source: vbox/trunk/doc/manual/en_US/user_Introduction.xml@ 36040

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<chapter>
  <title id="Introduction">First steps</title>

  <para>Welcome to $VBOX_PRODUCT!</para>

  <para>VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization application. What does
  that mean? For one thing, it installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based
  computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris operating
  systems. Secondly, it extends the capabilities of your existing computer so
  that it can run multiple operating systems (inside multiple virtual
  machines) at the same time. So, for example, you can run Windows and Linux
  on your Mac, run Windows Server 2008 on your Linux server, run Linux on your
  Windows PC, and so on, all alongside your existing applications. You can
  install and run as many virtual machines as you like -- the only practical
  limits are disk space and memory.</para>

  <para>VirtualBox is deceptively simple yet also very powerful. It can run
  everywhere from small embedded systems or desktop class machines all the way
  up to datacenter deployments and even Cloud environments.</para>

  <para>The following screenshot shows you how VirtualBox, installed on a Mac
  computer, is running Windows 7 in a virtual machine window:</para>

  <para><mediaobject>
      <imageobject>
        <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/vm-vista-running.png"
                   width="14cm" />
      </imageobject>
    </mediaobject></para>

  <para>In this User Manual, we'll begin simply with a quick introduction to
  virtualization and how to get your first virtual machine running with the
  easy-to-use VirtualBox graphical user interface. Subsequent chapters will go
  into much more detail covering more powerful tools and features, but
  fortunately, it is not necessary to read the entire User Manual before you
  can use VirtualBox.</para>

  <para>You can find a summary of VirtualBox's capabilities in <xref
  linkend="features-overview" />. For existing VirtualBox users who just want
  to see what's new in this release, there is a detailed list in <xref
  linkend="ChangeLog" />.</para>

  <sect1>
    <title>Why is virtualization useful?</title>

    <para>The techniques and features that VirtualBox provides are useful for
    several scenarios:</para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Running multiple operating systems
        simultaneously.</emphasis> VirtualBox allows you to run more than one
        operating system at a time. This way, you can run software written for
        one operating system on another (for example, Windows software on
        Linux or a Mac) without having to reboot to use it. Since you can
        configure what kinds of "virtual" hardware should be presented to each
        such operating system, you can install an old operating system such as
        DOS or OS/2 even if your real computer's hardware is no longer
        supported by that operating system.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Easier software installations.</emphasis>
        Software vendors can use virtual machines to ship entire software
        configurations. For example, installing a complete mail server
        solution on a real machine can be a tedious task. With VirtualBox,
        such a complex setup (then often called an "appliance") can be packed
        into a virtual machine. Installing and running a mail server becomes
        as easy as importing such an appliance into VirtualBox.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Testing and disaster recovery.</emphasis>
        Once installed, a virtual machine and its virtual hard disks can be
        considered a "container" that can be arbitrarily frozen, woken up,
        copied, backed up, and transported between hosts.</para>

        <para>On top of that, with the use of another VirtualBox feature
        called "snapshots", one can save a particular state of a virtual
        machine and revert back to that state, if necessary. This way, one can
        freely experiment with a computing environment. If something goes
        wrong (e.g. after installing misbehaving software or infecting the
        guest with a virus), one can easily switch back to a previous snapshot
        and avoid the need of frequent backups and restores.</para>

        <para>Any number of snapshots can be created, allowing you to travel
        back and forward in virtual machine time. You can delete snapshots
        while a VM is running to reclaim disk space.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Infrastructure consolidation.</emphasis>
        Virtualization can significantly reduce hardware and electricity
        costs. Most of the time, computers today only use a fraction of their
        potential power and run with low average system loads. A lot of
        hardware resources as well as electricity is thereby wasted. So,
        instead of running many such physical computers that are only
        partially used, one can pack many virtual machines onto a few powerful
        hosts and balance the loads between them.</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title id="virtintro">Some terminology</title>

    <para>When dealing with virtualization (and also for understanding the
    following chapters of this documentation), it helps to acquaint oneself
    with a bit of crucial terminology, especially the following terms:</para>

    <glosslist>
      <glossentry>
        <glossterm>Host operating system (host OS).</glossterm>

        <glossdef>
          <para>This is the operating system of the physical computer on which
          VirtualBox was installed. There are versions of VirtualBox for
          Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris hosts; for details, please see
          <xref linkend="hostossupport" />.</para>

          <para>Most of the time, this User Manual discusses all VirtualBox
          versions together. There may be platform-specific differences which
          we will point out where appropriate.</para>
        </glossdef>
      </glossentry>

      <glossentry>
        <glossterm>Guest operating system (guest OS).</glossterm>

        <glossdef>
          <para>This is the operating system that is running inside the
          virtual machine. Theoretically, VirtualBox can run any x86 operating
          system (DOS, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD, OpenBSD), but to achieve
          near-native performance of the guest code on your machine, we had to
          go through a lot of optimizations that are specific to certain
          operating systems. So while your favorite operating system
          <emphasis>may</emphasis> run as a guest, we officially support and
          optimize for a select few (which, however, include the most common
          ones).</para>

          <para>See <xref linkend="guestossupport" /> for details.</para>
        </glossdef>
      </glossentry>

      <glossentry>
        <glossterm>Virtual machine (VM).</glossterm>

        <glossdef>
          <para>This is the special environment that VirtualBox creates for
          your guest operating system while it is running. In other words, you
          run your guest operating system "in" a VM. Normally, a VM will be
          shown as a window on your computer's desktop, but depending on which
          of the various frontends of VirtualBox you use, it can be displayed
          in full-screen mode or remotely on another computer.</para>

          <para>In a more abstract way, internally, VirtualBox thinks of a VM
          as a set of parameters that determine its behavior. They include
          hardware settings (how much memory the VM should have, what hard
          disks VirtualBox should virtualize through which container files,
          what CDs are mounted etc.) as well as state information (whether the
          VM is currently running, saved, its snapshots etc.). These settings
          are mirrored in the VirtualBox Manager window as well as the
          <computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> command line program;
          see <xref linkend="vboxmanage" />. In other words, a VM is also what
          you can see in its settings dialog.</para>
        </glossdef>
      </glossentry>

      <glossentry>
        <glossterm>Guest Additions.</glossterm>

        <glossdef>
          <para>This refers to special software packages which are shipped
          with VirtualBox but designed to be installed
          <emphasis>inside</emphasis> a VM to improve performance of the guest
          OS and to add extra features. This is described in detail in <xref
          linkend="guestadditions" />.</para>
        </glossdef>
      </glossentry>
    </glosslist>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="features-overview">
    <title>Features overview</title>

    <para>Here's a brief outline of VirtualBox's main features:</para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Portability.</emphasis> VirtualBox runs on
        a large number of 32-bit and 64-bit host operating systems (again, see
        <xref linkend="hostossupport" /> for details).</para>

        <para>VirtualBox is a so-called "hosted" hypervisor (sometimes
        referred to as a "type 2" hypervisor). Whereas a "bare-metal" or "type
        1" hypervisor would run directly on the hardware, VirtualBox requires
        an existing operating system to be installed. It can thus run
        alongside existing applications on that host.</para>

        <para>To a very large degree, VirtualBox is functionally identical on
        all of the host platforms, and the same file and image formats are
        used. This allows you to run virtual machines created on one host on
        another host with a different host operating system; for example, you
        can create a virtual machine on Windows and then run it under
        Linux.</para>

        <para>In addition, virtual machines can easily be imported and
        exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF, see <xref
        linkend="ovf" />), an industry standard created for this purpose. You
        can even import OVFs that were created with a different virtualization
        software.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">No hardware virtualization
        required.</emphasis> For many scenarios, VirtualBox does not require
        the processor features built into newer hardware like Intel VT-x or
        AMD-V. As opposed to many other virtualization solutions, you can
        therefore use VirtualBox even on older hardware where these features
        are not present. The technical details are explained in <xref
        linkend="hwvirt" />.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Guest Additions: shared folders, seamless
        windows, 3D virtualization.</emphasis> The VirtualBox Guest Additions
        are software packages which can be installed
        <emphasis>inside</emphasis> of supported guest systems to improve
        their performance and to provide additional integration and
        communication with the host system. After installing the Guest
        Additions, a virtual machine will support automatic adjustment of
        video resolutions, seamless windows, accelerated 3D graphics and more.
        The Guest Additions are described in detail in <xref
        linkend="guestadditions" />.</para>

        <para>In particular, Guest Additions provide for "shared folders",
        which let you access files from the host system from within a guest
        machine. Shared folders are described in <xref
        linkend="sharedfolders" />.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Great hardware support.</emphasis> Among
        others, VirtualBox supports:</para>

        <itemizedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para><emphasis role="bold">Guest multiprocessing
            (SMP).</emphasis> VirtualBox can present up to 32 virtual CPUs to
            each virtual machine, irrespective of how many CPU cores are
            physically present on your host.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para><emphasis role="bold">USB device support.</emphasis>
            VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to
            connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without
            having to install device-specific drivers on the host. USB support
            is not limited to certain device categories. For details, see
            <xref linkend="settings-usb" />.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para><emphasis role="bold">Hardware compatibility.</emphasis>
            VirtualBox virtualizes a vast array of virtual devices, among them
            many devices that are typically provided by other virtualization
            platforms. That includes IDE, SCSI and SATA hard disk controllers,
            several virtual network cards and sound cards, virtual serial and
            parallel ports and an Input/Output Advanced Programmable Interrupt
            Controller (I/O APIC), which is found in many modern PC systems.
            This eases cloning of PC images from real machines and importing
            of third-party virtual machines into VirtualBox.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para><emphasis role="bold">Full ACPI support.</emphasis> The
            Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is fully
            supported by VirtualBox. This eases cloning of PC images from real
            machines or third-party virtual machines into VirtualBox. With its
            unique <emphasis role="bold">ACPI power status support,</emphasis>
            VirtualBox can even report to ACPI-aware guest operating systems
            the power status of the host. For mobile systems running on
            battery, the guest can thus enable energy saving and notify the
            user of the remaining power (e.g. in fullscreen modes).</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para><emphasis role="bold">Multiscreen resolutions.</emphasis>
            VirtualBox virtual machines support screen resolutions many times
            that of a physical screen, allowing them to be spread over a large
            number of screens attached to the host system.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para><emphasis role="bold">Built-in iSCSI support.</emphasis>
            This unique feature allows you to connect a virtual machine
            directly to an iSCSI storage server without going through the host
            system. The VM accesses the iSCSI target directly without the
            extra overhead that is required for virtualizing hard disks in
            container files. For details, see <xref
            linkend="storage-iscsi" />.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para><emphasis role="bold">PXE Network boot.</emphasis> The
            integrated virtual network cards of VirtualBox fully support
            remote booting via the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE).</para>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Multigeneration branched
        snapshots.</emphasis> VirtualBox can save arbitrary snapshots of the
        state of the virtual machine. You can go back in time and revert the
        virtual machine to any such snapshot and start an alternative VM
        configuration from there, effectively creating a whole snapshot tree.
        For details, see <xref linkend="snapshots" />. You can create and
        delete snapshots while the virtual machine is running.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Clean architecture; unprecedented
        modularity.</emphasis> VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with
        well-defined internal programming interfaces and a clean separation of
        client and server code. This makes it easy to control it from several
        interfaces at once: for example, you can start a VM simply by clicking
        on a button in the VirtualBox graphical user interface and then
        control that machine from the command line, or even remotely. See
        <xref linkend="frontends" /> for details.</para>

        <para>Due to its modular architecture, VirtualBox can also expose its
        full functionality and configurability through a comprehensive
        <emphasis role="bold">software development kit (SDK),</emphasis> which
        allows for integrating every aspect of VirtualBox with other software
        systems. Please see <xref linkend="VirtualBoxAPI" /> for
        details.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Remote machine display.</emphasis> The
        VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) allows for high-performance
        remote access to any running virtual machine. This extension supports
        the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) originally built into Microsoft
        Windows, with special additions for full client USB support.</para>

        <para>The VRDE does not rely on the RDP server that is built into
        Microsoft Windows; instead, it is plugged directly into the
        virtualization layer. As a result, it works with guest operating
        systems other than Windows (even in text mode) and does not require
        application support in the virtual machine either. The VRDE is
        described in detail in <xref linkend="vrde" />.</para>

        <para>On top of this special capacity, VirtualBox offers you more
        unique features:<itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
              <para><emphasis role="bold">Extensible RDP
              authentication.</emphasis> VirtualBox already supports Winlogon
              on Windows and PAM on Linux for RDP authentication. In addition,
              it includes an easy-to-use SDK which allows you to create
              arbitrary interfaces for other methods of authentication; see
              <xref linkend="vbox-auth" /> for details.</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para><emphasis role="bold">USB over RDP.</emphasis> Via RDP
              virtual channel support, VirtualBox also allows you to connect
              arbitrary USB devices locally to a virtual machine which is
              running remotely on a VirtualBox RDP server; see <xref
              linkend="usb-over-rdp" /> for details.</para>
            </listitem>
          </itemizedlist></para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title id="hostossupport">Supported host operating systems</title>

    <para>Currently, VirtualBox runs on the following host operating
    systems:</para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Windows</emphasis> hosts:<itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
              <para>Windows XP, all service packs (32-bit)</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Windows Server 2003 (32-bit)</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit<footnote>
                  <para>Support for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox
                  1.5.</para>
                </footnote>).</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)</para>
            </listitem>
          </itemizedlist></para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Mac OS X</emphasis> hosts:<footnote>
            <para>Preliminary Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with
            VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
            support was removed with VirtualBox 3.1.</para>
          </footnote></para>

        <itemizedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para>10.5 (Leopard, 32-bit)</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>10.6 (Snow Leopard, 32-bit and 64-bit)</para>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>

        <para>Intel hardware is required; please see <xref
        linkend="KnownIssues" /> also.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Linux</emphasis> hosts (32-bit and
        64-bit<footnote>
            <para>Support for 64-bit Linux was added with VirtualBox
            1.4.</para>
          </footnote>). Among others, this includes:<itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
              <para>Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper Drake"), 6.10 ("Edgy Eft"), 7.04
              ("Feisty Fawn"), 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon"), 8.04 ("Hardy Heron"),
              8.10 ("Intrepid Ibex"), 9.04 ("Jaunty Jackalope"), 9.10 ("Karmic
              Koala"), 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx"), 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat).</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 ("sarge"), 4.0 ("etch"), 5.0
              ("lenny") and 6.0 ("squeeze")</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 and 5, Oracle Linux 6</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Redhat Enterprise Linux 4, 5 and 6</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Fedora Core 4 to 14</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Gentoo Linux</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>SUSE Linux 9, 10 and 11, openSUSE 10.3, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2,
              11.3</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Mandriva 2007.1, 2008.0, 2009.1, 2010.0 and 2010.1</para>
            </listitem>
          </itemizedlist></para>

        <para>It should be possible to use VirtualBox on most systems based on
        Linux kernel 2.6 using either the VirtualBox installer or by doing a
        manual installation; see <xref linkend="install-linux-host" />. However,
        the formally tested and supported Linux distributions are those for
        which we offer a dedicated package.</para>

        <para>Note that starting with VirtualBox 2.1, Linux 2.4-based host
        operating systems are no longer supported.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para><emphasis role="bold">Solaris</emphasis> hosts (32-bit and
        64-bit) are supported with the restrictions listed in <xref
        linkend="KnownIssues" />:<itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
              <para>Solaris 11 Express (Nevada build 86 and higher,
              OpenSolaris 2008.05 and higher)</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Solaris 10 (u8 and higher)</para>
            </listitem>
          </itemizedlist></para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="intro-installing">
    <title>Installing VirtualBox and extension packs</title>

    <para>VirtualBox comes in many different packages, and installation
    depends on your host operating system. If you have installed software
    before, installation should be straightforward: on each host platform,
    VirtualBox uses the installation method that is most common and easy to
    use. If you run into trouble or have special requirements, please refer to
    <xref linkend="installation" /> for details about the various installation
    methods.</para>

    <para>Starting with version 4.0, VirtualBox is split into several
    components.<orderedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>The base package consists of all open-source components and is
          licensed under the GNU General Public License V2.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Additional extension packs can be downloaded which extend the
          functionality of the VirtualBox base package. Currently, Oracle
          provides the one extension pack, which can be found at <ulink
          url="http://www.virtualbox.org">http://www.virtualbox.org</ulink>
          and provides the following added functionality:<orderedlist>
              <listitem>
                <para>The virtual USB 2.0 (EHCI) device; see <xref
                linkend="settings-usb" />.</para>
              </listitem>

              <listitem>
                <para>VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP) support; see
                <xref linkend="vrde" />.</para>
              </listitem>

              <listitem>
                <para>Intel PXE boot ROM with support for the E1000 network
                card.</para>
              </listitem>
            </orderedlist></para>

          <para>VirtualBox extension packages have a
          <computeroutput>.vbox-extpack</computeroutput> file name extension.
          To install an extension, simply double-click on the package file,
          and the VirtualBox Manager will guide you through the required
          steps.</para>

          <para>To view the extension packs that are currently installed,
          please start the VirtualBox Manager (see the next section). From the
          "File" menu, please select "Preferences". In the window that shows
          up, go to the "Extensions" category which shows you the extensions
          which are currently installed and allows you to remove a package or
          add a new one.</para>

          <para>Alternatively you can use VBoxManage on the command line: see
          <xref linkend="vboxmanage-extpack" /> for details.</para>
        </listitem>
      </orderedlist></para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Starting VirtualBox</title>

    <para>After installation, you can start VirtualBox as
    follows:<itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>On a Windows host, in the standard "Programs" menu, click on
          the item in the "VirtualBox" group. On Vista or Windows 7, you can
          also type "VirtualBox" in the search box of the "Start" menu.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>On a Mac OS X host, in the Finder, double-click on the
          "VirtualBox" item in the "Applications" folder. (You may want to
          drag this item onto your Dock.)</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>On a Linux or Solaris host, depending on your desktop
          environment, a "VirtualBox" item may have been placed in either the
          "System" or "System Tools" group of your "Applications" menu.
          Alternatively, you can type
          <computeroutput>VirtualBox</computeroutput> in a terminal.</para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist></para>

    <para>When you start VirtualBox for the first time, a window like the
    following should come up:</para>

    <para><mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/virtualbox-main-empty.png"
                     width="10cm" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>This window is called the <emphasis
    role="bold">"VirtualBox Manager".</emphasis> On the left, you can see a
    pane that will later list all your virtual machines. Since you have not
    created any, the list is empty. A row of buttons above it allows you to
    create new VMs and work on existing VMs, once you have some. The pane on
    the right displays the properties of the virtual machine currently
    selected, if any. Again, since you don't have any machines yet, the pane
    displays a welcome message.</para>

    <para>To give you an idea what VirtualBox might look like later, after you
    have created many machines, here's another example:</para>

    <para><mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/virtualbox-main.png"
                     width="10cm" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject></para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="gui-createvm">
    <title>Creating your first virtual machine</title>

    <para>Click on the "New" button at the top of the VirtualBox Manager
    window. A wizard will pop up to guide you through setting up a new virtual
    machine (VM):</para>

    <para><mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/create-vm-1.png"
                     width="10cm" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>On the following pages, the wizard will ask you for the
    bare minimum of information that is needed to create a VM, in
    particular:<orderedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>The <emphasis role="bold">VM name</emphasis> will later be
          shown in the VM list of the VirtualBox Manager window, and it will
          be used for the VM's files on disk. Even though any name could be
          used, keep in mind that once you have created a few VMs, you will
          appreciate if you have given your VMs rather informative names; "My
          VM" would thus be less useful than "Windows XP SP2 with
          OpenOffice".</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>For <emphasis role="bold">"Operating System Type",</emphasis>
          select the operating system that you want to install later. The
          supported operating systems are grouped; if you want to install
          something very unusual that is not listed, select "Other". Depending
          on your selection, VirtualBox will enable or disable certain VM
          settings that your guest operating system may require. This is
          particularly important for 64-bit guests (see <xref
          linkend="intro-64bitguests" />). It is therefore recommended to
          always set it to the correct value.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>On the next page, select the <emphasis role="bold">memory
          (RAM)</emphasis> that VirtualBox should allocate every time the
          virtual machine is started. The amount of memory given here will be
          taken away from your host machine and presented to the guest
          operating system, which will report this size as the (virtual)
          computer's installed RAM.</para>

          <para><note>
              <para>Choose this setting carefully! The memory you give to the
              VM will not be available to your host OS while the VM is
              running, so do not specify more than you can spare. For example,
              if your host machine has 1 GB of RAM and you enter 512 MB as the
              amount of RAM for a particular virtual machine, while that VM is
              running, you will only have 512 MB left for all the other
              software on your host. If you run two VMs at the same time, even
              more memory will be allocated for the second VM (which may not
              even be able to start if that memory is not available). On the
              other hand, you should specify as much as your guest OS (and
              your applications) will require to run properly.</para>
            </note></para>

          <para>A Windows XP guest will require at least a few hundred MB RAM
          to run properly, and Windows Vista will even refuse to install with
          less than 512 MB. Of course, if you want to run graphics-intensive
          applications in your VM, you may require even more RAM.</para>

          <para>So, as a rule of thumb, if you have 1 GB of RAM or more in
          your host computer, it is usually safe to allocate 512 MB to each
          VM. But, in any case, make sure you always have at least 256 to 512
          MB of RAM left on your host operating system. Otherwise you may
          cause your host OS to excessively swap out memory to your hard disk,
          effectively bringing your host system to a standstill.</para>

          <para>As with the other settings, you can change this setting later,
          after you have created the VM.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Next, you must specify a <emphasis role="bold">virtual hard
          disk</emphasis> for your VM.</para>

          <para>There are many and potentially complicated ways in which
          VirtualBox can provide hard disk space to a VM (see <xref
          linkend="storage" /> for details), but the most common way is to use
          a large image file on your "real" hard disk, whose contents
          VirtualBox presents to your VM as if it were a complete hard disk.
          This file represents an entire hard disk then, so you can even copy
          it to another host and use it with another VirtualBox
          installation.</para>

          <para>The wizard shows you the following window:</para>

          <para><mediaobject>
              <imageobject>
                <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/create-vm-2.png"
                           width="10cm" />
              </imageobject>
            </mediaobject></para>

          <para>Here you have the following options:</para>

          <para><itemizedlist>
              <listitem>
                <para>To create a new, empty virtual hard disk, press the
                <emphasis role="bold">"New"</emphasis> button.</para>
              </listitem>

              <listitem>
                <para>You can pick an <emphasis
                role="bold">existing</emphasis> disk image file.</para>

                <para>The <emphasis role="bold">drop-down list</emphasis>
                presented in the window contains all disk images which are
                currently remembered by VirtualBox, probably because they are
                currently attached to a virtual machine (or have been in the
                past).</para>

                <para>Alternatively, you can click on the small <emphasis
                role="bold">folder button</emphasis> next to the drop-down
                list to bring up a standard file dialog, which allows you to
                pick any disk image file on your host disk.</para>
              </listitem>
            </itemizedlist>Most probably, if you are using VirtualBox for the
          first time, you will want to create a new disk image. Hence, press
          the "New" button.</para>

          <para>This brings up another window, the <emphasis
          role="bold">"Create New Virtual Disk Wizard",</emphasis> which helps
          you create a new disk image file in the new virtual machine's
          folder.</para>

          <para>VirtualBox supports two types of image files:<itemizedlist>
              <listitem>
                <para>A <emphasis role="bold">dynamically expanding
                file</emphasis> will only grow in size when the guest actually
                stores data on its virtual hard disk. It will therefore
                initially be small on the host hard drive and only later grow
                to the size specified as it is filled with data.</para>
              </listitem>

              <listitem>
                <para>A <emphasis role="bold">fixed-size file</emphasis> will
                immediately occupy the file specified, even if only a fraction
                of the virtual hard disk space is actually in use. While
                occupying much more space, a fixed-size file incurs less
                overhead and is therefore slightly faster than a dynamically
                expanding file.</para>
              </listitem>
            </itemizedlist></para>

          <para>For details about the differences, please refer to <xref
          linkend="vdidetails" />.</para>

          <para>To prevent your physical hard disk from running full,
          VirtualBox limits the size of the image file. Still, it needs to be
          large enough to hold the contents of your operating system and the
          applications you want to install -- for a modern Windows or Linux
          guest, you will probably need several gigabytes for any serious
          use:</para>

          <mediaobject>
            <imageobject>
              <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/create-vdi-1.png"
                         width="10cm" />
            </imageobject>
          </mediaobject>

          <para>After having selected or created your image file, again press
          <emphasis role="bold">"Next"</emphasis> to go to the next
          page.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>After clicking on <emphasis role="bold">"Finish"</emphasis>,
          your new virtual machine will be created. You will then see it in
          the list on the left side of the Manager window, with the name you
          entered initially.</para>
        </listitem>
      </orderedlist></para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Running your virtual machine</title>

    <para>To start a virtual machine, you have several options:<itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>Double-click on its entry in the list within the Manager
          window or</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>select its entry in the list in the Manager window it and
          press the "Start" button at the top or</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>for virtual machines created with VirtualBox 4.0 or later,
          navigate to the "VirtualBox VMs" folder in your system user's home
          directory, find the subdirectory of the machine you want to start
          and double-click on the machine settings file (with a
          <computeroutput>.vbox</computeroutput> file extension).</para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist></para>

    <para>This opens up a new window, and the virtual machine which you
    selected will boot up. Everything which would normally be seen on the
    virtual system's monitor is shown in the window, as can be seen with the
    image in <xref linkend="virtintro" />.</para>

    <para>In general, you can use the virtual machine much like you would use
    a real computer. There are couple of points worth mentioning
    however.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Starting a new VM for the first time</title>

      <para>When a VM gets started for the first time, another wizard -- the
      <emphasis role="bold">"First Start Wizard"</emphasis> -- will pop up to
      help you select an <emphasis role="bold">installation medium</emphasis>.
      Since the VM is created empty, it would otherwise behave just like a
      real computer with no operating system installed: it will do nothing and
      display an error message that no bootable operating system was
      found.</para>

      <para>For this reason, the wizard helps you select a medium to install
      an operating system from.</para>

      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>If you have physical CD or DVD media from which you want to
          install your guest operating system (e.g. in the case of a Windows
          installation CD or DVD), put the media into your host's CD or DVD
          drive.</para>

          <para>Then, in the wizard's drop-down list of installation media,
          select <emphasis role="bold">"Host drive"</emphasis> with the
          correct drive letter (or, in the case of a Linux host, device file).
          This will allow your VM to access the media in your host drive, and
          you can proceed to install from there.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>If you have downloaded installation media from the Internet in
          the form of an ISO image file (most probably in the case of a Linux
          distribution), you would normally burn this file to an empty CD or
          DVD and proceed as just described. With VirtualBox however, you can
          skip this step and mount the ISO file directly. VirtualBox will then
          present this file as a CD or DVD-ROM drive to the virtual machine,
          much like it does with virtual hard disk images.</para>

          <para>For this case, the wizard's drop-down list contains a list of
          installation media that were previously used with VirtualBox.</para>

          <para>If your medium is not in the list (especially if you are using
          VirtualBox for the first time), select the small folder icon next to
          the drop-down list to bring up a standard file dialog, with which
          you can pick the image file on your host disks.</para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>

      <para>In both cases, after making the choices in the wizard, you will be
      able to install your operating system.</para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title id="keyb_mouse_normal">Capturing and releasing keyboard and
      mouse</title>

      <para>As of version 3.2, VirtualBox provides a virtual USB tablet device
      to new virtual machines through which mouse events are communicated to
      the guest operating system. As a result, if you are running a modern
      guest operating system that can handle such devices, mouse support may
      work out of the box without the mouse being "captured" as described
      below; see <xref linkend="settings-motherboard" /> for more
      information.</para>

      <para>Otherwise, if the virtual machine only sees standard PS/2 mouse
      and keyboard devices, since the operating system in the virtual machine
      does not "know" that it is not running on a real computer, it expects to
      have exclusive control over your keyboard and mouse. This is, however,
      not the case since, unless you are running the VM in full-screen mode,
      your VM needs to share keyboard and mouse with other applications and
      possibly other VMs on your host.</para>

      <para>As a result, initially after installing a guest operating system
      and before you install the Guest Additions (we will explain this in a
      minute), only one of the two -- your VM or the rest of your computer --
      can "own" the keyboard and the mouse. You will see a
      <emphasis>second</emphasis> mouse pointer which will always be confined
      to the limits of the VM window. Basically, you activate the VM by
      clicking inside it.</para>

      <para>To return ownership of keyboard and mouse to your host operating
      system, VirtualBox reserves a special key on your keyboard for itself:
      the <emphasis role="bold">"host key".</emphasis> By default, this is the
      <emphasis>right Control key</emphasis> on your keyboard; on a Mac host,
      the default host key is the left Command key. You can change this
      default in the VirtualBox Global Settings. In any case, the current
      setting for the host key is always displayed <emphasis>at the bottom
      right of your VM window,</emphasis> should you have forgotten about
      it:</para>

      <para><mediaobject>
          <imageobject>
            <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/vm-hostkey.png"
                       width="7cm" />
          </imageobject>
        </mediaobject>In detail, all this translates into the
      following:</para>

      <para><itemizedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para>Your <emphasis role="bold">keyboard</emphasis> is owned by
            the VM if the VM window on your host desktop has the keyboard
            focus (and then, if you have many windows open in your guest
            operating system as well, the window that has the focus in your
            VM). This means that if you want to type within your VM, click on
            the title bar of your VM window first.</para>

            <para>To release keyboard ownership, press the Host key (as
            explained above, typically the right Control key).</para>

            <para>Note that while the VM owns the keyboard, some key sequences
            (like Alt-Tab for example) will no longer be seen by the host, but
            will go to the guest instead. After you press the host key to
            re-enable the host keyboard, all key presses will go through the
            host again, so that sequences like Alt-Tab will no longer reach
            the guest.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>Your <emphasis role="bold">mouse</emphasis> is owned by the
            VM only after you have clicked in the VM window. The host mouse
            pointer will disappear, and your mouse will drive the guest's
            pointer instead of your normal mouse pointer.</para>

            <para>Note that mouse ownership is independent of that of the
            keyboard: even after you have clicked on a titlebar to be able to
            type into the VM window, your mouse is not necessarily owned by
            the VM yet.</para>

            <para>To release ownership of your mouse by the VM, also press the
            Host key.</para>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist></para>

      <para>As this behavior can be inconvenient, VirtualBox provides a set of
      tools and device drivers for guest systems called the "VirtualBox Guest
      Additions" which make VM keyboard and mouse operation a lot more
      seamless. Most importantly, the Additions will get rid of the second
      "guest" mouse pointer and make your host mouse pointer work directly in
      the guest.</para>

      <para>This will be described later in <xref
      linkend="guestadditions" />.</para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Typing special characters</title>

      <para>Operating systems expect certain key combinations to initiate
      certain procedures. Some of these key combinations may be difficult to
      enter into a virtual machine, as there are three candidates as to who
      receives keyboard input: the host operating system, VirtualBox, or the
      guest operating system. Who of these three receives keypresses depends
      on a number of factors, including the key itself.</para>

      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>Host operating systems reserve certain key combinations for
          themselves. For example, it is impossible to enter the <emphasis
          role="bold">Ctrl+Alt+Delete</emphasis> combination if you want to
          reboot the guest operating system in your virtual machine, because
          this key combination is usually hard-wired into the host OS (both
          Windows and Linux intercept this), and pressing this key combination
          will therefore reboot your <emphasis>host</emphasis>.</para>

          <para>Also, on Linux and Solaris hosts, which use the X Window
          System, the key combination <emphasis
          role="bold">Ctrl+Alt+Backspace</emphasis> normally resets the X
          server (to restart the entire graphical user interface in case it
          got stuck). As the X server intercepts this combination, pressing it
          will usually restart your <emphasis>host</emphasis> graphical user
          interface (and kill all running programs, including VirtualBox, in
          the process).</para>

          <para>Third, on Linux hosts supporting virtual terminals, the key
          combination <emphasis role="bold">Ctrl+Alt+Fx</emphasis> (where Fx
          is one of the function keys from F1 to F12) normally allows to
          switch between virtual terminals. As with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, these
          combinations are intercepted by the host operating system and
          therefore always switch terminals on the
          <emphasis>host</emphasis>.</para>

          <para>If, instead, you want to send these key combinations to the
          <emphasis>guest</emphasis> operating system in the virtual machine,
          you will need to use one of the following methods:</para>

          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
              <para>Use the items in the "Machine" menu of the virtual machine
              window. There you will find "Insert Ctrl+Alt+Delete" and
              "Ctrl+Alt+Backspace"; the latter will only have an effect with
              Linux or Solaris guests, however.</para>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>Press special key combinations with the Host key (normally
              the right Control key), which VirtualBox will then translate for
              the virtual machine:<itemizedlist>
                  <listitem>
                    <para><emphasis role="bold">Host key + Del</emphasis> to
                    send Ctrl+Alt+Del (to reboot the guest);</para>
                  </listitem>

                  <listitem>
                    <para><emphasis role="bold">Host key +
                    Backspace</emphasis> to send Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (to
                    restart the graphical user interface of a Linux or Solaris
                    guest);</para>
                  </listitem>

                  <listitem>
                    <para><emphasis role="bold">Host key + F1</emphasis> (or
                    other function keys) to simulate Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or other
                    function keys, i.e. to switch between virtual terminals in
                    a Linux guest).</para>
                  </listitem>
                </itemizedlist></para>
            </listitem>
          </itemizedlist>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>For some other keyboard combinations such as <emphasis
          role="bold">Alt-Tab</emphasis> (to switch between open windows),
          VirtualBox allows you to configure whether these combinations will
          affect the host or the guest, if a virtual machine currently has the
          focus. This is a global setting for all virtual machines and can be
          found under "File" -&gt; "Preferences" -&gt; "Input" -&gt;
          "Auto-capture keyboard".</para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Changing removable media</title>

      <para>While a virtual machine is running, you can change removable media
      in the "Devices" menu of the VM's window. Here you can select in detail
      what VirtualBox presents to your VM as a CD, DVD, or floppy.</para>

      <para>The settings are the same as would be available for the VM in the
      "Settings" dialog of the VirtualBox main window, but since that dialog
      is disabled while the VM is in the "running" or "saved" state, this
      extra menu saves you from having to shut down and restart the VM every
      time you want to change media.</para>

      <para>Hence, in the "Devices" menu, VirtualBox allows you to attach the
      host drive to the guest or select a floppy or DVD image using the Disk
      Image Manager, all as described in <xref
      linkend="configbasics" />.</para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="intro-resize-window">
      <title>Resizing the machine's window</title>

      <para>You can resize the virtual machine's window when it is running. In
      that case, one of three things will happen:<orderedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para>If you have <emphasis role="bold">"scale mode"</emphasis>
            enabled, then the virtual machine's screen will be scaled to the
            size of the window. This can be useful if you have many machines
            running and want to have a look at one of them while it is running
            in the background. Alternatively, it might be useful to enlarge a
            window if the VM's output screen is very small, for example
            because you are running an old operating system in it.</para>

            <para>To enable scale mode, press the <emphasis role="bold">host
            key + C</emphasis>, or select "Scale mode" from the "Machine" menu
            in the VM window. To leave scale mode, press the host key + C
            again.</para>

            <para>Please see <xref linkend="KnownIssues" /> for additional
            remarks.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>If you have the Guest Additions installed and they support
            automatic <emphasis role="bold">resizing</emphasis>, the Guest
            Additions will automatically adjust the screen resolution of the
            guest operating system. For example, if you are running a Windows
            guest with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels and you then resize the
            VM window to make it 100 pixels wider, the Guest Additions will
            change the Windows display resolution to 1124x768.</para>

            <para>Please see <xref linkend="guestadditions" /> for more
            information about the Guest Additions.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>Otherwise, if the window is bigger than the VM's screen, the
            screen will be centered. If it is smaller, then scroll bars will
            be added to the machine window.</para>
          </listitem>
        </orderedlist></para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Saving the state of the machine</title>

      <para>When you click on the "Close" button of your virtual machine
      window (at the top right of the window, just like you would close any
      other window on your system), VirtualBox asks you whether you want to
      "save" or "power off" the VM. (As a shortcut, you can also press the
      Host key together with "Q".)</para>

      <para><mediaobject>
          <imageobject>
            <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/vm-close.png"
                       width="11cm" />
          </imageobject>
        </mediaobject>The difference between these three options is crucial.
      They mean:</para>

      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para><emphasis role="bold">Save the machine state:</emphasis> With
          this option, VirtualBox "freezes" the virtual machine by completely
          saving its state to your local disk.</para>

          <para>When you start the VM again later, you will find that the VM
          continues exactly where it was left off. All your programs will
          still be open, and your computer resumes operation. Saving the state
          of a virtual machine is thus in some ways similar to suspending a
          laptop computer (e.g. by closing its lid).</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para><emphasis role="bold">Send the shutdown signal.</emphasis>
          This will send an ACPI shutdown signal to the virtual machine, which
          has the same effect as if you had pressed the power button on a real
          computer. So long as the VM is running a fairly modern operating
          system, this should trigger a proper shutdown mechanism from within
          the VM.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para><emphasis role="bold">Power off the machine:</emphasis> With
          this option, VirtualBox also stops running the virtual machine, but
          <emphasis>without</emphasis> saving its state.<warning>
              <para>This is equivalent to pulling the power plug on a real
              computer without shutting it down properly. If you start the
              machine again after powering it off, your operating system will
              have to reboot completely and may begin a lengthy check of its
              (virtual) system disks. As a result, this should not normally be
              done, since it can potentially cause data loss or an
              inconsistent state of the guest system on disk.</para>
            </warning></para>

          <para>As an exception, if your virtual machine has any snapshots
          (see the next chapter), you can use this option to quickly <emphasis
          role="bold">restore the current snapshot</emphasis> of the virtual
          machine. In that case, powering off the machine will not disrupt its
          state, but any changes made since that snapshot was taken will be
          lost.</para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>

      <para>The <emphasis role="bold">"Discard"</emphasis> button in the
      VirtualBox Manager window discards a virtual machine's saved state. This
      has the same effect as powering it off, and the same warnings
      apply.</para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="snapshots">
    <title>Snapshots</title>

    <para>With snapshots, you can save a particular state of a virtual machine
    for later use. At any later time, you can revert to that state, even
    though you may have changed the VM considerably since then. A snapshot of
    a virtual machine is thus similar to a machine in "saved" state, as
    described above, but there can be many of them, and these saved states are
    preserved.</para>

    <para>You can see the snapshots of a virtual machine by first selecting a
    machine in the VirtualBox Manager and then clicking on the "Snapshots"
    button at the top right. Until you take a snapshot of the machine, the
    list of snapshots will be empty except for the "Current state" item, which
    represents the "Now" point in the lifetime of the virtual machine.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Taking, restoring and deleting snapshots</title>

      <para>There are three operations related to snapshots:<orderedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para>You can <emphasis role="bold">take a snapshot</emphasis>.
            This makes a copy of the machine's current state, to which you can
            go back at any given time later.<itemizedlist>
                <listitem>
                  <para>If your VM is currently running, select "Take
                  snapshot" from the "Machine" pull-down menu of the VM
                  window.</para>
                </listitem>

                <listitem>
                  <para>If your VM is currently in either the "saved" or the
                  "powered off" state (as displayed next to the VM in the
                  VirtualBox main window), click on the "Snapshots" tab on the
                  top right of the main window, and then<itemizedlist>
                      <listitem>
                        <para>either on the small camera icon (for "Take
                        snapshot") or</para>
                      </listitem>

                      <listitem>
                        <para>right-click on the "Current State" item in the
                        list and select "Take snapshot" from the menu.</para>
                      </listitem>
                    </itemizedlist></para>
                </listitem>
              </itemizedlist></para>

            <para>In any case, a window will pop up and ask you for a snapshot
            name. This name is purely for reference purposes to help you
            remember the state of the snapshot. For example, a useful name
            would be "Fresh installation from scratch, no Guest Additions", or
            "Service Pack 3 just installed". You can also add a longer text in
            the "Description" field if you want.</para>

            <para>Your new snapshot will then appear in the snapshots list.
            Underneath your new snapshot, you will see an item called "Current
            state", signifying that the current state of your VM is a
            variation based on the snapshot you took earlier. If you later
            take another snapshot, you will see that they will be displayed in
            sequence, and each subsequent snapshot is derived from an earlier
            one:<mediaobject>
                <imageobject>
                  <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/snapshots-1.png"
                             width="12cm" />
                </imageobject>
              </mediaobject></para>

            <para>VirtualBox imposes no limits on the number of snapshots you
            can take. The only practical limitation is disk space on your
            host: each snapshot stores the state of the virtual machine and
            thus occupies some disk space. (See the next section for details
            on what exactly is stored in a snapshot.)</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>You can <emphasis role="bold">restore a snapshot</emphasis>
            by right-clicking on any snapshot you have taken in the list of
            snapshots. By restoring a snapshot, you go back (or forward) in
            time: the current state of the machine is lost, and the machine is
            restored to the exact state it was in when the snapshot was
            taken.<footnote>
                <para>Both the terminology and the functionality of restoring
                snapshots has changed with VirtualBox 3.1. Before that
                version, it was only possible to go back to the very last
                snapshot taken -- not earlier ones, and the operation was
                called "Discard current state" instead of "Restore last
                snapshot". The limitation has been lifted with version 3.1. It
                is now possible to restore <emphasis>any</emphasis> snapshot,
                going backward and forward in time.</para>
              </footnote></para>

            <note>
              <para>Restoring a snapshot will affect the virtual hard drives
              that are connected to your VM, as the entire state of the
              virtual hard drive will be reverted as well. This means also
              that all files that have been created since the snapshot and all
              other file changes <emphasis>will be lost. </emphasis>In order
              to prevent such data loss while still making use of the snapshot
              feature, it is possible to add a second hard drive in
              "write-through" mode using the
              <computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> interface and use it
              to store your data. As write-through hard drives are
              <emphasis>not</emphasis> included in snapshots, they remain
              unaltered when a machine is reverted. See <xref
              linkend="hdimagewrites" os="" /> for details.</para>
            </note>

            <para>To avoid losing the current state when restoring a snapshot,
            you can create a new snapshot before the restore.</para>

            <para>By restoring an earlier snapshot and taking more snapshots
            from there, it is even possible to create a kind of alternate
            reality and to switch between these different histories of the
            virtual machine. This can result in a whole tree of virtual
            machine snapshots, as shown in the screenshot above.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>You can also <emphasis role="bold">delete a
            snapshot</emphasis>, which will not affect the state of the
            virtual machine, but only release the files on disk that
            VirtualBox used to store the snapshot data, thus freeing disk
            space. To delete a snapshot, right-click on it in the snapshots
            tree and select "Delete". As of VirtualBox 3.2, snapshots can be
            deleted even while a machine is running.<note>
                <para>Whereas taking and restoring snapshots are fairly quick
                operations, deleting a snapshot can take a considerable amount
                of time since large amounts of data may need to be copied
                between several disk image files. Temporary disk files may
                also need large amounts of disk space while the operation is
                in progress.</para>
              </note></para>

            <para>There are some situations which cannot be handled while a VM
            is running, and you will get an appropriate message that you need
            to perform this snapshot deletion when the VM is shut down.</para>
          </listitem>
        </orderedlist></para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Snapshot contents</title>

      <para>Think of a snapshot as a point in time that you have preserved.
      More formally, a snapshot consists of three things:<itemizedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para>It contains a complete copy of the VM settings, including
            the hardware configuration, so that when you restore a snapshot,
            the VM settings are restored as well. (For example, if you changed
            the hard disk configuration or the VM's system settings, that
            change is undone when you restore the snapshot.)</para>

            <para>The copy of the settings is stored in the machine
            configuration, an XML text file, and thus occupies very little
            space.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>The complete state of all the virtual disks attached to the
            machine is preserved. Going back to a snapshot means that all
            changes that had been made to the machine's disks -- file by file,
            bit by bit -- will be undone as well. Files that were since
            created will disappear, files that were deleted will be restored,
            changes to files will be reverted.</para>

            <para>(Strictly speaking, this is only true for virtual hard disks
            in "normal" mode. As mentioned above, you can configure disks to
            behave differently with snapshots; see <xref
            linkend="hdimagewrites" />. Even more formally and technically
            correct, it is not the virtual disk itself that is restored when a
            snapshot is restored. Instead, when a snapshot is taken,
            VirtualBox creates differencing images which contain only the
            changes since the snapshot were taken, and when the snapshot is
            restored, VirtualBox throws away that differencing image, thus
            going back to the previous state. This is both faster and uses
            less disk space. For the details, which can be complex, please see
            <xref linkend="diffimages" />.)</para>

            <para>Creating the differencing image as such does not occupy much
            space on the host disk initially, since the differencing image
            will initially be empty (and grow dynamically later with each
            write operation to the disk). The longer you use the machine after
            having created the snapshot, however, the more the differencing
            image will grow in size.</para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>Finally, if you took a snapshot while the machine was
            running, the memory state of the machine is also saved in the
            snapshot (the same way the memory can be saved when you close the
            VM window). When you restore such a snapshot, execution resumes at
            exactly the point when the snapshot was taken.</para>

            <para>The memory state file can be as large as the memory size of
            the virtual machine and will therefore occupy quite some disk
            space as well.</para>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist></para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title id="configbasics">Virtual machine configuration</title>

    <para>When you select a virtual machine from the list in the Manager
    window, you will see a summary of that machine's settings on the
    right.</para>

    <para>Clicking on the "Settings" button in the toolbar at the top brings
    up a detailed window where you can configure many of the properties of the
    selected VM. But be careful: even though it is possible to change all VM
    settings after installing a guest operating system, certain changes might
    prevent a guest operating system from functioning correctly if done after
    installation.</para>

    <note>
      <para>The "Settings" button is disabled while a VM is either in the
      "running" or "saved" state. This is simply because the settings dialog
      allows you to change fundamental characteristics of the virtual computer
      that is created for your guest operating system, and this operating
      system may not take it well when, for example, half of its memory is
      taken away from under its feet. As a result, if the "Settings" button is
      disabled, shut down the current VM first.</para>
    </note>

    <para>VirtualBox provides a plethora of parameters that can be changed for
    a virtual machine. The various settings that can be changed in the
    "Settings" window are described in detail in <xref
    linkend="BasicConcepts" />. Even more parameters are available with the
    VirtualBox command line interface; see <xref
    linkend="vboxmanage" />.</para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1>
    <title>Removing virtual machines</title>

    <para>To remove a virtual machine which you no longer need, right-click on
    it in the Manager's VM list select "Remove" from the context menu that
    comes up.</para>

    <para>A confirmation window will come up that allows you to select whether
    the machine should only be removed from the list of machines or whether
    the files associated with it should also be deleted.</para>

    <para>The "Remove" menu item is disabled while a machine is
    running.</para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="ovf">
    <title>Importing and exporting virtual machines</title>

    <para>VirtualBox can import and export virtual machines in the
    industry-standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF).<footnote>
        <para>OVF support was originally introduced with VirtualBox 2.2 and
        has seen major improvements with every version since.</para>
      </footnote></para>

    <para>OVF is a cross-platform standard supported by many virtualization
    products which allows for creating ready-made virtual machines that can
    then be imported into a virtualizer such as VirtualBox. VirtualBox makes
    OVF import and export easy to access and supports it from the Manager
    window as well as its command-line interface. This allows for packaging
    so-called <emphasis role="bold">virtual appliances</emphasis>: disk images
    together with configuration settings that can be distributed easily. This
    way one can offer complete ready-to-use software packages (operating
    systems with applications) that need no configuration or installation
    except for importing into VirtualBox.<note>
        <para>The OVF standard is complex, and support in VirtualBox is an
        ongoing process. In particular, no guarantee is made that VirtualBox
        supports all appliances created by other virtualization software. For
        a list of known limitations, please see <xref
        linkend="KnownIssues" />.</para>
      </note></para>

    <para>Appliances in OVF format can appear in two variants:<orderedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>They can come in several files, as one or several disk images,
          typically in the widely-used VMDK format (see <xref
          linkend="vdidetails" />) and a textual description file in an XML
          dialect with an <computeroutput>.ovf</computeroutput> extension.
          These files must then reside in the same directory for VirtualBox to
          be able to import them.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Alternatively, the above files can be packed together into a
          single archive file, typically with an
          <computeroutput>.ova</computeroutput> extension. (Such archive files
          use a variant of the TAR archive format and can therefore be
          unpacked outside of VirtualBox with any utility that can unpack
          standard TAR files.)</para>
        </listitem>
      </orderedlist></para>

    <para>To <emphasis role="bold">import</emphasis> an appliance in one of
    the above formats, simply double-click on the OVF/OVA file.<footnote>
        <para>Starting with version 4.0, VirtualBox creates file type
        associations for OVF and OVA files on your host operating
        system.</para>
      </footnote> Alternatively, select "File" -&gt; "Import appliance" from
    the Manager window. In the file dialog that comes up, navigate to the file
    with either the <computeroutput>.ovf</computeroutput> or the
    <computeroutput>.ova</computeroutput> file extension.</para>

    <para>If VirtualBox can handle the file, a dialog similar to the following
    will appear:</para>

    <para><mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/ovf-import.png"
                     width="12cm" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>This presents the virtual machines described in the OVF
    file and allows you to change the virtual machine settings by
    double-clicking on the description items. Once you click on <emphasis
    role="bold">"Import"</emphasis>, VirtualBox will copy the disk images and
    create local virtual machines with the settings described in the dialog.
    These will then show up in the Manager's list of virtual machines.</para>

    <para>Note that since disk images tend to be big, and VMDK images that
    come with virtual appliances are typically shipped in a special compressed
    format that is unsuitable for being used by virtual machines directly, the
    images will need to be unpacked and copied first, which can take a few
    minutes.</para>

    <para>For how to import an image at the command line, please see <xref
    linkend="vboxmanage-import" />.</para>

    <para>Conversely, to <emphasis role="bold">export</emphasis> virtual
    machines that you already have in VirtualBox, select "File" -&gt; "Export
    appliance". A different dialog window shows up that allows you to combine
    several virtual machines into an OVF appliance. Then, select the target
    location where the target files should be stored, and the conversion
    process begins. This can again take a while.</para>

    <para>For how to export an image at the command line, please see <xref
    linkend="vboxmanage-export" />.<note>
        <para>OVF cannot describe snapshots that were taken for a virtual
        machine. As a result, when you export a virtual machine that has
        snapshots, only the current state of the machine will be exported, and
        the disk images in the export will have a "flattened" state identical
        to the current state of the virtual machine.</para>
      </note></para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="frontends">
    <title>Alternative front-ends</title>

    <para>As briefly mentioned in <xref linkend="features-overview" />,
    VirtualBox has a very flexible internal design that allows for using
    multiple interfaces to control the same virtual machines. To illustrate,
    you can, for example, start a virtual machine with the VirtualBox Manager
    window and then stop it from the command line. With VirtualBox's support
    for the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), you can even run virtual machines
    remotely on a headless server and have all the graphical output redirected
    over the network.</para>

    <para>In detail, the following front-ends are shipped in the standard
    VirtualBox package:</para>

    <para><orderedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para><computeroutput>VirtualBox</computeroutput> is the VirtualBox
          Manager. This graphical user interface uses the Qt toolkit; most of
          this User Manual is dedicated to describing it. While this is the
          easiest to use, some of the more advanced VirtualBox features are
          kept away from it to keep it simple.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para><computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> is our
          command-line interface for automated and very detailed control of
          every aspect of VirtualBox. It is described in <xref
          linkend="vboxmanage" />.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para><computeroutput>VBoxSDL</computeroutput> is an alternative,
          simple graphical front-end with an intentionally limited feature
          set, designed to only display virtual machines that are controlled
          in detail with <computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput>. This is
          interesting for business environments where displaying all the bells
          and whistles of the full GUI is not feasible.
          <computeroutput>VBoxSDL</computeroutput> is described in <xref
          linkend="vboxsdl" />.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Finally, <computeroutput>VBoxHeadless</computeroutput> is yet
          another front-end that produces no visible output on the host at
          all, but merely acts as a RDP server if the VirtualBox Remote
          Desktop Extension (VRDE) is installed. As opposed to the other
          graphical interfaces, the headless front-end requires no graphics
          support. This is useful, for example, if you want to host your
          virtual machines on a headless Linux server that has no X Window
          system installed. For details, see <xref
          linkend="vboxheadless" />.</para>
        </listitem>
      </orderedlist>If the above front-ends still do not satisfy your
    particular needs, it is possible to create yet another front-end to the
    complex virtualization engine that is the core of VirtualBox, as the
    VirtualBox core neatly exposes all of its features in a clean API; please
    refer to <xref linkend="VirtualBoxAPI" />.</para>
  </sect1>
</chapter>