
179 parameters of the time synchronization mechanism.
180 </para>
181 </listitem>
182
183 <listitem>
184 <para>
185 <emphasis role="bold">Shared clipboard.</emphasis> With the
186 Guest Additions installed, the clipboard of the guest
187 operating system can optionally be shared with your host
188 operating system. See <xref linkend="generalsettings" />.
189 </para>
190 </listitem>
191
192 <listitem>
193 <para>
194 <emphasis role="bold">Automated logins.</emphasis> Also called
195 credentials passing. See <xref linkend="autologon" />.
196 </para>
197 </listitem>
198
199 </itemizedlist>
200
201 <para>
202 Each version of &product-name;, even minor releases, ship with
203 their own version of the Guest Additions. While the interfaces
204 through which the &product-name; core communicates with the Guest
205 Additions are kept stable so that Guest Additions already
206 installed in a VM should continue to work when &product-name; is
207 upgraded on the host, for best results, it is recommended to keep
208 the Guest Additions at the same version.
209 </para>
210
211 <para>
212 The Windows and Linux Guest Additions therefore check
213 automatically whether they have to be updated. If the host is
214 running a newer &product-name; version than the Guest Additions, a
215 notification with further instructions is displayed in the guest.
216 </para>
217
218 <para>
219 To disable this update check for the Guest Additions of a given
220 virtual machine, set the value of its
221 <literal>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/CheckHostVersion</literal> guest
222 property to <literal>0</literal>. See
223 <xref linkend="guestadd-guestprops" />.
224 </para>
225
226 </sect1>
227
228 <sect1 id="guestadd-install">
229
230 <title>Installing and Maintaining Guest Additions</title>
231
232 <para>
233 Guest Additions are available for virtual machines running
234 Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris, or OS/2. The following sections
235 describe the specifics of each variant in detail.
236 </para>
237
238 <sect2 id="additions-windows">
239
240 <title>Guest Additions for Windows</title>
241
242 <para>
243 The &product-name; Windows Guest Additions are designed to be
244 installed in a virtual machine running a Windows operating
245 system. The following versions of Windows guests are supported:
246 </para>
247
248 <itemizedlist>
249
250 <listitem>
251 <para>
252 Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (any service pack)
253 </para>
254 </listitem>
255
256 <listitem>
257 <para>
258 Microsoft Windows 2000 (any service pack)
259 </para>
260 </listitem>
261
262 <listitem>
263 <para>
264 Microsoft Windows XP (any service pack)
265 </para>
266 </listitem>
267
268 <listitem>
269 <para>
270 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (any service pack)
271 </para>
272 </listitem>
273
274 <listitem>
275 <para>
276 Microsoft Windows Server 2008
277 </para>
278 </listitem>
279
280 <listitem>
281 <para>
282 Microsoft Windows Vista (all editions)
283 </para>
284 </listitem>
285
286 <listitem>
287 <para>
288 Microsoft Windows 7 (all editions)
289 </para>
290 </listitem>
291
292 <listitem>
293 <para>
294 Microsoft Windows 8 (all editions)
295 </para>
296 </listitem>
297
298 <listitem>
299 <para>
300 Microsoft Windows 10 RTM build 10240
301 </para>
302 </listitem>
303
304 <listitem>
305 <para>
306 Microsoft Windows Server 2012
307 </para>
308 </listitem>
309
310 </itemizedlist>
311
312 <sect3 id="mountingadditionsiso">
313
314 <title>Installing the Windows Guest Additions</title>
315
316 <para>
317 In the <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu in the
318 virtual machine's menu bar, &product-name; has a menu item
319 <emphasis role="bold">Insert Guest Additions CD
320 Image</emphasis>, which mounts the Guest Additions ISO file
321 inside your virtual machine. A Windows guest should then
322 automatically start the Guest Additions installer, which
323 installs the Guest Additions on your Windows guest.
324 </para>
325
326 <para>
327 For other guest operating systems, or if automatic start of
328 software on a CD is disabled, you need to do a manual start of
329 the installer.
330 </para>
331
332 <note>
333 <para>
334 For the basic Direct3D acceleration to work in a Windows
335 guest, you have to install the WDDM video driver available
336 for Windows Vista or later.
337 </para>
338
339 <para>
340 For Windows 8 and later, only the WDDM Direct3D video driver
341 is available. For basic Direct3D acceleration to work in
342 Windows XP guests, you have to install the Guest Additions
343 in Safe Mode. See <xref linkend="KnownIssues" /> for
344 details.
345 </para>
346 </note>
347
348 <para>
349 If you prefer to mount the Guest Additions manually, you can
350 perform the following steps:
351 </para>
352
353 <orderedlist>
354
355 <listitem>
356 <para>
357 Start the virtual machine in which you have installed
358 Windows.
359 </para>
360 </listitem>
361
362 <listitem>
363 <para>
364 Select <emphasis role="bold">Optical Drives</emphasis>
365 from the <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu in
366 the virtual machine's menu bar and then
367 <emphasis role="bold">Choose/Create a Disk
368 Image</emphasis>. This displays the Virtual Media Manager,
369 described in <xref linkend="virtual-media-manager" />.
370 </para>
371 </listitem>
372
373 <listitem>
374 <para>
375 In the Virtual Media Manager, click
376 <emphasis role="bold">Add</emphasis> and browse your host
377 file system for the
378 <filename>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</filename> file.
379 </para>
380
381 <itemizedlist>
382
383 <listitem>
384 <para>
385 On a Windows host, this file is in the &product-name;
386 installation directory, usually in
387 <filename>C:\Program
388 files\Oracle\VirtualBox</filename>.
389 </para>
390 </listitem>
391
392 <listitem>
393 <para>
394 On macOS hosts, this file is in the application bundle
395 of &product-name;. Right-click on the &product-name;
396 icon in Finder and choose <emphasis role="bold">Show
397 Package Contents</emphasis>. The file is located in
398 the <filename>Contents/MacOS</filename> folder.
399 </para>
400 </listitem>
401
402 <listitem>
403 <para>
404 On a Linux host, this file is in the
405 <filename>additions</filename> folder where you
406 installed &product-name;, usually
407 <filename>/opt/VirtualBox/</filename>.
408 </para>
409 </listitem>
410
411 <listitem>
412 <para>
413 On Oracle Solaris hosts, this file is in the
414 <filename>additions</filename> folder where you
415 installed &product-name;, usually
416 <filename>/opt/VirtualBox</filename>.
417 </para>
418 </listitem>
419
420 </itemizedlist>
421 </listitem>
422
423 <listitem>
424 <para>
425 In the Virtual Media Manager, select the ISO file and
426 click the <emphasis role="bold">Add</emphasis> button.
427 This mounts the ISO file and presents it to your Windows
428 guest as a CD-ROM.
429 </para>
430 </listitem>
431
432 </orderedlist>
433
434 <para>
435 Unless you have the Autostart feature disabled in your Windows
436 guest, Windows will now autostart the &product-name; Guest
437 Additions installation program from the Additions ISO. If the
438 Autostart feature has been turned off, choose
439 <filename>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe</filename> from the CD/DVD
440 drive inside the guest to start the installer.
441 </para>
442
443 <para>
444 The installer will add several device drivers to the Windows
445 driver database and then invoke the hardware detection wizard.
446 </para>
447
448 <para>
449 Depending on your configuration, it might display warnings
450 that the drivers are not digitally signed. You must confirm
451 these in order to continue the installation and properly
452 install the Additions.
453 </para>
454
455 <para>
456 After installation, reboot your guest operating system to
457 activate the Additions.
458 </para>
459
460 </sect3>
461
462 <sect3 id="additions-windows-updating">
463
464 <title>Updating the Windows Guest Additions</title>
465
466 <para>
467 Windows Guest Additions can be updated by running the
468 installation program again. This replaces the previous
469 Additions drivers with updated versions.
470 </para>
471
472 <para>
473 Alternatively, you can also open the Windows Device Manager
474 and select <emphasis role="bold">Update Driver...</emphasis>
475 for the following devices:
476 </para>
477
478 <itemizedlist>
479
480 <listitem>
481 <para>
482 &product-name; Graphics Adapter
483 </para>
484 </listitem>
485
486 <listitem>
487 <para>
488 &product-name; System Device
489 </para>
490 </listitem>
491
492 </itemizedlist>
493
494 <para>
495 For each, choose the option to provide your own driver, click
496 <emphasis role="bold">Have Disk</emphasis> and navigate to the
497 CD-ROM drive with the Guest Additions.
498 </para>
499
500 </sect3>
501
502 <sect3 id="additions-windows-install-unattended">
503
504 <title>Unattended Installation of the Windows Guest Additions</title>
505
506 <para>
507 You can configure unattended installation of the
508 &product-name; Guest Additions when you create a new VM using
509 the <emphasis role="bold">Create Virtual Machine</emphasis>
510 wizard. Select the <emphasis role="bold">Guest
511 Additions</emphasis> check box on the
512 <emphasis role="bold">Unattended Guest OS Install</emphasis>
513 page of the wizard.
514 </para>
515
516 <para>
517 Guest Additions are installed automatically, following
518 completion of the guest OS installation.
519 </para>
520
521 <simplesect id="additions-windows-install-unattended-certs">
522
523 <title>Installing Code Signing Certificates</title>
524
525 <para>
526 To avoid popups when performing an unattended installation
527 of the &product-name; Guest Additions, the code signing
528 certificates used to sign the drivers needs to be installed
529 in the correct certificate stores on the guest operating
530 system. Failure to do this will cause a typical Windows
531 installation to display multiple dialogs asking whether you
532 want to install a particular driver.
533 </para>
534
535 <note>
536 <para>
537 On some legacy Windows versions, such as Windows 2000 and
538 Windows XP, the user intervention popups mentioned above
539 are always displayed, even after importing the Oracle
540 certificates.
541 </para>
542 </note>
543
544 <para>
545 Installing the code signing certificates on a Windows guest
546 can be done automatically. Use the
547 <filename>VBoxCertUtil.exe</filename> utility from the
548 <filename>cert</filename> folder on the Guest Additions
549 installation CD.
550 </para>
551
552 <para>
553 Use the following steps:
554 </para>
555
556 <orderedlist>
557
558 <listitem>
559 <para>
560 Log in as Administrator on the guest.
561 </para>
562 </listitem>
563
564 <listitem>
565 <para>
566 Mount the &product-name; Guest Additions .ISO.
567 </para>
568 </listitem>
569
570 <listitem>
571 <para>
572 Open a command line window on the guest and change to
573 the <filename>cert</filename> folder on the
574 &product-name; Guest Additions CD.
575 </para>
576 </listitem>
577
578 <listitem>
579 <para>
580 Run the following command:
581 </para>
582
583<screen>VBoxCertUtil.exe add-trusted-publisher vbox*.cer --root vbox*.cer</screen>
584
585 <para>
586 This command installs the certificates to the
587 certificate store. When installing the same certificate
588 more than once, an appropriate error will be displayed.
589 </para>
590 </listitem>
591
592 </orderedlist>
593
594 <para>
595 To allow for completely unattended guest installations, you
596 can specify a command line parameter to the install
597 launcher:
598 </para>
599
600<screen>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /S</screen>
601
602 <para>
603 This automatically installs the right files and drivers for
604 the corresponding platform, either 32-bit or 64-bit.
605 </para>
606
607 <note>
608 <para>
609 By default on an unattended installation on a Vista or
610 Windows 7 guest, there will be the XPDM graphics driver
611 installed. This graphics driver does not support Windows
612 Aero / Direct3D on the guest. Instead, the WDDM graphics
613 driver needs to be installed. To select this driver by
614 default, add the command line parameter
615 <literal>/with_wddm</literal> when invoking the Windows
616 Guest Additions installer. This is only required for Vista
617 and Windows 7.
618 </para>
619 </note>
620
621 <note>
622 <para>
623 For Windows Aero to run correctly on a guest, the guest's
624 VRAM size needs to be configured to at least 128 MB.
625 </para>
626 </note>
627
628 <para>
629 For more options regarding unattended guest installations,
630 consult the command line help by using the command:
631 </para>
632
633<screen>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /?</screen>
634
635 </simplesect>
636
637 </sect3>
638
639 <sect3 id="windows-guest-file-extraction">
640
641 <title>Manual File Extraction</title>
642
643 <para>
644 If you would like to install the files and drivers manually,
645 you can extract the files from the Windows Guest Additions
646 setup as follows:
647 </para>
648
649<screen>VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /extract</screen>
650
651 <para>
652 To explicitly extract the Windows Guest Additions for another
653 platform than the current running one, such as 64-bit files on
654 a 32-bit system, you must use the appropriate platform
655 installer. Use
656 <filename>VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe</filename> or
657 <filename>VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe</filename> with the
658 <literal>/extract</literal> parameter.
659 </para>
660
661 </sect3>
662
663 </sect2>
664
665 <sect2 id="additions-linux">
666
667 <title>Guest Additions for Linux</title>
668
669 <para>
670 Like the Windows Guest Additions, the &product-name; Guest
671 Additions for Linux are a set of device drivers and system
672 applications which may be installed in the guest operating
673 system.
674 </para>
675
676 <para>
677 The following Linux distributions are officially supported:
678 </para>
679
680 <itemizedlist>
681
682 <listitem>
683 <para>
684 Oracle Linux as of version 5, including UEK kernels
685 </para>
686 </listitem>
687
688 <listitem>
689 <para>
690 Fedora as of Fedora Core 4
691 </para>
692 </listitem>
693
694 <listitem>
695 <para>
696 Red Hat Enterprise Linux as of version 3
697 </para>
698 </listitem>
699
700 <listitem>
701 <para>
702 SUSE and openSUSE Linux as of version 9
703 </para>
704 </listitem>
705
706 <listitem>
707 <para>
708 Ubuntu as of version 5.10
709 </para>
710 </listitem>
711
712 </itemizedlist>
713
714 <para>
715 Many other distributions are known to work with the Guest
716 Additions.
717 </para>
718
719 <para>
720 The version of the Linux kernel supplied by default in SUSE and
721 openSUSE 10.2, Ubuntu 6.10 (all versions) and Ubuntu 6.06
722 (server edition) contains a bug which can cause it to crash
723 during startup when it is run in a virtual machine. The Guest
724 Additions work in those distributions.
725 </para>
726
727 <para>
728 Note that some Linux distributions already come with all or part
729 of the &product-name; Guest Additions. You may choose to keep
730 the distribution's version of the Guest Additions but these are
731 often not up to date and limited in functionality, so we
732 recommend replacing them with the Guest Additions that come with
733 &product-name;. The &product-name; Linux Guest Additions
734 installer tries to detect an existing installation and replace
735 them but depending on how the distribution integrates the Guest
736 Additions, this may require some manual interaction. It is
737 highly recommended to take a snapshot of the virtual machine
738 before replacing preinstalled Guest Additions.
739 </para>
740
741 <sect3 id="additions-linux-install">
742
743 <title>Installing the Linux Guest Additions</title>
744
745 <para>
746 The &product-name; Guest Additions for Linux are provided on
747 the same virtual CD-ROM file as the Guest Additions for
748 Windows. See <xref linkend="mountingadditionsiso"/>. They also
749 come with an installation program that guides you through the
750 setup process. However, due to the significant differences
751 between Linux distributions, installation may be slightly more
752 complex when compared to Windows.
753 </para>
754
755 <para>
756 Installation generally involves the following steps:
757 </para>
758
759 <orderedlist>
760
761 <listitem>
762 <para>
763 Before installing the Guest Additions, you prepare your
764 guest system for building external kernel modules. This
765 works as described in
766 <xref linkend="externalkernelmodules" />, except that this
767 step must be performed in your Linux
768 <emphasis>guest</emphasis> instead of on a Linux host
769 system.
770 </para>
771
772 <para>
773 If you suspect that something has gone wrong, check that
774 your guest is set up correctly and run the following
775 command as root:
776 </para>
777
778<screen>rcvboxadd setup</screen>
779 </listitem>
780
781 <listitem>
782 <para>
783 Insert the <filename>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</filename> CD
784 file into your Linux guest's virtual CD-ROM drive, as
785 described for a Windows guest in
786 <xref linkend="mountingadditionsiso" />.
787 </para>
788 </listitem>
789
790 <listitem>
791 <para>
792 Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted
793 and run the following command as root:
794 </para>
795
796<screen>sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run</screen>
797 </listitem>
798
799 </orderedlist>
800
801 </sect3>
802
803 <sect3 id="additions-linux-install-unattended">
804
805 <title>Unattended Installation of the Linux Guest Additions</title>
806
807 <para>
808 You can configure unattended installation of the
809 &product-name; Guest Additions when you create a new VM using
810 the <emphasis role="bold">Create Virtual Machine</emphasis>
811 wizard. Select the <emphasis role="bold">Guest
812 Additions</emphasis> check box on the
813 <emphasis role="bold">Unattended Guest OS Install</emphasis>
814 page of the wizard.
815 </para>
816
817 <para>
818 Guest Additions are installed automatically, following
819 completion of the guest OS installation.
820 </para>
821
822 </sect3>
823
824 <sect3 id="additions-linux-graphics-mouse">
825
826 <title>Graphics and Mouse Integration</title>
827
828 <para>
829 In Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, &product-name; graphics
830 and mouse integration goes through the X Window System.
831 &product-name; can use the X.Org variant of the system, or
832 XFree86 version 4.3 which is identical to the first X.Org
833 release. During the installation process, the X.Org display
834 server will be set up to use the graphics and mouse drivers
835 which come with the Guest Additions.
836 </para>
837
838 <para>
839 After installing the Guest Additions into a fresh installation
840 of a supported Linux distribution or Oracle Solaris system,
841 many unsupported systems will work correctly too, the guest's
842 graphics mode will change to fit the size of the
843 &product-name; window on the host when it is resized. You can
844 also ask the guest system to switch to a particular resolution
845 by sending a video mode hint using the
846 <command>VBoxManage</command> tool.
847 </para>
848
849 <para>
850 Multiple guest monitors are supported in guests using the
851 X.Org server version 1.3, which is part of release 7.3 of the
852 X Window System version 11, or a later version. The layout of
853 the guest screens can be adjusted as needed using the tools
854 which come with the guest operating system.
855 </para>
856
857 <para>
858 If you want to understand more about the details of how the
859 X.Org drivers are set up, in particular if you wish to use
860 them in a setting which our installer does not handle
861 correctly, see <xref linkend="guestxorgsetup" />.
862 </para>
863
864 <para>
865 Starting from &product-name; 7, Linux guest screen resize
866 functionality for guests running VMSVGA graphics configuration
867 has been changed. Since then, this functionality consists of a
868 standalone daemon called VBoxDRMClient and its Desktop
869 Environment helper counterpart.
870 </para>
871
872 <para>
873 VBoxDRMClient runs as a root process and is a bridge between
874 the host and the guest's vmwgfx driver. This means that
875 VBoxDRMClient listens to screen resize hints from the host and
876 forwards them to the vmwgfx driver. This enables guest screen
877 resize functionality to be available before the user has
878 performed a graphical login.
879 </para>
880
881 <para>
882 In order to perform Desktop Environment specific actions, such
883 as setting the primary screen in a multimonitor setup, a
884 Desktop Environment helper is used. Once the user has
885 performed a graphical login operation, the helper daemon
886 starts with user session scope and attempts to connect to
887 VBoxDRMClient using an IPC connection. When VBoxDRMClient has
888 received a corresponding command from the host, it is
889 forwarded to the helper daemon over IPC and the action is then
890 performed.
891 </para>
892
893 <para>
894 By default, VBoxDRMClient allows any process to connect to its
895 IPC socket. This can be restricted by using the following
896 steps:
897 </para>
898
899 <orderedlist>
900
901 <listitem>
902 <para>
903 The Guest Additions Linux installer creates a
904 <literal>vboxdrmipc</literal> user group. A corresponding
905 user needs to be added to this group.
906 </para>
907 </listitem>
908
909 <listitem>
910 <para>
911 You must set the <literal>DRMIpcRestricted</literal> guest
912 property, as follows:
913 </para>
914
915<screen>VBoxManage guestproperty set "VM name" /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/DRMIpcRestricted 1 \
916--flags RDONLYGUEST</screen>
917
918 <para>
919 It is important to set only the RDONLYGUEST flag for the
920 property, so that it cannot be changed from inside the
921 guest.
922 </para>
923 </listitem>
924
925 </orderedlist>
926
927 <note>
928 <para>
929 Both steps are required. If one of them is missing, all
930 processes will have access to the IPC socket.
931 </para>
932 </note>
933
934 <para>
935 Restricted mode can be disabled by unsetting the guest
936 property, as follows:
937 </para>
938
939<screen>VBoxManage guestproperty unset "VM name" /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/DRMIpcRestricted</screen>
940
941 </sect3>
942
943 <sect3 id="additions-linux-updating">
944
945 <title>Updating the Linux Guest Additions</title>
946
947 <para>
948 The Guest Additions can simply be updated by going through the
949 installation procedure again with an updated CD-ROM image.
950 This will replace the drivers with updated versions. You
951 should reboot after updating the Guest Additions.
952 </para>
953
954 </sect3>
955
956 <sect3 id="additions-linux-uninstall">
957
958 <title>Uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions</title>
959
960 <para>
961 If you have a version of the Guest Additions installed on your
962 virtual machine and wish to remove it without installing new
963 ones, you can do so by inserting the Guest Additions CD image
964 into the virtual CD-ROM drive as described above. Then run the
965 installer for the current Guest Additions with the
966 <literal>uninstall</literal> parameter from the path that the
967 CD image is mounted on in the guest, as follows:
968 </para>
969
970<screen>sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall</screen>
971
972 <para>
973 While this will normally work without issues, you may need to
974 do some manual cleanup of the guest in some cases, especially
975 of the XFree86Config or xorg.conf file. In particular, if the
976 Additions version installed or the guest operating system were
977 very old, or if you made your own changes to the Guest
978 Additions setup after you installed them.
979 </para>
980
981 <para>
982 You can uninstall the Additions as follows:
983 </para>
984
985<screen>/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-<replaceable>version</replaceable>/uninstall.sh</screen>
986
987 <para>
988 Replace
989 <filename>/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-<replaceable>version</replaceable></filename>
990 with the correct Guest Additions installation directory.
991 </para>
992
993 </sect3>
994
995 </sect2>
996
997 <sect2 id="additions-solaris">
998
999 <title>Guest Additions for Oracle Solaris</title>
1000
1001 <para>
1002 Like the Windows Guest Additions, the &product-name; Guest
1003 Additions for Oracle Solaris take the form of a set of device
1004 drivers and system applications which may be installed in the
1005 guest operating system.
1006 </para>
1007
1008 <para>
1009 The following Oracle Solaris distributions are officially
1010 supported:
1011 </para>
1012
1013 <itemizedlist>
1014
1015 <listitem>
1016 <para>
1017 Oracle Solaris 11, including Oracle Solaris 11 Express
1018 </para>
1019 </listitem>
1020
1021 <listitem>
1022 <para>
1023 Oracle Solaris 10 4/08 and later
1024 </para>
1025 </listitem>
1026
1027 </itemizedlist>
1028
1029 <para>
1030 Other distributions may work if they are based on comparable
1031 software releases.
1032 </para>
1033
1034 <sect3 id="additions-solaris-install">
1035
1036 <title>Installing the Oracle Solaris Guest Additions</title>
1037
1038 <para>
1039 The &product-name; Guest Additions for Oracle Solaris are
1040 provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as the Additions for Windows
1041 and Linux. They come with an installation program that guides
1042 you through the setup process.
1043 </para>
1044
1045 <para>
1046 Installation involves the following steps:
1047 </para>
1048
1049 <orderedlist>
1050
1051 <listitem>
1052 <para>
1053 Mount the <filename>VBoxGuestAdditions.iso</filename> file
1054 as your Oracle Solaris guest's virtual CD-ROM drive,
1055 exactly the same way as described for a Windows guest in
1056 <xref linkend="mountingadditionsiso" />.
1057 </para>
1058
1059 <para>
1060 If the CD-ROM drive on the guest does not get mounted, as
1061 seen with some versions of Oracle Solaris 10, run the
1062 following command as root:
1063 </para>
1064
1065<screen>svcadm restart volfs</screen>
1066 </listitem>
1067
1068 <listitem>
1069 <para>
1070 Change to the directory where your CD-ROM drive is mounted
1071 and run the following command as root:
1072 </para>
1073
1074<screen>pkgadd -G -d ./VBoxSolarisAdditions.pkg</screen>
1075 </listitem>
1076
1077 <listitem>
1078 <para>
1079 Choose <emphasis role="bold">1</emphasis> and confirm
1080 installation of the Guest Additions package. After the
1081 installation is complete, log out and log in to X server
1082 on your guest, to activate the X11 Guest Additions.
1083 </para>
1084 </listitem>
1085
1086 </orderedlist>
1087
1088 </sect3>
1089
1090 <sect3 id="additions-solaris-install-unattended">
1091
1092 <title>Unattended Installation of the Oracle Solaris Guest Additions</title>
1093
1094 <para>
1095 You can configure unattended installation of the
1096 &product-name; Guest Additions when you create a new VM using
1097 the <emphasis role="bold">Create Virtual Machine</emphasis>
1098 wizard. Select the <emphasis role="bold">Guest
1099 Additions</emphasis> check box on the
1100 <emphasis role="bold">Unattended Guest OS Install</emphasis>
1101 page of the wizard.
1102 </para>
1103
1104 <para>
1105 Guest Additions are installed automatically, following
1106 completion of the guest OS installation.
1107 </para>
1108
1109 </sect3>
1110
1111 <sect3 id="additions-solaris-uninstall">
1112
1113 <title>Uninstalling the Oracle Solaris Guest Additions</title>
1114
1115 <para>
1116 The Oracle Solaris Guest Additions can be safely removed by
1117 removing the package from the guest. Open a root terminal
1118 session and run the following command:
1119 </para>
1120
1121<screen>pkgrm SUNWvboxguest</screen>
1122
1123 </sect3>
1124
1125 <sect3 id="additions-solaris-updating">
1126
1127 <title>Updating the Oracle Solaris Guest Additions</title>
1128
1129 <para>
1130 The Guest Additions should be updated by first uninstalling
1131 the existing Guest Additions and then installing the new ones.
1132 Attempting to install new Guest Additions without removing the
1133 existing ones is not possible.
1134 </para>
1135
1136 </sect3>
1137
1138 </sect2>
1139
1140 <sect2 id="additions-os2">
1141
1142 <title>Guest Additions for OS/2</title>
1143
1144 <para>
1145 &product-name; also ships with a set of drivers that improve
1146 running OS/2 in a virtual machine. Due to restrictions of OS/2
1147 itself, this variant of the Guest Additions has a limited
1148 feature set. See <xref linkend="KnownIssues" /> for details.
1149 </para>
1150
1151 <para>
1152 The OS/2 Guest Additions are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as
1153 those for the other platforms. Mount the ISO in OS/2 as
1154 described previously. The OS/2 Guest Additions are located in
1155 the directory <filename>\OS2</filename>.
1156 </para>
1157
1158 <para>
1159 We do not provide an automatic installer at this time. See the
1160 <filename>readme.txt</filename> file in the CD-ROM directory,
1161 which describes how to install the OS/2 Guest Additions
1162 manually.
1163 </para>
1164
1165 </sect2>
1166
1167 </sect1>
1168
1169 <sect1 id="sharedfolders">
1170
1171 <title>Shared Folders</title>
1172
1173 <para>
1174 With the <emphasis>shared folders</emphasis> feature of
1175 &product-name;, you can access files of your host system from
1176 within the guest system. This is similar to how you would use
1177 network shares in Windows networks, except that shared folders do
1178 not require networking, only the Guest Additions. Shared folders
1179 are supported with Windows 2000 or later, Linux, and Oracle
1180 Solaris guests. &product-name; includes experimental support for
1181 Mac OS X and OS/2 guests.
1182 </para>
1183
1184 <para>
1185 Shared folders physically reside on the <emphasis>host</emphasis>
1186 and are then shared with the guest, which uses a special file
1187 system driver in the Guest Additions to talk to the host. For
1188 Windows guests, shared folders are implemented as a pseudo-network
1189 redirector. For Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, the Guest
1190 Additions provide a virtual file system.
1191 </para>
1192
1193 <para>
1194 To share a host folder with a virtual machine in &product-name;,
1195 you must specify the path of the folder and choose a
1196 <emphasis>share name</emphasis> that the guest can use to access
1197 the shared folder. This happens on the host. In the guest you can
1198 then use the share name to connect to it and access files.
1199 </para>
1200
1201 <para>
1202 There are several ways in which shared folders can be set up for a
1203 virtual machine:
1204 </para>
1205
1206 <itemizedlist>
1207
1208 <listitem>
1209 <para>
1210 In the window of a running VM, you select
1211 <emphasis role="bold">Shared Folders</emphasis> from the
1212 <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu, or click on the
1213 folder icon on the status bar in the bottom right corner.
1214 </para>
1215 </listitem>
1216
1217 <listitem>
1218 <para>
1219 If a VM is not currently running, you can configure shared
1220 folders in the virtual machine's
1221 <emphasis role="bold">Settings</emphasis> window.
1222 </para>
1223 </listitem>
1224
1225 <listitem>
1226 <para>
1227 From the command line, you can create shared folders using
1228 <command>VBoxManage</command>, as follows:
1229 </para>
1230
1231<screen>VBoxManage sharedfolder add "VM name" --name "sharename" --hostpath "C:\test"</screen>
1232
1233 <para>
1234 See <xref linkend="vboxmanage-sharedfolder" />.
1235 </para>
1236 </listitem>
1237
1238 </itemizedlist>
1239
1240 <para>
1241 There are two types of shares:
1242 </para>
1243
1244 <itemizedlist>
1245
1246 <listitem>
1247 <para>
1248 Permanent shares, that are saved with the VM settings.
1249 </para>
1250 </listitem>
1251
1252 <listitem>
1253 <para>
1254 Transient shares, that are added at runtime and disappear when
1255 the VM is powered off. These can be created using a check box
1256 in &vbox-mgr;, or by using the <option>--transient</option>
1257 option of the <command>VBoxManage sharedfolder add</command>
1258 command.
1259 </para>
1260 </listitem>
1261
1262 </itemizedlist>
1263
1264 <para>
1265 Shared folders can either be read-write or read-only. This means
1266 that the guest is either allowed to both read and write, or just
1267 read files on the host. By default, shared folders are read-write.
1268 Read-only folders can be created using a check box in the
1269 &vbox-mgr;, or with the <option>--readonly</option> option of the
1270 <command>VBoxManage sharedfolder add</command> command.
1271 </para>
1272
1273 <para>
1274 &product-name; shared folders also support symbolic links, also
1275 called <emphasis>symlinks</emphasis>, under the following
1276 conditions:
1277 </para>
1278
1279 <itemizedlist>
1280
1281 <listitem>
1282 <para>
1283 The host operating system must support symlinks. For example,
1284 a macOS, Linux, or Oracle Solaris host is required.
1285 </para>
1286 </listitem>
1287
1288 <listitem>
1289 <para>
1290 Currently only Linux and Oracle Solaris Guest Additions
1291 support symlinks.
1292 </para>
1293 </listitem>
1294
1295 <listitem>
1296 <para>
1297 For security reasons the guest OS is not allowed to create
1298 symlinks by default. If you trust the guest OS to not abuse
1299 the functionality, you can enable creation of symlinks for a
1300 shared folder as follows:
1301 </para>
1302
1303<screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/<replaceable>sharename</replaceable> 1</screen>
1304 </listitem>
1305
1306 </itemizedlist>
1307
1308 <sect2 id="sf_mount_manual">
1309
1310 <title>Manual Mounting</title>
1311
1312 <para>
1313 You can mount the shared folder from inside a VM, in the same
1314 way as you would mount an ordinary network share:
1315 </para>
1316
1317 <itemizedlist>
1318
1319 <listitem>
1320 <para>
1321 In a Windows guest, shared folders are browseable and
1322 therefore visible in Windows Explorer. To attach the host's
1323 shared folder to your Windows guest, open Windows Explorer
1324 and look for the folder in <emphasis role="bold">My
1325 Networking Places</emphasis>, <emphasis role="bold">Entire
1326 Network</emphasis>, <emphasis role="bold">&product-name;
1327 Shared Folders</emphasis>. By right-clicking on a shared
1328 folder and selecting <emphasis role="bold">Map Network
1329 Drive</emphasis> from the menu that pops up, you can assign
1330 a drive letter to that shared folder.
1331 </para>
1332
1333 <para>
1334 Alternatively, on the Windows command line, use the
1335 following command:
1336 </para>
1337
1338<screen>net use x: \\vboxsvr\sharename</screen>
1339
1340 <para>
1341 While <literal>vboxsvr</literal> is a fixed name, note that
1342 <literal>vboxsrv</literal> would also work, replace
1343 <replaceable>x:</replaceable> with the drive letter that you
1344 want to use for the share, and
1345 <replaceable>sharename</replaceable> with the share name
1346 specified with <command>VBoxManage</command>.
1347 </para>
1348 </listitem>
1349
1350 <listitem>
1351 <para>
1352 In a Linux guest, use the following command:
1353 </para>
1354
1355<screen>mount -t vboxsf [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint</screen>
1356
1357 <para>
1358 To mount a shared folder during boot, add the following
1359 entry to <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>:
1360 </para>
1361
1362<screen>sharename mountpoint vboxsf defaults 0 0</screen>
1363 </listitem>
1364
1365 <listitem>
1366 <para>
1367 In a Oracle Solaris guest, use the following command:
1368 </para>
1369
1370<screen>mount -F vboxfs [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint</screen>
1371
1372 <para>
1373 Replace <replaceable>sharename</replaceable>, use a
1374 lowercase string, with the share name specified with
1375 <command>VBoxManage</command> or &vbox-mgr;. Replace
1376 <replaceable>mountpoint</replaceable> with the path where
1377 you want the share to be mounted on the guest, such as
1378 <filename>/mnt/share</filename>. The usual mount rules
1379 apply. For example, create this directory first if it does
1380 not exist yet.
1381 </para>
1382
1383 <para>
1384 Here is an example of mounting the shared folder for the
1385 user jack on Oracle Solaris:
1386 </para>
1387
1388<screen>$ id
1389uid=5000(jack) gid=1(other)
1390$ mkdir /export/home/jack/mount
1391$ pfexec mount -F vboxfs -o uid=5000,gid=1 jackshare /export/home/jack/mount
1392$ cd ~/mount
1393$ ls
1394sharedfile1.mp3 sharedfile2.txt
1395$</screen>
1396
1397 <para>
1398 Beyond the standard options supplied by the
1399 <command>mount</command> command, the following are
1400 available:
1401 </para>
1402
1403<screen>iocharset CHARSET</screen>
1404
1405 <para>
1406 This option sets the character set used for I/O operations.
1407 Note that on Linux guests, if the
1408 <literal>iocharset</literal> option is not specified, then
1409 the Guest Additions driver will attempt to use the character
1410 set specified by the CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT kernel option. If
1411 this option is not set either, then UTF-8 is used.
1412 </para>
1413
1414<screen>convertcp CHARSET</screen>
1415
1416 <para>
1417 This option specifies the character set used for the shared
1418 folder name. This is UTF-8 by default.
1419 </para>
1420
1421 <para>
1422 The generic mount options, documented in the
1423 <command>mount</command> manual page, apply also. Especially
1424 useful are the options <literal>uid</literal>,
1425 <literal>gid</literal> and <literal>mode</literal>, as they
1426 can allow access by normal users in read/write mode,
1427 depending on the settings, even if root has mounted the
1428 filesystem.
1429 </para>
1430 </listitem>
1431
1432 <listitem>
1433 <para>
1434 In an OS/2 guest, use the <command>VBoxControl</command>
1435 command to manage shared folders. For example:
1436 </para>
1437
1438<screen>VBoxControl sharedfolder use D: MyShareName
1439VBoxControl sharedfolder unuse D:
1440VBoxControl sharedfolder list</screen>
1441
1442 <para>
1443 As with Windows guests, shared folders can also be accessed
1444 via UNC using <filename>\\VBoxSF\</filename>,
1445 <filename>\\VBoxSvr\</filename> or
1446 <filename>\\VBoxSrv\</filename> as the server name and the
1447 shared folder name as <replaceable>sharename</replaceable>.
1448 </para>
1449 </listitem>
1450
1451 </itemizedlist>
1452
1453 </sect2>
1454
1455 <sect2 id="sf_mount_auto">
1456
1457 <title>Automatic Mounting</title>
1458
1459 <para>
1460 &product-name; provides the option to mount shared folders
1461 automatically. When automatic mounting is enabled for a shared
1462 folder, the Guest Additions service will mount it for you
1463 automatically. For Windows or OS/2, a preferred drive letter can
1464 also be specified. For Linux or Oracle Solaris, a mount point
1465 directory can also be specified.
1466 </para>
1467
1468 <para>
1469 If a drive letter or mount point is not specified, or is in use
1470 already, an alternative location is found by the Guest Additions
1471 service. The service searches for an alternative location
1472 depending on the guest OS, as follows:
1473 </para>
1474
1475 <itemizedlist>
1476
1477 <listitem>
1478 <para>
1479 <emphasis role="bold">Windows and OS/2 guests.</emphasis>
1480 Search for a free drive letter, starting at
1481 <filename>Z:</filename>. If all drive letters are assigned,
1482 the folder is not mounted.
1483 </para>
1484 </listitem>
1485
1486 <listitem>
1487 <para>
1488 <emphasis role="bold">Linux and Oracle Solaris
1489 guests.</emphasis> Folders are mounted under the
1490 <filename>/media</filename> directory. The folder name is
1491 normalized (no spaces, slashes or colons) and is prefixed
1492 with <filename>sf_</filename>.
1493 </para>
1494
1495 <para>
1496 For example, if you have a shared folder called
1497 <filename>myfiles</filename>, it will appear as
1498 <filename>/media/sf_myfiles</filename> in the guest.
1499 </para>
1500
1501 <para>
1502 The guest properties
1503 <literal>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir</literal>
1504 and the more generic
1505 <literal>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix</literal>
1506 can be used to override the automatic mount directory and
1507 prefix. See <xref linkend="guestadd-guestprops" />.
1508 </para>
1509 </listitem>
1510
1511 </itemizedlist>
1512
1513 <para>
1514 Access to an automatically mounted shared folder is granted to
1515 everyone in a Windows guest, including the guest user. For Linux
1516 and Oracle Solaris guests, access is restricted to members of
1517 the group <literal>vboxsf</literal> and the
1518 <literal>root</literal> user.
1519 </para>
1520
1521 </sect2>
1522
1523 </sect1>
1524
1525 <sect1 id="guestadd-dnd">
1526
1527 <title>Drag and Drop</title>
1528
1529 <para>
1530 &product-name; enables you to drag and drop content from the host
1531 to the guest, and vice versa. For this to work the latest version
1532 of the Guest Additions must be installed on the guest.
1533 </para>
1534
1535 <para>
1536 Drag and drop transparently allows copying or opening files,
1537 directories, and even certain clipboard formats from one end to
1538 the other. For example, from the host to the guest or from the
1539 guest to the host. You then can perform drag and drop operations
1540 between the host and a VM, as it would be a native drag and drop
1541 operation on the host OS.
1542 </para>
1543
1544 <para>
1545 At the moment drag and drop is implemented for Windows-based and
1546 X-Windows-based systems, both on the host and guest side. As
1547 X-Windows supports many different drag and drop protocols only the
1548 most common one, XDND, is supported for now. Applications using
1549 other protocols, such as Motif or OffiX, will not be recognized by
1550 &product-name;.
1551 </para>
1552
1553 <para>
1554 In the context of using drag and drop, the origin of the data is
1555 called the <emphasis>source</emphasis>. That is, where the actual
1556 data comes from and is specified. The
1557 <emphasis>destination</emphasis> specifies where the data from the
1558 source should go to. Transferring data from the source to the
1559 destination can be done in various ways, such as copying, moving,
1560 or linking.
1561 </para>
1562
1563 <note>
1564 <para>
1565 At the moment only copying of data is supported. Moving or
1566 linking is not yet implemented.
1567 </para>
1568 </note>
1569
1570 <para>
1571 When transferring data from the host to the guest OS, the host in
1572 this case is the source, whereas the guest OS is the destination.
1573 However, when transferring data from the guest OS to the host, the
1574 guest OS this time became the source and the host is the
1575 destination.
1576 </para>
1577
1578 <para>
1579 For security reasons drag and drop can be configured at runtime on
1580 a per-VM basis either using the <emphasis role="bold">Drag and
1581 Drop</emphasis> menu item in the
1582 <emphasis role="bold">Devices</emphasis> menu of the virtual
1583 machine, as shown below, or the <command>VBoxManage</command>
1584 command.
1585 </para>
1586
1587 <figure id="fig-drag-drop-options">
1588 <title>Drag and Drop Menu Options</title>
1589 <mediaobject>
1590 <imageobject>
1591 <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/dnd-modes.png"
1592 width="10cm" />
1593 </imageobject>
1594 </mediaobject>
1595 </figure>
1596
1597 <para>
1598 The following drag and drop modes are available:
1599 </para>
1600
1601 <itemizedlist>
1602
1603 <listitem>
1604 <para>
1605 <emphasis role="bold">Disabled.</emphasis> Disables the drag
1606 and drop feature entirely. This is the default when creating a
1607 new VM.
1608 </para>
1609 </listitem>
1610
1611 <listitem>
1612 <para>
1613 <emphasis role="bold">Host To Guest.</emphasis> Enables drag
1614 and drop operations from the host to the guest only.
1615 </para>
1616 </listitem>
1617
1618 <listitem>
1619 <para>
1620 <emphasis role="bold">Guest To Host.</emphasis> Enables drag
1621 and drop operations from the guest to the host only.
1622 </para>
1623 </listitem>
1624
1625 <listitem>
1626 <para>
1627 <emphasis role="bold">Bidirectional.</emphasis> Enables drag
1628 and drop operations in both directions: from the host to the
1629 guest, and from the guest to the host.
1630 </para>
1631 </listitem>
1632
1633 </itemizedlist>
1634
1635 <note>
1636 <para>
1637 Drag and drop support depends on the frontend being used. At the
1638 moment, only the &vbox-mgr; frontend provides this
1639 functionality.
1640 </para>
1641 </note>
1642
1643 <para>
1644 To use the <command>VBoxManage</command> command to control the
1645 current drag and drop mode, see <xref linkend="vboxmanage" />. The
1646 <command>modifyvm</command> and <command>controlvm</command>
1647 commands enable setting of a VM's current drag and drop mode from
1648 the command line.
1649 </para>
1650
1651 <sect2 id="guestadd-dnd-formats">
1652
1653 <title>Supported Formats</title>
1654
1655 <para>
1656 As &product-name; can run on a variety of host operating systems
1657 and also supports a wide range of guests, certain data formats
1658 must be translated after transfer. This is so that the
1659 destination operating system, which receives the data, is able
1660 to handle them in an appropriate manner.
1661 </para>
1662
1663 <note>
1664 <para>
1665 When dragging files no data conversion is done in any way. For
1666 example, when transferring a file from a Linux guest to a
1667 Windows host the Linux-specific line endings are not converted
1668 to Windows line endings.
1669 </para>
1670 </note>
1671
1672 <para>
1673 The following formats are handled by the &product-name; drag and
1674 drop service:
1675 </para>
1676
1677 <itemizedlist>
1678
1679 <listitem>
1680 <para>
1681 <emphasis role="bold">Plain text:</emphasis> From
1682 applications such as text editors, internet browsers and
1683 terminal windows.
1684 </para>
1685 </listitem>
1686
1687 <listitem>
1688 <para>
1689 <emphasis role="bold">Files:</emphasis> From file managers
1690 such as Windows Explorer, Nautilus, and Finder.
1691 </para>
1692 </listitem>
1693
1694 <listitem>
1695 <para>
1696 <emphasis role="bold">Directories:</emphasis> For
1697 directories, the same formats apply as for files.
1698 </para>
1699 </listitem>
1700
1701 </itemizedlist>
1702
1703 </sect2>
1704
1705 <sect2 id="guestadd-dnd-limitations">
1706
1707 <title>Known Limitations</title>
1708
1709 <para>
1710 The following limitations are known for drag and drop:
1711 </para>
1712
1713 <para>
1714 On Windows hosts, dragging and dropping content between
1715 UAC-elevated (User Account Control) programs and
1716 non-UAC-elevated programs is not allowed. If you start
1717 &product-name; with Administrator privileges then drag and drop
1718 will not work with Windows Explorer, which runs with regular
1719 user privileges by default.
1720 </para>
1721
1722 <para>
1723 On Linux hosts and guests, programs can query for drag and drop
1724 data while the drag operation is still in progress. For example,
1725 on LXDE using the PCManFM file manager. This currently is not
1726 supported. As a workaround, a different file manager, such as
1727 Nautilus, can be used instead.
1728 </para>
1729
1730 </sect2>
1731
1732 </sect1>
1733
1734 <sect1 id="guestadd-video">
1735
1736 <title>Hardware-Accelerated Graphics</title>
1737
1738 <sect2 id="guestadd-3d">
1739
1740 <title>Hardware 3D Acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9)</title>
1741
1742 <para>
1743 The &product-name; Guest Additions contain experimental hardware
1744 3D support for Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests.
1745 </para>
1746
1747 <para>
1748 With this feature, if an application inside your virtual machine
1749 uses 3D features through the OpenGL or Direct3D 8/9 programming
1750 interfaces, instead of emulating them in software, which would
1751 be slow, &product-name; will attempt to use your host's 3D
1752 hardware. This works for all supported host platforms, provided
1753 that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated
1754 3D hardware in the first place.
1755 </para>
1756
1757 <para>
1758 The 3D acceleration feature currently has the following
1759 preconditions:
1760 </para>
1761
1762 <itemizedlist>
1763
1764 <listitem>
1765 <para>
1766 It is only available for certain Windows, Linux, and Oracle
1767 Solaris guests. In particular:
1768 </para>
1769
1770 <itemizedlist>
1771
1772 <listitem>
1773 <para>
1774 3D acceleration with Windows guests requires Windows
1775 2000 or later. Apart from on Windows 2000 guests, both
1776 OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9 are supported on an experimental
1777 basis.
1778 </para>
1779 </listitem>
1780
1781 <listitem>
1782 <para>
1783 OpenGL on Linux requires kernel 2.6.27 or later, as well
1784 as X.org server version 1.5 or later. Ubuntu 10.10 and
1785 Fedora 14 have been tested and confirmed as working.
1786 </para>
1787 </listitem>
1788
1789 <listitem>
1790 <para>
1791 OpenGL on Oracle Solaris guests requires X.org server
1792 version 1.5 or later.
1793 </para>
1794 </listitem>
1795
1796 </itemizedlist>
1797 </listitem>
1798
1799 <listitem>
1800 <para>
1801 The Guest Additions must be installed.
1802 </para>
1803
1804 <note>
1805 <para>
1806 For the basic Direct3D acceleration to work in a Windows
1807 Guest, &product-name; needs to replace Windows system
1808 files in the virtual machine. As a result, the Guest
1809 Additions installation program offers Direct3D
1810 acceleration as an option that must be explicitly enabled.
1811 Also, you must install the Guest Additions in Safe Mode.
1812 This does <emphasis>not</emphasis> apply to the WDDM
1813 Direct3D video driver available for Windows Vista and
1814 later. See <xref linkend="KnownIssues" /> for details.
1815 </para>
1816 </note>
1817 </listitem>
1818
1819 <listitem>
1820 <para>
1821 Because 3D support is still experimental at this time, it is
1822 disabled by default and must be <emphasis>manually
1823 enabled</emphasis> in the VM settings. See
1824 <xref linkend="settings-display" />.
1825 </para>
1826
1827 <note>
1828 <para>
1829 Untrusted guest systems should not be allowed to use the
1830 3D acceleration features of &product-name;, just as
1831 untrusted host software should not be allowed to use 3D
1832 acceleration. Drivers for 3D hardware are generally too
1833 complex to be made properly secure and any software which
1834 is allowed to access them may be able to compromise the
1835 operating system running them. In addition, enabling 3D
1836 acceleration gives the guest direct access to a large body
1837 of additional program code in the &product-name; host
1838 process which it might conceivably be able to use to crash
1839 the virtual machine.
1840 </para>
1841 </note>
1842 </listitem>
1843
1844 </itemizedlist>
1845
1846 <para>
1847 To enable Aero theme support, the &product-name; WDDM video
1848 driver must be installed, which is available with the Guest
1849 Additions installation. The WDDM driver is not installed by
1850 default for Vista and Windows 7 guests and must be
1851 <emphasis>manually selected</emphasis> in the Guest Additions
1852 installer by clicking <emphasis role="bold">No</emphasis> in the
1853 <emphasis role="bold">Would You Like to Install Basic Direct3D
1854 Support</emphasis> dialog displayed when the Direct3D feature is
1855 selected.
1856 </para>
1857
1858 <para>
1859 The Aero theme is not enabled by default on Windows. See your
1860 Windows platform documentation for details of how to enable the
1861 Aero theme.
1862 </para>
1863
1864 <para>
1865 Technically, &product-name; implements 3D acceleration by
1866 installing an additional hardware 3D driver inside the guest
1867 when the Guest Additions are installed. This driver acts as a
1868 hardware 3D driver and reports to the guest operating system
1869 that the virtual hardware is capable of 3D hardware
1870 acceleration. When an application in the guest then requests
1871 hardware acceleration through the OpenGL or Direct3D programming
1872 interfaces, these are sent to the host through a special
1873 communication tunnel implemented by &product-name;. The
1874 <emphasis>host</emphasis> then performs the requested 3D
1875 operation using the host's programming interfaces.
1876 </para>
1877
1878 </sect2>
1879
1880 <sect2 id="guestadd-2d">
1881
1882 <title>Hardware 2D Video Acceleration for Windows Guests</title>
1883
1884 <para>
1885 The &product-name; Guest Additions contain experimental hardware
1886 2D video acceleration support for Windows guests.
1887 </para>
1888
1889 <para>
1890 With this feature, if an application such as a video player
1891 inside your Windows VM uses 2D video overlays to play a movie
1892 clip, then &product-name; will attempt to use your host's video
1893 acceleration hardware instead of performing overlay stretching
1894 and color conversion in software, which would be slow. This
1895 currently works for Windows, Linux and macOS host platforms,
1896 provided that your host operating system can make use of 2D
1897 video acceleration in the first place.
1898 </para>
1899
1900 <para>
1901 Hardware 2D video acceleration currently has the following
1902 preconditions:
1903 </para>
1904
1905 <itemizedlist>
1906
1907 <listitem>
1908 <para>
1909 Only available for Windows guests, running Windows XP or
1910 later.
1911 </para>
1912 </listitem>
1913
1914 <listitem>
1915 <para>
1916 Guest Additions must be installed.
1917 </para>
1918 </listitem>
1919
1920 <listitem>
1921 <para>
1922 Because 2D support is still experimental at this time, it is
1923 disabled by default and must be <emphasis>manually
1924 enabled</emphasis> in the VM settings. See
1925 <xref linkend="settings-display" />.
1926 </para>
1927 </listitem>
1928
1929 </itemizedlist>
1930
1931 <para>
1932 Technically, &product-name; implements this by exposing video
1933 overlay DirectDraw capabilities in the Guest Additions video
1934 driver. The driver sends all overlay commands to the host
1935 through a special communication tunnel implemented by
1936 &product-name;. On the host side, OpenGL is then used to
1937 implement color space transformation and scaling.
1938 </para>
1939
1940 </sect2>
1941
1942 </sect1>
1943
1944 <sect1 id="seamlesswindows">
1945
1946 <title>Seamless Windows</title>
1947
1948 <para>
1949 With the <emphasis>seamless windows</emphasis> feature of
1950 &product-name;, you can have the windows that are displayed within
1951 a virtual machine appear side by side next to the windows of your
1952 host. This feature is supported for the following guest operating
1953 systems, provided that the Guest Additions are installed:
1954 </para>
1955
1956 <itemizedlist>
1957
1958 <listitem>
1959 <para>
1960 Windows guests.
1961 </para>
1962 </listitem>
1963
1964 <listitem>
1965 <para>
1966 Supported Linux or Oracle Solaris guests running the X Window
1967 System.
1968 </para>
1969 </listitem>
1970
1971 </itemizedlist>
1972
1973 <para>
1974 After seamless windows are enabled, &product-name; suppresses the
1975 display of the desktop background of your guest, allowing you to
1976 run the windows of your guest operating system seamlessly next to
1977 the windows of your host.
1978 </para>
1979
1980 <figure id="fig-seamless-windows">
1981 <title>Seamless Windows on a Host Desktop</title>
1982 <mediaobject>
1983 <imageobject>
1984 <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/seamless.png" width="14cm" />
1985 </imageobject>
1986 </mediaobject>
1987 </figure>
1988
1989 <para>
1990 To enable seamless mode, after starting the virtual machine, press
1991 the <emphasis role="bold">Host key + L</emphasis>. The Host key is
1992 normally the right control key. This will enlarge the size of the
1993 VM's display to the size of your host screen and mask out the
1994 guest operating system's background. To disable seamless windows
1995 and go back to the normal VM display, press the Host key + L
1996 again.
1997 </para>
1998
1999 </sect1>
2000
2001 <sect1 id="guestadd-guestprops">
2002
2003 <title>Guest Properties</title>
2004
2005 <para>
2006 &product-name; enables requests of some properties from a running
2007 guest, provided that the &product-name; Guest Additions are
2008 installed and the VM is running. This provides the following
2009 advantages:
2010 </para>
2011
2012 <itemizedlist>
2013
2014 <listitem>
2015 <para>
2016 A number of predefined VM characteristics are automatically
2017 maintained by &product-name; and can be retrieved on the host.
2018 For example, to monitor VM performance and statistics.
2019 </para>
2020 </listitem>
2021
2022 <listitem>
2023 <para>
2024 Arbitrary string data can be exchanged between guest and host.
2025 This works in both directions.
2026 </para>
2027 </listitem>
2028
2029 </itemizedlist>
2030
2031 <para>
2032 To accomplish this, &product-name; establishes a private
2033 communication channel between the &product-name; Guest Additions
2034 and the host, and software on both sides can use this channel to
2035 exchange string data for arbitrary purposes. Guest properties are
2036 simply string keys to which a value is attached. They can be set,
2037 or written to, by either the host and the guest. They can also be
2038 read from both sides.
2039 </para>
2040
2041 <para>
2042 In addition to establishing the general mechanism of reading and
2043 writing values, a set of predefined guest properties is
2044 automatically maintained by the &product-name; Guest Additions to
2045 allow for retrieving interesting guest data such as the guest's
2046 exact operating system and service pack level, the installed
2047 version of the Guest Additions, users that are currently logged
2048 into the guest OS, network statistics and more. These predefined
2049 properties are all prefixed with <literal>/VirtualBox/</literal>
2050 and organized into a hierarchical tree of keys.
2051 </para>
2052
2053 <para>
2054 Some of this runtime information is shown when you select
2055 <emphasis role="bold">Session Information Dialog</emphasis> from a
2056 virtual machine's <emphasis role="bold">Machine</emphasis> menu.
2057 </para>
2058
2059 <para>
2060 A more flexible way to use this channel is with the
2061 <command>VBoxManage guestproperty</command> command. See
2062 <xref linkend="vboxmanage-guestproperty" />. For example, to have
2063 <emphasis>all</emphasis> the available guest properties for a
2064 given running VM listed with their respective values, use this
2065 command:
2066 </para>
2067
2068<screen>$ VBoxManage guestproperty enumerate "Windows Vista III"
2069VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>
2070Copyright (C) 2005-2022 Oracle and/or its affiliates
2071
2072Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product, value: Windows Vista Business Edition,
2073 timestamp: 1229098278843087000, flags:
2074Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Release, value: 6.0.6001,
2075 timestamp: 1229098278950553000, flags:
2076Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/ServicePack, value: 1,
2077 timestamp: 1229098279122627000, flags:
2078Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/InstallDir,
2079 value: C:/Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox
2080 Guest Additions, timestamp: 1229098279269739000, flags:
2081Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Revision, value: 40720,
2082 timestamp: 1229098279345664000, flags:
2083Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Version, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>,
2084 timestamp: 1229098279479515000, flags:
2085Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxControl.exe, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2086 timestamp: 1229098279651731000, flags:
2087Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxHook.dll, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2088 timestamp: 1229098279804835000, flags:
2089Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxDisp.dll, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2090 timestamp: 1229098279880611000, flags:
2091Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMRXNP.dll, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2092 timestamp: 1229098279882618000, flags:
2093Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxService.exe, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2094 timestamp: 1229098279883195000, flags:
2095Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxTray.exe, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2096 timestamp: 1229098279885027000, flags:
2097Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxGuest.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2098 timestamp: 1229098279886838000, flags:
2099Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxMouse.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2100 timestamp: 1229098279890600000, flags:
2101Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxSF.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2102 timestamp: 1229098279893056000, flags:
2103Name: /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/Components/VBoxVideo.sys, value: <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>r40720,
2104 timestamp: 1229098279895767000, flags:
2105Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsers, value: 1,
2106 timestamp: 1229099826317660000, flags:
2107Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/NoLoggedInUsers, value: false,
2108 timestamp: 1229098455580553000, flags:
2109Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/Count, value: 1,
2110 timestamp: 1229099826299785000, flags:
2111Name: /VirtualBox/HostInfo/GUI/LanguageID, value: C,
2112 timestamp: 1229098151272771000, flags:
2113Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP, value: 192.168.2.102,
2114 timestamp: 1229099826300088000, flags:
2115Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Broadcast, value: 255.255.255.255,
2116 timestamp: 1229099826300220000, flags:
2117Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/Netmask, value: 255.255.255.0,
2118 timestamp: 1229099826300350000, flags:
2119Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/Status, value: Up,
2120 timestamp: 1229099826300524000, flags:
2121Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/LoggedInUsersList, value: username,
2122 timestamp: 1229099826317386000, flags:</screen>
2123
2124 <para>
2125 To query the value of a single property, use the
2126 <command>get</command> subcommand as follows:
2127 </para>
2128
2129<screen>$ VBoxManage guestproperty get "Windows Vista III" "/VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Product"
2130VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>
2131Copyright (C) 2005-2022 Oracle and/or its affiliates
2132
2133Value: Windows Vista Business Edition</screen>
2134
2135 <para>
2136 To add or change guest properties from the guest, use the tool
2137 <command>VBoxControl</command>. This tool is included in the Guest
2138 Additions. When started from a Linux guest, this tool requires
2139 root privileges for security reasons.
2140 </para>
2141
2142<screen>$ sudo VBoxControl guestproperty enumerate
2143VirtualBox Guest Additions Command Line Management Interface Version <replaceable>version-number</replaceable>
2144Copyright (C) 2005-2022 Oracle and/or its affiliates
2145
2146Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Release, value: 2.6.28-18-generic,
2147 timestamp: 1265813265835667000, flags: &lt;NULL&gt;
2148Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/OS/Version, value: #59-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 28 01:23:03 UTC 2010,
2149 timestamp: 1265813265836305000, flags: &lt;NULL&gt;
2150 ...</screen>
2151
2152 <para>
2153 For more complex needs, you can use the &product-name; programming
2154 interfaces. See <xref linkend="VirtualBoxAPI" />.
2155 </para>
2156
2157 <sect2 id="guestadd-guestprops-waits">
2158
2159 <title>Using Guest Properties to Wait on VM Events</title>
2160
2161 <para>
2162 The properties <literal>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVer</literal>,
2163 <literal>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVerExt</literal> or
2164 <literal>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxRev</literal> can be waited on
2165 to detect that the VM state was restored from saved state or
2166 snapshot:
2167 </para>
2168
2169<screen>$ VBoxControl guestproperty wait /VirtualBox/HostInfo/VBoxVer</screen>
2170
2171 <para>
2172 Similarly the
2173 <literal>/VirtualBox/HostInfo/ResumeCounter</literal> can be
2174 used to detect that a VM was resumed from the paused state or
2175 saved state.
2176 </para>
2177
2178 </sect2>
2179
2180 </sect1>
2181
2182 <sect1 id="guestadd-gc-file-manager">
2183
2184 <title>Guest Control File Manager</title>
2185
2186 <para>
2187 The Guest Control File Manager is a feature of the Guest Additions
2188 that enables easy copying and moving of files between a guest and
2189 the host system. Other file management operations provide support
2190 to create new folders and to rename or delete files.
2191 </para>
2192
2193 <para>
2194 This feature is useful when the VM window of a guest is not
2195 visible. For example, when the guest is running in headless mode.
2196 </para>
2197
2198 <note>
2199 <para>
2200 To use the Guest Control File Manager, the guest must be
2201 running. For powered-off guests, it is disabled automatically.
2202 </para>
2203 </note>
2204
2205 <figure id="fig-guest-control-fm">
2206 <title>Guest Control File Manager</title>
2207 <mediaobject>
2208 <imageobject>
2209 <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/guest-fm.png"
2210 width="12cm" />
2211 </imageobject>
2212 </mediaobject>
2213
2214 </figure>
2215
2216 <para>
2217 The Guest Control File Manager works by mounting the host file
2218 system. Guest users must authenticate and create a guest session
2219 before they can transfer files.
2220 </para>
2221
2222 <sect2 id="guestadd-gc-file-manager-using">
2223
2224 <title>Using the Guest Control File Manager</title>
2225
2226 <para>
2227 The following steps describe how to use the Guest Control File
2228 Manager.
2229 </para>
2230
2231 <orderedlist>
2232
2233 <listitem>
2234 <para>
2235 Open the Guest Control File Manager. Do either of the
2236 following:
2237 </para>
2238
2239 <itemizedlist>
2240
2241 <listitem>
2242 <para>
2243 In the guest VM, select
2244 <emphasis role="bold">Machine</emphasis>,
2245 <emphasis role="bold">File Manager</emphasis>.
2246 </para>
2247 </listitem>
2248
2249 <listitem>
2250 <para>
2251 In &vbox-mgr;, click on the machine name. Click
2252 <emphasis role="bold">File Manager</emphasis> in the
2253 machine tools menu for the VM.
2254 </para>
2255 </listitem>
2256
2257 </itemizedlist>
2258
2259 <para>
2260 The left pane shows the files on the host system.
2261 </para>
2262 </listitem>
2263
2264 <listitem>
2265 <para>
2266 Create a guest session.
2267 </para>
2268
2269 <para>
2270 At the bottom of the Guest Control File Manager, enter
2271 authentication credentials for a user on the guest system.
2272 </para>
2273
2274 <para>
2275 Click <emphasis role="bold">Create Session</emphasis>.
2276 </para>
2277
2278 <para>
2279 The contents of the guest VM file system appears in the
2280 right pane of the Guest Control File Manager.
2281 </para>
2282 </listitem>
2283
2284 <listitem>
2285 <para>
2286 Transfer files between the guest and the host system by
2287 using the move and copy file transfer icons.
2288 </para>
2289
2290 <para>
2291 You can copy and move files from the guest to the host
2292 system or from the host system to the guest.
2293 </para>
2294 </listitem>
2295
2296 <listitem>
2297 <para>
2298 Close the Guest Control File Manager.
2299 </para>
2300
2301 <para>
2302 Click <emphasis role="bold">Close</emphasis> to end the
2303 guest session.
2304 </para>
2305 </listitem>
2306
2307 </orderedlist>
2308
2309 </sect2>
2310
2311 </sect1>
2312
2313 <sect1 id="guestadd-guestcontrol">
2314
2315 <title>Guest Control of Applications</title>
2316
2317 <para>
2318 The Guest Additions enable starting of applications inside a guest
2319 VM from the host system. This feature can be used to automate
2320 deployment of software within the guest.
2321 </para>
2322
2323 <para>
2324 For this to work, the application needs to be installed on the
2325 guest. No additional software needs to be installed on the host.
2326 Additionally, text mode output to stdout and stderr can be shown
2327 on the host for further processing. There are options to specify
2328 user credentials and a timeout value, in milliseconds, to limit
2329 the time the application is able to run.
2330 </para>
2331
2332 <para>
2333 The Guest Additions for Windows allow for automatic updating. This
2334 applies for already installed Guest Additions versions. Also,
2335 copying files from host to the guest as well as remotely creating
2336 guest directories is available.
2337 </para>
2338
2339 <para>
2340 To use these features, use the &product-name; command line. See
2341 <xref linkend="vboxmanage-guestcontrol" />.
2342 </para>
2343
2344 </sect1>
2345
2346 <sect1 id="guestadd-memory-usage">
2347
2348 <title>Memory Overcommitment</title>
2349
2350 <para>
2351 In server environments with many VMs, the Guest Additions can be
2352 used to share physical host memory between several VMs. This
2353 reduces the total amount of memory in use by the VMs. If memory
2354 usage is the limiting factor and CPU resources are still
2355 available, this can help with running more VMs on each host.
2356 </para>
2357
2358 <sect2 id="guestadd-balloon">
2359
2360 <title>Memory Ballooning</title>
2361
2362 <para>
2363 The Guest Additions can change the amount of host memory that a
2364 VM uses, while the machine is running. Because of how this is
2365 implemented, this feature is called <emphasis>memory
2366 ballooning</emphasis>.
2367 </para>
2368
2369 <note>
2370 <itemizedlist>
2371
2372 <listitem>
2373 <para>
2374 &product-name; supports memory ballooning only on 64-bit
2375 hosts. It is not supported on macOS hosts.
2376 </para>
2377 </listitem>
2378
2379 <listitem>
2380 <para>
2381 Memory ballooning does not work well with large pages
2382 enabled. To turn off large pages support for a VM, run
2383 <command>VBoxManage modifyvm
2384 <replaceable>vmname</replaceable> --large-pages
2385 off</command>
2386 </para>
2387 </listitem>
2388
2389 </itemizedlist>
2390 </note>
2391
2392 <para>
2393 Normally, to change the amount of memory allocated to a virtual
2394 machine, you have to shut down the virtual machine entirely and
2395 modify its settings. With memory ballooning, memory that was
2396 allocated for a virtual machine can be given to another virtual
2397 machine without having to shut the machine down.
2398 </para>
2399
2400 <para>
2401 When memory ballooning is requested, the &product-name; Guest
2402 Additions, which run inside the guest, allocate physical memory
2403 from the guest operating system on the kernel level and lock
2404 this memory down in the guest. This ensures that the guest will
2405 not use that memory any longer. No guest applications can
2406 allocate it, and the guest kernel will not use it either.
2407 &product-name; can then reuse this memory and give it to another
2408 virtual machine.
2409 </para>
2410
2411 <para>
2412 The memory made available through the ballooning mechanism is
2413 only available for reuse by &product-name;. It is
2414 <emphasis>not</emphasis> returned as free memory to the host.
2415 Requesting balloon memory from a running guest will therefore
2416 not increase the amount of free, unallocated memory on the host.
2417 Effectively, memory ballooning is therefore a memory
2418 overcommitment mechanism for multiple virtual machines while
2419 they are running. This can be useful to temporarily start
2420 another machine, or in more complicated environments, for
2421 sophisticated memory management of many virtual machines that
2422 may be running in parallel depending on how memory is used by
2423 the guests.
2424 </para>
2425
2426 <para>
2427 At this time, memory ballooning is only supported through
2428 <command>VBoxManage</command>. Use the following command to
2429 increase or decrease the size of the memory balloon within a
2430 running virtual machine that has Guest Additions installed:
2431 </para>
2432
2433<screen>VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" guestmemoryballoon n</screen>
2434
2435 <para>
2436 where <replaceable>VM name</replaceable> is the name or UUID of
2437 the virtual machine in question and <replaceable>n</replaceable>
2438 is the amount of memory to allocate from the guest in megabytes.
2439 See <xref
2440 linkend="vboxmanage-controlvm" />.
2441 </para>
2442
2443 <para>
2444 You can also set a default balloon that will automatically be
2445 requested from the VM every time after it has started up with
2446 the following command:
2447 </para>
2448
2449<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --guest-memory-balloon n</screen>
2450
2451 <para>
2452 By default, no balloon memory is allocated. This is a VM
2453 setting, like other <command>modifyvm</command> settings, and
2454 therefore can only be set while the machine is shut down. See
2455 <xref
2456 linkend="vboxmanage-modifyvm" />.
2457 </para>
2458
2459 </sect2>
2460
2461 <sect2 id="guestadd-pagefusion">
2462
2463 <title>Page Fusion</title>
2464
2465 <para>
2466 Whereas memory ballooning simply reduces the amount of RAM that
2467 is available to a VM, Page Fusion works differently. It avoids
2468 memory duplication between several similar running VMs.
2469 </para>
2470
2471 <para>
2472 In a server environment running several similar VMs on the same
2473 host, lots of memory pages are identical. For example, if the
2474 VMs are using identical operating systems. &product-name;'s Page
2475 Fusion technology can efficiently identify these identical
2476 memory pages and share them between multiple VMs.
2477 </para>
2478
2479 <note>
2480 <para>
2481 &product-name; supports Page Fusion only on 64-bit hosts, and
2482 it is not supported on macOS hosts. Page Fusion currently
2483 works only with Windows 2000 and later guests.
2484 </para>
2485 </note>
2486
2487 <para>
2488 The more similar the VMs on a given host are, the more
2489 efficiently Page Fusion can reduce the amount of host memory
2490 that is in use. It therefore works best if all VMs on a host run
2491 identical operating systems. Instead of having a complete copy
2492 of each operating system in each VM, Page Fusion identifies the
2493 identical memory pages in use by these operating systems and
2494 eliminates the duplicates, sharing host memory between several
2495 machines. This is called <emphasis>deduplication</emphasis>. If
2496 a VM tries to modify a page that has been shared with other VMs,
2497 a new page is allocated again for that VM with a copy of the
2498 shared page. This is called <emphasis>copy on write</emphasis>.
2499 All this is fully transparent to the virtual machine.
2500 </para>
2501
2502 <para>
2503 You may be familiar with this kind of memory overcommitment from
2504 other hypervisor products, which call this feature
2505 <emphasis>page sharing</emphasis> or <emphasis>same page
2506 merging</emphasis>. However, Page Fusion differs significantly
2507 from those other solutions, whose approaches have several
2508 drawbacks:
2509 </para>
2510
2511 <itemizedlist>
2512
2513 <listitem>
2514 <para>
2515 Traditional hypervisors scan <emphasis>all</emphasis> guest
2516 memory and compute checksums, also called hashes, for every
2517 single memory page. Then, they look for pages with identical
2518 hashes and compare the entire content of those pages. If two
2519 pages produce the same hash, it is very likely that the
2520 pages are identical in content. This process can take rather
2521 long, especially if the system is not idling. As a result,
2522 the additional memory only becomes available after a
2523 significant amount of time, such as hours or sometimes days.
2524 Even worse, this kind of page sharing algorithm generally
2525 consumes significant CPU resources and increases the
2526 virtualization overhead by 10 to 20%.
2527 </para>
2528
2529 <para>
2530 Page Fusion in &product-name; uses logic in the
2531 &product-name; Guest Additions to quickly identify memory
2532 cells that are most likely identical across VMs. It can
2533 therefore achieve most of the possible savings of page
2534 sharing almost immediately and with almost no overhead.
2535 </para>
2536 </listitem>
2537
2538 <listitem>
2539 <para>
2540 Page Fusion is also much less likely to be confused by
2541 identical memory that it will eliminate, just to learn
2542 seconds later that the memory will now change and having to
2543 perform a highly expensive and often service-disrupting
2544 reallocation.
2545 </para>
2546 </listitem>
2547
2548 </itemizedlist>
2549
2550 <para>
2551 At this time, Page Fusion can only be controlled with
2552 <command>VBoxManage</command>, and only while a VM is shut down.
2553 To enable Page Fusion for a VM, use the following command:
2554 </para>
2555
2556<screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --page-fusion on</screen>
2557
2558 <para>
2559 You can observe Page Fusion operation using some metrics.
2560 <literal>RAM/VMM/Shared</literal> shows the total amount of
2561 fused pages, whereas the per-VM metric
2562 <literal>Guest/RAM/Usage/Shared</literal> will return the amount
2563 of fused memory for a given VM. See
2564 <xref linkend="vboxmanage-metrics" /> for information on how to
2565 query metrics.
2566 </para>
2567
2568 <note>
2569 <para>
2570 Enabling Page Fusion might indirectly increase the chances for
2571 malicious guests to successfully attack other VMs running on
2572 the same host. See <xref linkend="pot-insecure"/>.
2573 </para>
2574 </note>
2575
2576 </sect2>
2577
2578 </sect1>
2579
2580 <sect1 id="guestadd-resizing">
2581
2582 <title>Controlling Virtual Monitor Topology</title>
2583
2584 <sect2 id="guestadd-resizing-linux">
2585
2586 <title>X11/Wayland Desktop Environments</title>
2587
2588 <para>
2589 The Guest Additions provide services for controlling the guest
2590 system's monitor topology. Monitor topology means the resolution
2591 of each virtual monitor and its state (disabled/enabled). The
2592 resolution of a virtual monitor can be modified from the host
2593 side either by resizing the window that hosts the virtual
2594 monitor, by using the <emphasis role="bold">View</emphasis> menu
2595 or the <command>VBoxManage controlvm
2596 <replaceable>vmname</replaceable> setscreenlayout</command>
2597 command. On guest operating systems with X11/Wayland desktops
2598 this is put into effect by either of the following two services:
2599 </para>
2600
2601<screen>
2602 VBoxClient --vmsvga
2603 VBoxDRMClient
2604 </screen>
2605
2606 <para>
2607 The following are some details about guest screen resolution
2608 control functionality:
2609 </para>
2610
2611 <itemizedlist>
2612
2613 <listitem>
2614 <para>
2615 On X11/Wayland desktops the resizing service is started
2616 during desktop session initialization, that is desktop
2617 login. On X11 desktops <code>VBoxClient --vmsvga</code>
2618 handles screen topology through the RandR extension. On
2619 Wayland clients <code>VBoxDRMClient</code> is used. The
2620 decision is made automatically at each desktop session
2621 start.
2622 </para>
2623 </listitem>
2624
2625 <listitem>
2626 <para>
2627 On 32-bit guest operating systems
2628 <command>VBoxDRMClient</command> is always used, in order to
2629 work around bugs.
2630 </para>
2631 </listitem>
2632
2633 <listitem>
2634 <para>
2635 Since the monitor topology control services are initialized
2636 during the desktop session start, it is impossible to
2637 control the monitor resolution of display managers such as
2638 GDM or LightDM. This default behavior can be changed by
2639 setting the guest property
2640 <literal>/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/DRMResize</literal> of the
2641 virtual machine to any value. See
2642 <xref linkend="guestadd-guestprops" /> for details of how to
2643 update guest properties. When this guest property is set
2644 then <command>VBoxDRMClient</command> is started during the
2645 guest OS boot and stays active all the time, for both the
2646 display manager login screen and the desktop session.
2647 </para>
2648 </listitem>
2649
2650 </itemizedlist>
2651
2652 <sect3 id="guestadd-resizing-linux-limitations">
2653
2654 <title>Known Limitations</title>
2655
2656 <para>
2657 <command>VBoxDRMClient</command> is not able to handle
2658 arbitrary guest monitor topologies. Specifically, disabling a
2659 guest monitor that is not the last one invalidates the monitor
2660 topology due to limitations in the
2661 <literal>vmwgfx.ko</literal> Linux kernel module. For example,
2662 when the guest is configured to have four monitors it is not
2663 recommended to disable the second or third monitor.
2664 </para>
2665
2666 </sect3>
2667
2668 </sect2>
2669
2670 </sect1>
2671
2672</chapter>
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