7 ms·

Oracle VM VirtualBox 5.2 Is Now Available

68 points by nikolay 9y ago

nikolay 9y ago
Notable enhancements in this release: - VM export to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic (OCI Classic) format - Automatic, unattended guest OS installation for Oracle VM VirtualBox Virtual Machines - Improved Virtual Machine Tools, including a new dynamic interface to manage Virtual Machine configuration and snapshot capabilities - New Global Tools handling * Virtual Media Manager manages media attributes like size, location, type and description * Host Network Manager simplifies managing corresponding networks and their attributes - GUI accessibility * New GUI icons for VirtualBox on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris and Mac OS X) * Enhanced Virtual Machine Selector * Extended audio settings, with the option to enable/disable audio input/output * Snapshot Pane updates allow easier management of snapshot attributes, like name and description - Audio * Device enumeration support for audio backends (optional) * Support for host device callbacks (optional) and further enhancements * HDA emulation now uses asynchronous data processing in separate threads - Storage * Support for CUE/BIN images as CD/DVD media including multiple tracks * Support for the controller memory buffer feature for NVMe
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- torstenvl 9y ago
  Just FYI, when you post content like that, it is completely unreadable.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    How? It's formatted monospaced text, its perfectly readable to me.
    - finnh 9y ago
      On my iphone, at least, the monospace section cuts off after ~20 characters and you have to drag back-and-forth to horizontally scroll the rest into view. Landscape mode helps, but not much.
    - croddin 9y ago
      It doesn’t wrap on mobile and you have to scroll horizontally to read it all.
      - mrweasel 9y ago
        Nor does it wrap in Firefox, so pretty annoying on desktops as well. Unless you're using a large monitor.
    - torstenvl 9y ago
      It's fixed width at a tiny fraction of the screen width. Reading each line requires manually scrolling from start to end of the line, and then back to the beginning, seeing maybe 2-3 words at a time.
    - jannes 9y ago
      https://i.imgur.com/X3FcvQX.png https://i.imgur.com/X3FcvQX.png
  - alberth 9y ago
    This is a tiny CSS fix to simply remove the "width" attribute on code and pre. I wish someone from HN would fix this.
    - yupyup 9y ago
      If only this were a website for technical people...
  - nikolay 9y ago
    I agree, but that's the only option for posting something structured. I wish HN would give up and implement GitHub Flavored Markdown and allow us to post code snippets, nested lists, etc. Sorry, I do extra effort to convert HTML into comments - maybe I should write a tool instead. I try to always post a comment with release notes and not just an outbound link. It would be great if HN implements https://changelogs.md/ https://changelogs.md/ and gives an open to see the changelog without leaving the site.
  - rosstex 9y ago
    (on mobile)
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Here's the problem: @media only screen and (min-width : 390px) and (max-width : 509px) { .comment { max-width: 350px; overflow: auto } pre { max-width: 260px; } } @media only screen and (min-width : 510px) and (max-width : 599px) { .comment { max-width: 460px; overflow: auto } pre { max-width: 340px; } } @media only screen and (min-width : 600px) and (max-width : 689px) { .comment { max-width: 540px; overflow: auto } pre { max-width: 400px; } } They are putting max widths on child elements instead of letting the parent control things. It's foolishness. But then, if you look at the html hacker news generates, it'll put you off your lunch.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- avtar 9y ago
  Some movement on addressing VirtualBox Shared Folders performance issues would have been really nice to see. Has anyone been able to make it perform well for filesystem intensive (npm install, docker builds, etc.) tasks? https://www.google.ca/search?q=virtualbox+shared+folders+performance+issues https://www.google.ca/search?q=virtualbox+shared+folders+per...
  - ngrilly 9y ago
    No. VirtualBox Shared Folders are still slow. I switched to NFS.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  So it's readable on mobile without attempting to horizontally scroll in too-small a space... Notable enhancements in this release: VM export to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic (OCI Classic) format Automatic, unattended guest OS installation for Oracle VM VirtualBox Virtual Machines Improved Virtual Machine Tools, including a new dynamic interface to manage Virtual Machine configuration and snapshot capabilities New Global Tools handling * Virtual Media Manager manages media attributes like size, location, type and description * Host Network Manager simplifies managing corresponding networks and their attributes GUI accessibility * New GUI icons for VirtualBox on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris and Mac OS X) * Enhanced Virtual Machine Selector * Extended audio settings, with the option to enable/disable audio input/output * Snapshot Pane updates allow easier management of snapshot attributes, like name and description Audio * Device enumeration support for audio backends (optional) * Support for host device callbacks (optional) and further enhancements * HDA emulation now uses asynchronous data processing in separate threads Storage * Support for CUE/BIN images as CD/DVD media including multiple tracks * Support for the controller memory buffer feature for NVMe
  - nikolay 9y ago
    Thank you! Honestly, I never read HN on mobile devices, so, I wasn't aware of the issue, and I use Stylish for a dark theme and other enhancements on Chrome, which might be fixing some of the <pre /> issues as well.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Oh, it is a horrible experience on mobile but only for that function. Well, and the coloration but I'm partially colorblind and accept that I'm not a priority. It's like they did the whole site perfectly and then just screwed that up for no good reason. HN is otherwise perfect, as I'm not counting the colors. Those are okay until they use gray (I think, I am never actually sure) text. Totally off topic: I wasn't always colorblind. It happened with age, according to the eye doc. It is so strange never being certain you're seeing colors properly. I didn't realize I was colorblind until people kept pointing out that I was wrong. 'No, David. The curtains are blue, not black.' It led to some amusing confrontations. Anyhow, other than that, HN is pretty much perfect on mobile.
SonOfKyuss 9y ago
I searched the release notes and manual but couldn't find an answer. Does anyone know if this release fixes the problem of not cleanly shutting down the guest OS when the Windows host does an automated update/reboot? It's really annoying to have Windows run an update overnight and see that it did a dirty shutdown of my Linux dev instance guest. Virtualbox has a "save state" option. It would be nice if it would perform a "save state" on all guests when the host reboots.
- Aloha 9y ago
  This strikes me as a windows issue, not a VirtualBox one. How does windows kill applications that have not exited, how long does it wait to do so, etc?
  - SonOfKyuss 9y ago
    The VirtualBox process is notified of Windows shutdown and power management events. It can choose to save the state or "power down" the guest OS. There is a setting to manage the default action to take, but it doesn't seem to work reliably. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idm9348 https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idm9348
    - Aloha 9y ago
      I wonder if its taking too long to save state, so windows kills the process and proceeds with its reboot
      - breakingcups 9y ago
        That's probably it, Windows 10 is incredibly aggressive in killing applications when rebooting for an update. In corporate settings it's even worse, we're currently having a glitch where, no matter what our administrators specify as policy, computers will just randomly reboot sometime after Patch Tuesday for a reboot. Without notification, without a chance to save your work. Just poof.
stephenr 9y ago
FYI this will break the current version of Vagrant if you use the VirtualBox provider (which is default): https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/9080 https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/9080
- apple4ever 9y ago
  Ugh figures I read that after updating.
davidcollantes 9y ago
Does anyone has a screenshot? I am curious to know how those "new GUI icons" look like, but don't want to install it just for see them.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Here you go: https://imgur.com/a/uSt73 https://imgur.com/a/uSt73
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
smacktoward 9y ago
What's the current state of GPU passthrough on VirtualBox? Currently I dual boot between Windows (games) and Linux (everything else). I would love to just single-boot into Linux as a host and then have a Windows VM for games that need it. But that's only practical if the VM has full access to the GPU, and last I heard GPU passthrough on VirtualBox was kind of hit or miss.
- chrisper 9y ago
  You can use Qemu for that. I used to do that for a while, but found it annoying. Dual boot is much better imho, especially since it barley takes any time. When I had issues, I had no clue if it was because of my config, the game being buggy, the nvidia drivers being buggy, etc. etc. Also having to have "two"of everything is annoying as well.
  - pizza234 9y ago
    You don't really need "two" of everything. You can have one monitor connected to two video ports, and a single mouse and keybord, a pass them through. QEMU itself can be run via a short script, and it only requires to be run as sudo. You shouldn't really have issues in a general sense: with the correct setup, after a short time (having exhausted the tweaking options) one will experience if the machine is compatible with VGA passthrough, or not. In the latter case, the problem is that either the guest doesn't work at all, or that it has performance problems. The is at least one radical advantage in having a virtualized Windows: rollbacks. When I use a Windows guest, I don't care whether I'll take malware or not, since to rollback is trivial.
- pizza234 9y ago
  VirtualBox will likely not support it for a very long time (assuming they will ever do it), as VGA passthrough has some host requirements (configuration-wise), that I think would be too much to handle for a virtualization product. I use QEMU and it works without any issue; to be specific, in hundreds of boots, it hung only a couple of times, which is very well within issues with windows itself rather than the platform. Also, it typically runs via a single script. The crux is to have the correct hardware (some hardware just doesn't work well), and to use a correct software setup (most important thing: if you use a GPU for passthrough, forget about using it on the host at all). The information around is unfortunately very scattered and often outdated. I suggest to use those two sources: - https://github.com/saveriomiroddi/vga-passthrough - https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO
0xbear 9y ago
Tried it a few weeks ago to run Windows, guest os got corrupted right after installation. Searched Google and apparently this happens quite a lot. I’d say you get what you pay for, but KVM works fine. It’s just slow because there’s no graphics acceleration.
- icf80 9y ago
  Never had any corruption ever with VirtualBox.
  - eugenekolo2 9y ago
    I have. And a whole onslaught of numerous other issues. Most of them seem to be documented in bugs 5+ years old that never get fixed. I was once a Virtualbox fan boy. But, I'm going with KVM and Vmware moving forward.
  - mrmondo 9y ago
    I have, plenty of times, so glad I ditched it a few years back - the amount of performance related issues was astounding too.
nas 9y ago
Given that Oracle seems to have the midas shit touch (RIP John Dunsworth), does anyone have suggestions on Virtualbox alternatives? VMWare is the obvious one I guess. It's great that they have released 5.2 and that they are adding new things. Virtualbox is a handy tool for me and I'm just afraid one day soon Oracle will turn it to shit.
- fulafel 9y ago
  Use apps that use your native OS virtualization (Hyper-V, KVM, Docker for Mac/xhyve, etc). Bonus: Less driver crashes, better security and peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps.
  - j_s 9y ago
    > peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps Not sure how this works elsewhere but in Windows land I've only ever been able to get one hypervisor per reboot.
    - fulafel 9y ago
      I was thinking of Docker for Windows and the stock Hyper-V VM UI.
- baobrien 9y ago
  On Linux, I've been using kvm with libvirt and virt-manager as the GUI.
  - phjesusthatguy3 9y ago
    +1 to this. KVM and virt-manager Just Work for me on Debian 9. I don't know what I was doing wrong with previous releases but I just installed it, added my user to the correct group, and there I go.
  - chainsaw10 9y ago
    Have you gotten Windows to work well as a guest? I could never get it to work as well as it does with VirtualBox.
icf80 9y ago
Bridged networking not working in Virtualbox 5.2 - Windows 10 x64 Host with Windows x64 Guest at least. I had to go back to 5.1.30.
wildpeaks 9y ago
I wish I didn't have to choose between Docker for Windows (which requires Hyper-V enabled) and Virtualbox (which requires Hyper-V disabled afaik) on Windows 10, both are useful.
quuquuquu 9y ago
Just a friendly reminder, from a former Oracle employee who was laid off recently, that Oracle is cancerous, rapacious, and DOES NOT respect you as a user or customer. They WILL audit you. They WILL sue you. They WILL harass you. They WILL deceive you. Period. End of story. And they will make 100k easily off of you. DON'T use Oracle products unless you are prepared to deal with these types of arbitrary, long, painful battles.

68 points by nikolay 9y ago

Notable enhancements in this release: - VM export to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic (OCI Classic) format - Automatic, unattended guest OS installation for Oracle VM VirtualBox Virtual Machines - Improved Virtual Machine Tools, including a new dynamic interface to manage Virtual Machine configuration and snapshot capabilities - New Global Tools handling * Virtual Media Manager manages media attributes like size, location, type and description * Host Network Manager simplifies managing corresponding networks and their attributes - GUI accessibility * New GUI icons for VirtualBox on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris and Mac OS X) * Enhanced Virtual Machine Selector * Extended audio settings, with the option to enable/disable audio input/output * Snapshot Pane updates allow easier management of snapshot attributes, like name and description - Audio * Device enumeration support for audio backends (optional) * Support for host device callbacks (optional) and further enhancements * HDA emulation now uses asynchronous data processing in separate threads - Storage * Support for CUE/BIN images as CD/DVD media including multiple tracks * Support for the controller memory buffer feature for NVMe

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
torstenvl 9y ago
Just FYI, when you post content like that, it is completely unreadable.
- Aloha 9y ago
  How? It's formatted monospaced text, its perfectly readable to me.
  - finnh 9y ago
    On my iphone, at least, the monospace section cuts off after ~20 characters and you have to drag back-and-forth to horizontally scroll the rest into view. Landscape mode helps, but not much.
  - croddin 9y ago
    It doesn’t wrap on mobile and you have to scroll horizontally to read it all.
    - mrweasel 9y ago
      Nor does it wrap in Firefox, so pretty annoying on desktops as well. Unless you're using a large monitor.
  - torstenvl 9y ago
    It's fixed width at a tiny fraction of the screen width. Reading each line requires manually scrolling from start to end of the line, and then back to the beginning, seeing maybe 2-3 words at a time.
  - jannes 9y ago
    https://i.imgur.com/X3FcvQX.png https://i.imgur.com/X3FcvQX.png
- alberth 9y ago
  This is a tiny CSS fix to simply remove the "width" attribute on code and pre. I wish someone from HN would fix this.
  - yupyup 9y ago
    If only this were a website for technical people...
- nikolay 9y ago
  I agree, but that's the only option for posting something structured. I wish HN would give up and implement GitHub Flavored Markdown and allow us to post code snippets, nested lists, etc. Sorry, I do extra effort to convert HTML into comments - maybe I should write a tool instead. I try to always post a comment with release notes and not just an outbound link. It would be great if HN implements https://changelogs.md/ https://changelogs.md/ and gives an open to see the changelog without leaving the site.
- rosstex 9y ago
  (on mobile)
- hinkley 9y ago
  Here's the problem: @media only screen and (min-width : 390px) and (max-width : 509px) { .comment { max-width: 350px; overflow: auto } pre { max-width: 260px; } } @media only screen and (min-width : 510px) and (max-width : 599px) { .comment { max-width: 460px; overflow: auto } pre { max-width: 340px; } } @media only screen and (min-width : 600px) and (max-width : 689px) { .comment { max-width: 540px; overflow: auto } pre { max-width: 400px; } } They are putting max widths on child elements instead of letting the parent control things. It's foolishness. But then, if you look at the html hacker news generates, it'll put you off your lunch.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
avtar 9y ago
Some movement on addressing VirtualBox Shared Folders performance issues would have been really nice to see. Has anyone been able to make it perform well for filesystem intensive (npm install, docker builds, etc.) tasks? https://www.google.ca/search?q=virtualbox+shared+folders+performance+issues https://www.google.ca/search?q=virtualbox+shared+folders+per...
- ngrilly 9y ago
  No. VirtualBox Shared Folders are still slow. I switched to NFS.
JohnTHaller 9y ago
So it's readable on mobile without attempting to horizontally scroll in too-small a space... Notable enhancements in this release: VM export to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic (OCI Classic) format Automatic, unattended guest OS installation for Oracle VM VirtualBox Virtual Machines Improved Virtual Machine Tools, including a new dynamic interface to manage Virtual Machine configuration and snapshot capabilities New Global Tools handling * Virtual Media Manager manages media attributes like size, location, type and description * Host Network Manager simplifies managing corresponding networks and their attributes GUI accessibility * New GUI icons for VirtualBox on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris and Mac OS X) * Enhanced Virtual Machine Selector * Extended audio settings, with the option to enable/disable audio input/output * Snapshot Pane updates allow easier management of snapshot attributes, like name and description Audio * Device enumeration support for audio backends (optional) * Support for host device callbacks (optional) and further enhancements * HDA emulation now uses asynchronous data processing in separate threads Storage * Support for CUE/BIN images as CD/DVD media including multiple tracks * Support for the controller memory buffer feature for NVMe
- nikolay 9y ago
  Thank you! Honestly, I never read HN on mobile devices, so, I wasn't aware of the issue, and I use Stylish for a dark theme and other enhancements on Chrome, which might be fixing some of the <pre /> issues as well.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Oh, it is a horrible experience on mobile but only for that function. Well, and the coloration but I'm partially colorblind and accept that I'm not a priority. It's like they did the whole site perfectly and then just screwed that up for no good reason. HN is otherwise perfect, as I'm not counting the colors. Those are okay until they use gray (I think, I am never actually sure) text. Totally off topic: I wasn't always colorblind. It happened with age, according to the eye doc. It is so strange never being certain you're seeing colors properly. I didn't realize I was colorblind until people kept pointing out that I was wrong. 'No, David. The curtains are blue, not black.' It led to some amusing confrontations. Anyhow, other than that, HN is pretty much perfect on mobile.

SonOfKyuss 9y ago

I searched the release notes and manual but couldn't find an answer. Does anyone know if this release fixes the problem of not cleanly shutting down the guest OS when the Windows host does an automated update/reboot? It's really annoying to have Windows run an update overnight and see that it did a dirty shutdown of my Linux dev instance guest. Virtualbox has a "save state" option. It would be nice if it would perform a "save state" on all guests when the host reboots.

Aloha 9y ago
This strikes me as a windows issue, not a VirtualBox one. How does windows kill applications that have not exited, how long does it wait to do so, etc?
- SonOfKyuss 9y ago
  The VirtualBox process is notified of Windows shutdown and power management events. It can choose to save the state or "power down" the guest OS. There is a setting to manage the default action to take, but it doesn't seem to work reliably. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idm9348 https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idm9348
  - Aloha 9y ago
    I wonder if its taking too long to save state, so windows kills the process and proceeds with its reboot
    - breakingcups 9y ago
      That's probably it, Windows 10 is incredibly aggressive in killing applications when rebooting for an update. In corporate settings it's even worse, we're currently having a glitch where, no matter what our administrators specify as policy, computers will just randomly reboot sometime after Patch Tuesday for a reboot. Without notification, without a chance to save your work. Just poof.

stephenr 9y ago

FYI this will break the current version of Vagrant if you use the VirtualBox provider (which is default): https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/9080 https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/9080

apple4ever 9y ago
Ugh figures I read that after updating.

davidcollantes 9y ago

Does anyone has a screenshot? I am curious to know how those "new GUI icons" look like, but don't want to install it just for see them.

chrisper 9y ago
Here you go: https://imgur.com/a/uSt73 https://imgur.com/a/uSt73
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

smacktoward 9y ago

What's the current state of GPU passthrough on VirtualBox? Currently I dual boot between Windows (games) and Linux (everything else). I would love to just single-boot into Linux as a host and then have a Windows VM for games that need it. But that's only practical if the VM has full access to the GPU, and last I heard GPU passthrough on VirtualBox was kind of hit or miss.

chrisper 9y ago
You can use Qemu for that. I used to do that for a while, but found it annoying. Dual boot is much better imho, especially since it barley takes any time. When I had issues, I had no clue if it was because of my config, the game being buggy, the nvidia drivers being buggy, etc. etc. Also having to have "two"of everything is annoying as well.
- pizza234 9y ago
  You don't really need "two" of everything. You can have one monitor connected to two video ports, and a single mouse and keybord, a pass them through. QEMU itself can be run via a short script, and it only requires to be run as sudo. You shouldn't really have issues in a general sense: with the correct setup, after a short time (having exhausted the tweaking options) one will experience if the machine is compatible with VGA passthrough, or not. In the latter case, the problem is that either the guest doesn't work at all, or that it has performance problems. The is at least one radical advantage in having a virtualized Windows: rollbacks. When I use a Windows guest, I don't care whether I'll take malware or not, since to rollback is trivial.
pizza234 9y ago
VirtualBox will likely not support it for a very long time (assuming they will ever do it), as VGA passthrough has some host requirements (configuration-wise), that I think would be too much to handle for a virtualization product. I use QEMU and it works without any issue; to be specific, in hundreds of boots, it hung only a couple of times, which is very well within issues with windows itself rather than the platform. Also, it typically runs via a single script. The crux is to have the correct hardware (some hardware just doesn't work well), and to use a correct software setup (most important thing: if you use a GPU for passthrough, forget about using it on the host at all). The information around is unfortunately very scattered and often outdated. I suggest to use those two sources: - https://github.com/saveriomiroddi/vga-passthrough - https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO

0xbear 9y ago

Tried it a few weeks ago to run Windows, guest os got corrupted right after installation. Searched Google and apparently this happens quite a lot. I’d say you get what you pay for, but KVM works fine. It’s just slow because there’s no graphics acceleration.

icf80 9y ago
Never had any corruption ever with VirtualBox.
- eugenekolo2 9y ago
  I have. And a whole onslaught of numerous other issues. Most of them seem to be documented in bugs 5+ years old that never get fixed. I was once a Virtualbox fan boy. But, I'm going with KVM and Vmware moving forward.
- mrmondo 9y ago
  I have, plenty of times, so glad I ditched it a few years back - the amount of performance related issues was astounding too.

nas 9y ago

Given that Oracle seems to have the midas shit touch (RIP John Dunsworth), does anyone have suggestions on Virtualbox alternatives? VMWare is the obvious one I guess. It's great that they have released 5.2 and that they are adding new things. Virtualbox is a handy tool for me and I'm just afraid one day soon Oracle will turn it to shit.

fulafel 9y ago
Use apps that use your native OS virtualization (Hyper-V, KVM, Docker for Mac/xhyve, etc). Bonus: Less driver crashes, better security and peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps.
- j_s 9y ago
  > peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps Not sure how this works elsewhere but in Windows land I've only ever been able to get one hypervisor per reboot.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    I was thinking of Docker for Windows and the stock Hyper-V VM UI.
baobrien 9y ago
On Linux, I've been using kvm with libvirt and virt-manager as the GUI.
- phjesusthatguy3 9y ago
  +1 to this. KVM and virt-manager Just Work for me on Debian 9. I don't know what I was doing wrong with previous releases but I just installed it, added my user to the correct group, and there I go.
- chainsaw10 9y ago
  Have you gotten Windows to work well as a guest? I could never get it to work as well as it does with VirtualBox.

icf80 9y ago

Bridged networking not working in Virtualbox 5.2 - Windows 10 x64 Host with Windows x64 Guest at least. I had to go back to 5.1.30.

wildpeaks 9y ago

I wish I didn't have to choose between Docker for Windows (which requires Hyper-V enabled) and Virtualbox (which requires Hyper-V disabled afaik) on Windows 10, both are useful.

quuquuquu 9y ago

Just a friendly reminder, from a former Oracle employee who was laid off recently, that Oracle is cancerous, rapacious, and DOES NOT respect you as a user or customer. They WILL audit you. They WILL sue you. They WILL harass you. They WILL deceive you. Period. End of story. And they will make 100k easily off of you. DON'T use Oracle products unless you are prepared to deal with these types of arbitrary, long, painful battles.