Welcome to the VirtualBox Main API documentation. This documentation describes the so-called VirtualBox Main API which comprises all public COM interfaces and components provided by the VirtualBox server and by the VirtualBox client library. VirtualBox employs a client-server design, meaning that whenever any part of VirtualBox is running -- be it the Qt GUI, the VBoxManage command-line interface or any virtual machine --, a dedicated server process named VBoxSVC runs in the background. This allows multiple processes working with VirtualBox to cooperate without conflicts. These processes communicate to each other using inter-process communication facilities provided by the COM implementation of the host computer. On Windows platforms, the VirtualBox Main API uses Microsoft COM, a native COM implementation. On all other platforms, Mozilla XPCOM, an open-source COM implementation, is used. All the parts that a typical VirtualBox user interacts with (the Qt GUI and the VBoxManage command-line interface) are technically front-ends to the Main API and only use the interfaces that are documented in this Main API documentation. This ensures that, with any given release version of VirtualBox, all capabilities of the product that could be useful to an external client program are always exposed by way of this API. The VirtualBox Main API (also called the VirtualBox COM library) contains two public component classes: %VirtualBox.VirtualBox and %VirtualBox.Session, which implement IVirtualBox and ISession interfaces respectively. These two classes are of supreme importance and will be needed in order for any front-end program to do anything useful. It is recommended to read the documentation of the mentioned interfaces first. The %VirtualBox.VirtualBox class is a singleton. This means that there can be only one object of this class on the local machine at any given time. This object is a parent of many other objects in the VirtualBox COM library and lives in the VBoxSVC process. In fact, when you create an instance of the VirtualBox.VirtualBox, the COM subsystem checks if the VBoxSVC process is already running, starts it if not, and returns you a reference to the VirtualBox object created in this process. When the last reference to this object is released, the VBoxSVC process ends (with a 5 second delay to protect from too frequent restarts). The %VirtualBox.Session class is a regular component. You can create as many Session objects as you need but all of them will live in a process which issues the object instantiation call. Session objects represent virtual machine sessions which are used to configure virtual machines and control their execution. The naming of methods and attributes is very clearly defined: they all start with a lowercase letter (except if they start with an acronym), and are using CamelCase style otherwise. This naming only applies to the IDL description, and is modified by the various language bindings (some convert the first character to upper case, some not). See the SDK reference for more details about how to call a method or attribute from a specific programming language. /* currently, nsISupportsImpl.h lacks the below-like macros */ #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE1_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE1_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE2_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE2_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE3_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE3_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE4_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE4_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE5_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE5_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE6_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE6_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE7_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE7_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE8_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE8_CI #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS1_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS1_CI(_class, _interface) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE1_CI(_class, _interface) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER1(_class, _interface) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS2_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS2_CI(_class, _i1, _i2) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE2_CI(_class, _i1, _i2) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER2(_class, _i1, _i2) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS3_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS3_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE3_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER3(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS4_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS4_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE4_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER4(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS5_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS5_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE5_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER5(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS6_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS6_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE6_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER6(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS7_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS7_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6, _i7) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE7_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6, _i7) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER7(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6, _i7) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS8_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS8_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6, _i7, _i8) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE8_CI(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6, _i7, _i8) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER8(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3, _i4, _i5, _i6, _i7, _i8) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE1_AMBIGUOUS_CI # define NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE1_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_BEGIN(_class) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(_i1, _ic1) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(nsISupports, _ic1) \ NS_IMPL_QUERY_CLASSINFO(_class) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_END #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE2_AMBIGUOUS_CI # define NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE2_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1, \ _i2, _ic2) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_BEGIN(_class) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(_i1, _ic1) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(_i2, _ic2) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(nsISupports, _ic1) \ NS_IMPL_QUERY_CLASSINFO(_class) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_END #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE3_AMBIGUOUS_CI # define NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE3_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1, \ _i2, _ic2, _i3, _ic3) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_BEGIN(_class) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(_i1, _ic1) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(_i2, _ic2) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(_i3, _ic3) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_ENTRY_AMBIGUOUS(nsISupports, _ic1) \ NS_IMPL_QUERY_CLASSINFO(_class) \ NS_INTERFACE_MAP_END #endif #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE1_AMBIGUOUS_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE1_AMBIGUOUS_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE2_AMBIGUOUS_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE2_AMBIGUOUS_CI #define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE3_AMBIGUOUS_CI NS_IMPL_QUERY_INTERFACE3_AMBIGUOUS_CI #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS1_AMBIGUOUS_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS1_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE1_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER1(_class, _i1) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS2_AMBIGUOUS_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS2_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1, \ _i2, _ic2) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE2_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1, \ _i2, _ic2) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER2(_class, _i1, _i2) #endif #ifndef NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS3_AMBIGUOUS_CI # define NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ISUPPORTS3_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1, \ _i2, _ic2, _i3, _ic3) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_ADDREF(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_RELEASE(_class) \ NS_IMPL_THREADSAFE_QUERY_INTERFACE3_AMBIGUOUS_CI(_class, _i1, _ic1, \ _i2, _ic2, _i3, _ic3) \ NS_IMPL_CI_INTERFACE_GETTER3(_class, _i1, _i2, _i3) #endif This section describes all VirtualBox-specific COM result codes that may be returned by methods of VirtualBox COM interfaces in addition to standard COM result codes. Note that along with the result code, every VirtualBox method returns extended error information through the IVirtualBoxErrorInfo interface on failure. This interface is a preferred way to present the error to the end user because it contains a human readable description of the error. Raw result codes, both standard and described in this section, are intended to be used by programs to analyze the reason of a failure and select an appropriate course of action without involving the end user (for example, retry the operation later or make a different call). The standard COM result codes that may originate from our methods include:
E_INVALIDARG
Returned when the value of the method's argument is not within the range of valid values. This should not be confused with situations when the value is within the range but simply doesn't suit the current object state and there is a possibility that it will be accepted later (in such cases VirtualBox-specific codes are returned, for example, ).
E_POINTER
Returned if a memory pointer for the output argument is invalid (for example, @c null). When pointers representing input arguments (such as strings) are invalid, E_INVALIDARG is returned.
E_ACCESSDENIED
Returned when the called object is not ready. Since the lifetime of a public COM object cannot be fully controlled by the implementation, VirtualBox maintains the readiness state for all objects it creates and returns this code in response to any method call on the object that was deactivated by VirtualBox and is not functioning any more.
E_OUTOFMEMORY
Returned when a memory allocation operation fails.
Object corresponding to the supplied arguments does not exist. Current virtual machine state prevents the operation. Virtual machine error occurred attempting the operation. File not accessible or erroneous file contents. Runtime subsystem error. Pluggable Device Manager error. Current object state prohibits operation. Host operating system related error. Requested operation is not supported. Invalid XML found. Current session state prohibits operation. Object being in use prohibits operation. A provided password was incorrect. A maximum has been reached. Guest Control reported an error from the guest side. The operation ran into an explicitly requested timeout. A drag and drop error has occurred. Settings version of VirtualBox settings files. This is written to the "version" attribute of the root "VirtualBox" element in the settings file XML and indicates which VirtualBox version wrote the file. Null value, indicates invalid version. Legacy settings version, not currently supported. Legacy settings version, not currently supported. Legacy settings version, not currently supported. Legacy settings version, not currently supported. Settings version "1.3", written by VirtualBox 2.0.12. Intermediate settings version, understood by VirtualBox 2.1.x. Intermediate settings version, understood by VirtualBox 2.1.x. Settings version "1.6", written by VirtualBox 2.1.4 (at least). Settings version "1.7", written by VirtualBox 2.2.x and 3.0.x. Intermediate settings version "1.8", understood by VirtualBox 3.1.x. Settings version "1.9", written by VirtualBox 3.1.x. Settings version "1.10", written by VirtualBox 3.2.x. Settings version "1.11", written by VirtualBox 4.0.x. Settings version "1.12", written by VirtualBox 4.1.x. Settings version "1.13", written by VirtualBox 4.2.x. Settings version "1.14", written by VirtualBox 4.3.x. Settings version "1.15", written by VirtualBox 5.0.x. Settings version "1.16", written by VirtualBox 5.1.x. Settings version "1.17", written by VirtualBox 6.0.x. Settings version "1.18", written by VirtualBox 6.1.x. Settings version "1.19", written by VirtualBox 7.0.x. Settings version greater than "1.19", written by a future VirtualBox version. Access mode for opening files. Virtual machine execution state. This enumeration represents possible values of the attribute. Below is the basic virtual machine state diagram. It shows how the state changes during virtual machine execution. The text in square braces shows a method of the IConsole or IMachine interface that performs the given state transition.
            +---------[powerDown()] <- Stuck <--[failure]-+
            V                                             |
    +-> PoweredOff --+-->[powerUp()]--> Starting --+      | +-----[resume()]-----+
    |                |                             |      | V                    |
    |   Aborted <----+                             +--> Running --[pause()]--> Paused
    |                                              |      ^ |                   ^ |
    |  AbortedSaved <-----------[failure]-----<----+      | |                   | |
    |       |                                      |      | |                   | |
    |       +-------------+                        |      | |                   | |
    |                     V                        |      | |                   | |
    |   Saved --------[powerUp()]-----> Restoring -+      | |                   | |
    |     ^                                               | |                   | |
    |     |     +-----------------------------------------+-|-------------------+ +
    |     |     |                                           |                     |
    |     |     +- OnlineSnapshotting <--[takeSnapshot()]<--+---------------------+
    |     |                                                 |                     |
    |     +-------- Saving <--------[saveState()]<----------+---------------------+
    |                                                       |                     |
    +-------------- Stopping -------[powerDown()]<----------+---------------------+
      
Note that states to the right of PoweredOff, Aborted, AbortedSaved, and Saved in the above diagram are called online VM states. These states represent the virtual machine which is being executed in a dedicated process (usually with a GUI window attached to it where you can see the activity of the virtual machine and interact with it). There are two special pseudo-states, FirstOnline and LastOnline, that can be used in relational expressions to detect if the given machine state is online or not:
        if (machine.GetState() >= MachineState_FirstOnline &&
            machine.GetState() <= MachineState_LastOnline)
        {
            ...the machine is being executed...
        }
      
When the virtual machine is in one of the online VM states (that is, being executed), only a few machine settings can be modified. Methods working with such settings contain an explicit note about that. An attempt to change any other setting or perform a modifying operation during this time will result in the @c VBOX_E_INVALID_VM_STATE error. All online states except Running, Paused and Stuck are transitional: they represent temporary conditions of the virtual machine that will last as long as the operation that initiated such a condition. The Stuck state is a special case. It means that execution of the machine has reached the "Guru Meditation" condition. This condition indicates an internal VMM (virtual machine manager) failure which may happen as a result of either an unhandled low-level virtual hardware exception or one of the recompiler exceptions (such as the too-many-traps condition). Note also that any online VM state may transit to the Aborted state. This happens if the process that is executing the virtual machine terminates unexpectedly (for example, crashes). Other than that, the Aborted state is equivalent to PoweredOff. There are also a few additional state diagrams that do not deal with virtual machine execution and therefore are shown separately. The states shown on these diagrams are called offline VM states (this includes PoweredOff, Aborted, AbortedSaved and Saved too). The first diagram shows what happens when a lengthy setup operation is being executed (such as ).
    +----------------------------------(same state as before the call)------+
    |                                                                       |
    +-> PoweredOff --+                                                      |
    |                |                                                      |
    |-> Aborted -----+-->[lengthy VM configuration call] --> SettingUp -----+
    |                |
    +-> Saved -------+
      
The next two diagrams demonstrate the process of taking a snapshot of a powered off virtual machine, restoring the state to that as of a snapshot or deleting a snapshot, respectively.
    +----------------------------------(same state as before the call)------+
    |                                                                       |
    +-> PoweredOff --+                                                      |
    |                +-->[takeSnapshot()] ------------------> Snapshotting -+
    +-> Aborted -----+

    +-> PoweredOff --+
    |                |
    |   Aborted -----+-->[restoreSnapshot()    ]-------> RestoringSnapshot -+
    |                |   [deleteSnapshot()     ]-------> DeletingSnapshot --+
    +-> Saved -------+                                                      |
    |                                                                       |
    +---(Saved if restored from an online snapshot, PoweredOff otherwise)---+
      
For whoever decides to touch this enum: In order to keep the comparisons involving FirstOnline and LastOnline pseudo-states valid, the numeric values of these states must be correspondingly updated if needed: for any online VM state, the condition FirstOnline <= state <= LastOnline must be @c true. The same relates to transient states for which the condition FirstOnline <= state <= LastOnline must be @c true.
Null value (never used by the API). The machine is not running and has no saved execution state; it has either never been started or been shut down successfully. The machine is not currently running, but the execution state of the machine has been saved to an external file when it was running, from where it can be resumed. The machine was teleported to a different host (or process) and then powered off. Take care when powering it on again may corrupt resources it shares with the teleportation target (e.g. disk and network). The process running the machine has terminated abnormally. This may indicate a crash of the VM process in host execution context, or the VM process has been terminated externally. A machine in the @c Saved stated has terminated abnormally before reaching the @c Running state. Similar to the @c Aborted state, this may indicate a crash of the VM process in host execution context, or the VM process has been terminated externally. The machine is currently being executed. For whoever decides to touch this enum: In order to keep the comparisons in the old source code valid, this state must immediately precede the Paused state. @todo Lift this spectacularly wonderful restriction. Execution of the machine has been paused. For whoever decides to touch this enum: In order to keep the comparisons in the old source code valid, this state must immediately follow the Running state. @todo Lift this spectacularly wonderful restriction. Execution of the machine has reached the "Guru Meditation" condition. This indicates a severe error in the hypervisor itself. bird: Why this uncool name? Could we rename it to "GuruMeditation" or "Guru", perhaps? Or are there some other VMM states that are intended to be lumped in here as well? The machine is about to be teleported to a different host or process. It is possible to pause a machine in this state, but it will go to the @c TeleportingPausedVM state and it will not be possible to resume it again unless the teleportation fails. A live snapshot is being taken. The machine is running normally, but some of the runtime configuration options are inaccessible. Also, if paused while in this state it will transition to @c OnlineSnapshotting and it will not be resume the execution until the snapshot operation has completed. Machine is being started after powering it on from a zero execution state. Machine is being normally stopped powering it off, or after the guest OS has initiated a shutdown sequence. Machine is saving its execution state to a file. Execution state of the machine is being restored from a file after powering it on from either the @c Saved or @c AbortedSaved execution state. The machine is being teleported to another host or process, but it is not running. This is the paused variant of the @c Teleporting state. Teleporting the machine state in from another host or process. Like @c DeletingSnapshot, but the merging of media is ongoing in the background while the machine is running. Like @c DeletingSnapshotOnline, but the machine was paused when the merging of differencing media was started. Like @c LiveSnapshotting, but the machine was paused when the merging of differencing media was started. A machine snapshot is being restored; this typically does not take long. A machine snapshot is being deleted; this can take a long time since this may require merging differencing media. This value indicates that the machine is not running while the snapshot is being deleted. Lengthy setup operation is in progress. Taking an (offline) snapshot. Pseudo-state: first online state (for use in relational expressions). Pseudo-state: last online state (for use in relational expressions). Pseudo-state: first transient state (for use in relational expressions). Pseudo-state: last transient state (for use in relational expressions).
Session state. This enumeration represents possible values of and attributes. Null value (never used by the API). In , this means that the machine is not locked for any sessions. In , this means that no machine is currently locked for this session. In , this means that the machine is currently locked for a session, whose process identifier can then be found in the attribute. In , this means that a machine is currently locked for this session, and the mutable machine object can be found in the attribute (see for details). A new process is being spawned for the machine as a result of call. This state also occurs as a short transient state during an call. The session is being unlocked. Basic CPU architecture types. Matches any CPU architecture. 32-bit (and 16-bit) x86. 64-bit x86. (Also known as x86-64 or x64.) Virtual CPU property type. This enumeration represents possible values of the IMachine get- and setCPUProperty methods. Null value (never used by the API). This setting determines whether VirtualBox will expose the Physical Address Extension (PAE) feature of the host CPU to the guest. Note that in case PAE is not available, it will not be reported. This setting determines whether VirtualBox will advertise long mode (i.e. 64-bit guest support) and let the guest enter it. This setting determines whether a triple fault within a guest will trigger an internal error condition and stop the VM (default) or reset the virtual CPU/VM and continue execution. This setting determines whether an APIC is part of the virtual CPU. This feature can only be turned off when the X2APIC feature is off. This setting determines whether an x2APIC is part of the virtual CPU. Since this feature implies that the APIC feature is present, it automatically enables the APIC feature when set. If set, force an indirect branch prediction barrier on VM exits if the host CPU supports it. This setting will significantly slow down workloads causing many VM exits, so it is only recommended for situation where there is a real need to be paranoid. If set, force an indirect branch prediction barrier on VM entry if the host CPU supports it. This setting will significantly slow down workloads causing many VM exits, so it is only recommended for situation where there is a real need to be paranoid. Enabled the hardware virtualization (AMD-V/VT-x) feature on the guest CPU. This requires hardware virtualization on the host CPU. If set, the speculation control CPUID bits and MSRs, when available on the host, are exposed to the guest. Depending on the host CPU and operating system, this may significantly slow down workloads causing many VM exits. If set, the speculation controls are managed by the host. This is intended for guests which do not set the speculation controls themselves. Note! This has not yet been implemented beyond leaving everything to the host OS. If set and the host is affected by CVE-2018-3646, flushes the level 1 data cache when the EMT is scheduled to do ring-0 guest execution. There could be a small performance penalty for certain typs of workloads. For security reasons this setting will be enabled by default. If set and the host is affected by CVE-2018-3646, flushes the level 1 data on every VM entry. This setting may significantly slow down workloads causing many VM exits, so it is only recommended for situation where there is a real need to be paranoid. If set and the host is affected by CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, or CVE-2018-12130, clears the relevant MDS buffers when the EMT is scheduled to do ring-0 guest execution. There could be a small performance penalty for certain typs of workloads. For security reasons this setting will be enabled by default. If set and the host is affected by CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, or CVE-2018-12130, clears the relevant MDS buffers on every VM entry. This setting may slow down workloads causing many VM exits, so it is only recommended for situation where there is a real need to be paranoid. Hardware virtualization property type. This enumeration represents possible values for the and methods. Null value (never used by the API). Whether hardware virtualization (VT-x/AMD-V) is enabled at all. If such extensions are not available, they will not be used. Whether VT-x VPID is enabled. If this extension is not available, it will not be used. Whether Nested Paging is enabled. If this extension is not available, it will not be used. Whether VT-x unrestricted execution is enabled. If this feature is not available, it will not be used. Whether large page allocation is enabled; requires nested paging and a 64-bit host. Whether the VM should fail to start if hardware virtualization (VT-x/AMD-V) cannot be used. If not set, there will be an automatic fallback to software virtualization. Use the native hypervisor API instead of the VirtualBox one (HM) for VT-X/AMD-V. This is ignored if isn't set. Whether AMD-V Virtualized VMSAVE/VMLOAD is enabled. If this feature is not available, it will not be used. The paravirtualized guest interface provider. This enumeration represents possible values for the attribute. No provider is used. A default provider is automatically chosen according to the guest OS type. Used for VMs which didn't used to have any provider settings. Usually interpreted as @c None for most VMs. A minimal set of features to expose to the paravirtualized guest. Microsoft Hyper-V. Linux KVM. Used with . Placeholder value, do not use when obtaining a lock. Request only a shared lock for remote-controlling the machine. Such a lock allows changing certain VM settings which can be safely modified for a running VM. Lock the machine for writing. This requests an exclusive lock, i.e. there cannot be any other API client holding any type of lock for this VM concurrently. Remember that a VM process counts as an API client which implicitly holds the equivalent of a shared lock during the entire VM runtime. Lock the machine for writing, and create objects necessary for running a VM in this process. Session type. This enumeration represents possible values of the attribute. Null value (never used by the API). Session has acquired an exclusive write lock on a machine using . Session has launched a VM process using Session has obtained a link to another session using Device type. Null value, may also mean "no device" (not allowed for ). Floppy device. CD/DVD-ROM device. Hard disk device. Network device. USB device. Shared folder device. Graphics device 3D activity. End of valid device types (exclusive). Used for invalid validation and such. Device activity for . Host-Guest clipboard interchange mode. Drag and drop interchange mode. Scope of the operation. A generic enumeration used in various methods to define the action or argument scope. BIOS boot menu mode. BIOS APIC initialization mode. If the hardware does not support the mode then the code falls back to a lower mode. CPU features. Firmware type. BIOS Firmware. EFI Firmware, bitness detected basing on OS type. EFI firmware, 32-bit. EFI firmware, 64-bit. EFI firmware, combined 32 and 64-bit. Type of pointing device used in a virtual machine. No mouse. PS/2 auxiliary device, a.k.a. mouse. USB mouse (relative pointer). USB tablet (absolute pointer). Also enables a relative USB mouse in addition. Combined device, working as PS/2 or USB mouse, depending on guest behavior. Using this device can have negative performance implications. USB multi-touch device, just touchscreen. It is a specific mode of the USB tablet and also enables the mouse device. USB multi-touch device, touchscreen plus touchpad. It also enables the mouse device. Type of keyboard device used in a virtual machine. No keyboard. PS/2 keyboard. USB keyboard. Combined device, working as PS/2 or USB keyboard, depending on guest behavior. Using of such device can have negative performance implications. Format of a bitmap. Generic values for formats used by the source bitmap, the screen shot or image update APIs. Unknown buffer format (the user may not assume any particular format of the buffer). Generic BGR format without alpha channel. Pixel layout depends on the number of bits per pixel:
  • 32 - bits 31:24 undefined, bits 23:16 R, bits 15:8 G, bits 7:0 B.
  • 16 - bits 15:11 R, bits 10:5 G, bits 4:0 B.
4 bytes per pixel: B, G, R, 0. 4 bytes per pixel: B, G, R, A. 4 bytes per pixel: R, G, B, A. PNG image. JPEG image.
The type of the disk partition. Empty partition entry FAT12 if partition size less than 65536 sectors FAT16 if partition size less than 65536 sectors FAT12 or FAT16 if partition size greater or equal than 65536 sectors NT and OS/2 installable file system, e.g. NTFS, exFAT, HPFS. The FAT32 with CHS addressing. The FAT32 with LBA addressing. The FAT16 with LBA addressing. The extended partition with LBA addressing. Windows Recovery Environment (RE) partition (hidden NTFS partition). The linux swap partition (old versions). The linux native partition (old versions). The BSD slice. The linux swap partition. The linux native partition. The linux extended partition. The linux LVM partition. The BSD slice. The Apple UFS partition. The Apple HFS partition. The Apple HFS partition. The GPT protective MBR partition. The EFI system partition. Unknown partition type. MBR partition scheme. Intel Fast Flash (iFFS) partition. Sony boot partition. Lenovo boot partition. Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR). Windows Basic data partition Windows Logical Disk Manager (LDM) metadata partition. Windows Logical Disk Manager data partition. Windows Recovery Environment. Windows Storage Spaces partition. Windows Storage Replica partition. IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) partition. Linux filesystem data. Linux RAID partition. Linux root partition for x86. Linux root partition for AMD64. Linux root partition for ARM32. Linux root partition for ARM64 / AArch64. Linux /home partition. Linux /srv partition. Linux plain dm-crypt partition. Linux unitified key setup (LUKS) partition. Linux reserved partition. FreeBSD boot partition. FreeBSD data partition. FreeBSD swap partition. FreeBSD unix file system (UFS) partition. FreeBSD Vinum volume manager partition. FreeBSD ZFS partition. Unknown FreeBSD partition. Apple hierarchical file system plus (HFS+) partition. Apple APFS/FileFault container partition. Apple RAID partition. Apple RAID partition, offline. Apple boot partition. Apple label. Apple TV recovery partition. Apple Core Storage Containe. SoftRAID status. SoftRAID scratch. SoftRAID volume. SoftRAID cache. Unknown Apple partition. Solaris boot partition. Solaris root partition. Solaris swap partition. Solaris backup partition. Solaris /usr partition. Solaris /var partition. Solaris /home partition. Solaris alternate sector. Solaris reserved partition. Unknown Solaris partition. NetBSD swap partition. NetBSD fast file system (FFS) partition. NetBSD log structured file system (LFS) partition. NetBSD RAID partition. NetBSD concatenated partition. NetBSD encrypted partition. Unknown NetBSD partition. Chrome OS kernel partition. Chrome OS root file system partition. Chrome OS partition reserved for future. Container Linux /usr partition. Container Linux resizable root filesystem partition. Container Linux OEM customization partition. Container Linux root filesystem on RAID partition. Haiku BFS MidnightBSD boot partition. MidnightBSD data partition. MidnightBSD swap partition. MidnightBSD unix file system (UFS) partition. MidnightBSD Vinum volume manager partition. MidnightBSD ZFS partition. Unknown MidnightBSD partition. OpenBSD data partition. QNX power-safe file system partition. Plan 9 partition. VMWare ESX coredump partition. VMWare ESX virtual machine file system (VMFS) partition. VMWare ESX reserved partition. Unknown VMWare partition. Android x86 bootloader partition. Android x86 bootloader2 partition. Android x86 boot partition. Android x86 recovery partition. Android x86 misc partition. Android x86 metadata partition. Android x86 system partition. Android x86 cache partition. Android x86 data partition. Android x86 persistent data partition. Android x86 vendor partition. Android x86 config partition. Android x86 factory partition. Android x86 alternative factory partition. Android x86 fastboot partition. Android x86 OEM partition. Android ARM meta partition. Android ARM EXT partition. Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) boot partition. Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) config partition. PowerPC PReP boot partition. freedesktop.org shared boot loader configuration partition. Ceph block partition. Ceph block DB partition. Ceph dm-crypt block DB partition. Ceph dm-crypt Linux unitified key setup (LUKS) block DB partition. Ceph dm-crypt block partition. Ceph dm-crypt Linux unitified key setup (LUKS) block partition. Ceph block write-ahead log partition. Ceph dm-crypt block write-ahead log partition. Ceph dm-crypt Linux unitified key setup (LUKS) block write-ahead log partition. Ceph disk in creation partition. Ceph dm-crypt disk in creation partition. Ceph Journal partition. Ceph dm-crypt journal partition. Ceph dm-crypt Linux unitified key setup (LUKS) journal partition. Ceph Lockbox for dm-crypt keys partition. Ceph multipath block 1 partition. Ceph multipath block 2 partition. Ceph multipath block DB partition. Ceph multipath block write-ahead log partition. Ceph multipath journal partition. Ceph multipath object storage deamon (OSD) partition. Ceph object storage deamon (OSD) partition. Ceph dm-crypt object storage deamon (OSD) partition. Ceph dm-crypt Linux unitified key setup (LUKS) object storage deamon (OSD) partition. The IVirtualBoxErrorInfo interface represents extended error information. Extended error information can be set by VirtualBox components after unsuccessful or partially successful method invocation. This information can be retrieved by the calling party as an IVirtualBoxErrorInfo object and then shown to the client in addition to the plain 32-bit result code. In MS COM, this interface extends the IErrorInfo interface, in XPCOM, it extends the nsIException interface. In both cases, it provides a set of common attributes to retrieve error information. Sometimes invocation of some component's method may involve methods of other components that may also fail (independently of this method's failure), or a series of non-fatal errors may precede a fatal error that causes method failure. In cases like that, it may be desirable to preserve information about all errors happened during method invocation and deliver it to the caller. The attribute is intended specifically for this purpose and allows to represent a chain of errors through a single IVirtualBoxErrorInfo object set after method invocation. errors are stored to a chain in the reverse order, i.e. the initial error object you query right after method invocation is the last error set by the callee, the object it points to in the @a next attribute is the previous error and so on, up to the first error (which is the last in the chain). Result code of the error. Usually, it will be the same as the result code returned by the method that provided this error information, but not always. For example, on Win32, CoCreateInstance() will most likely return E_NOINTERFACE upon unsuccessful component instantiation attempt, but not the value the component factory returned. Value is typed 'long', not 'result', to make interface usable from scripting languages. In MS COM, there is no equivalent. In XPCOM, it is the same as nsIException::result. Optional result data of this error. This will vary depending on the actual error usage. By default this attribute is not being used. UUID of the interface that defined the error. In MS COM, it is the same as IErrorInfo::GetGUID, except for the data type. In XPCOM, there is no equivalent. Name of the component that generated the error. In MS COM, it is the same as IErrorInfo::GetSource. In XPCOM, there is no equivalent. Text description of the error. In MS COM, it is the same as IErrorInfo::GetDescription. In XPCOM, it is the same as nsIException::message. Next error object if there is any, or @c null otherwise. In MS COM, there is no equivalent. In XPCOM, it is the same as nsIException::inner. TBD: the idea, technically we can start any number of the NAT networks, but we should expect that at some point we will get collisions because of port-forwanding rules. so perhaps we should support only single instance of NAT network. This is CIDR IPv4 string. Specifying it user defines IPv4 addresses of gateway (low address + 1) and DHCP server (= low address + 2). Note: If there are defined IPv4 port-forward rules update of network will be ignored (because new assignment could break existing rules). This attribute is read-only. It's recalculated on changing network attribute (low address of network + 1). This attribute define whether gateway will support IPv6 or not. This a CIDR IPv6 defining prefix for link-local addresses autoconfiguration within network. Note: ignored if attribute IPv6Enabled is false. Array of NAT port-forwarding rules in string representation, in the following format: "name:protocolid:[host ip]:host port:[guest ip]:guest port". Array of mappings (address,offset),e.g. ("127.0.1.1=4") maps 127.0.1.1 to networkid + 4. Offset in ipv6 network from network id for address mapped into loopback6 interface of the host. Array of NAT port-forwarding rules in string representation, in the following format: "name:protocolid:[host ip]:host port:[guest ip]:guest port". Protocol handled with the rule. IP of the host interface to which the rule should apply. An empty ip address is acceptable, in which case the NAT engine binds the handling socket to any interface. The port number to listen on. The IP address of the guest which the NAT engine will forward matching packets to. An empty IP address is not acceptable. The port number to forward. TBD: User-friendly, descriptive name of cloud subnet. For example, domain names of subnet and vcn, separated by dot. Cloud provider short name. Cloud profile name. Cloud network id. TBD: User-friendly, descriptive name of host-only network. For example, "Host-only network 192.168.56.0". specifies network mask host IP address, which usually is the lower IP address of DHCP range. specifies from IP address in DHCP address range specifies to IP address in DHCP address range Host-only network ID. IPv4 netmask. Set to by default. UTC offset in seconds (32-bit decimal value). Space separated list of IPv4 router addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 time server (RFC 868) addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 name server (IEN 116) addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 DNS addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 log server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 cookie server (RFC 865) addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 line printer server (RFC 1179) addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 imagen impress server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 resource location (RFC 887) addresses. The client name. See RFC 1035 for character limits. Number of 512 byte blocks making up the boot file (16-bit decimal value). Client core file. Domain name for the client. IPv4 address of the swap server that the client should use. The path to the root disk the client should use. Path to a file containing additional DHCP options (RFC2123). Whether IP forwarding should be enabled by the client (boolean). Whether non-local datagrams should be forwarded by the client (boolean) List of IPv4 addresses and masks paris controlling non-local source routing. The maximum datagram size the client should reassemble (16-bit decimal value). The default time-to-leave on outgoing (IP) datagrams (8-bit decimal value). RFC1191 path MTU discovery timeout value in seconds (32-bit decimal value). RFC1191 path MTU discovery size table, sorted in ascending order (list of 16-bit decimal values). The MTU size for the interface (16-bit decimal value). Indicates whether the MTU size is the same for all subnets (boolean). Broadcast address (RFC1122) for the client to use (IPv4 address). Whether to perform subnet mask discovery via ICMP (boolean). Whether to respond to subnet mask requests via ICMP (boolean). Whether to perform router discovery (RFC1256) (boolean). Where to send router solicitation requests (RFC1256) (IPv4 address). List of network and router address pairs addresses. Whether to negotiate the use of trailers for ARP (RTF893) (boolean). The timeout in seconds for ARP cache entries (32-bit decimal value). Whether to use IEEE 802.3 (RTF1042) rather than of v2 (RFC894) ethernet encapsulation (boolean). Default time-to-live for TCP sends (non-zero 8-bit decimal value). The interface in seconds between TCP keepalive messages (32-bit decimal value). Whether to include a byte of garbage in TCP keepalive messages for backward compatibility (boolean). The NIS (Sun Network Information Services) domain name (string). Space separated list of IPv4 NIS server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 NTP (RFC1035) server addresses. Vendor specific information. Only accessible using . Space separated list of IPv4 NetBIOS name server (NBNS) addresses (RFC1001,RFC1002). Space separated list of IPv4 NetBIOS datagram distribution server (NBDD) addresses (RFC1001,RFC1002). NetBIOS node type (RFC1001,RFC1002): 1=B-node, 2=P-node, 4=M-node, and 8=H-node (8-bit decimal value). NetBIOS scope (RFC1001,RFC1002). Only accessible using . Space separated list of IPv4 X windows font server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 X windows display manager addresses. Netware IP domain name (RFC2242) (string). Netware IP information (RFC2242). Only accessible using . The NIS+ domain name (string). Space separated list of IPv4 NIS+ server addresses. TFTP server name (string). Bootfile name (string). Space separated list of IPv4 mobile IP agent addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 simple mail transport protocol (SMPT) server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 post office protocol 3 (POP3) server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 network news transport protocol (NTTP) server addresses. Space separated list of default IPv4 world wide web (WWW) server addresses. Space separated list of default IPv4 finger server addresses. Space separated list of default IPv4 internet relay chat (IRC) server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 StreetTalk server addresses. Space separated list of IPv4 StreetTalk directory assistance (STDA) server addresses. Addresses of one or more service location protocol (SLP) directory agent, and an indicator of whether their use is mandatory. Only accessible using . List of service scopes for the service location protocol (SLP) and whether using the list is mandator. Only accessible using . Domain search list, see RFC3397 and section 4.1.4 in RFC1035 for encoding. Only accessible using . Value format is specific to the option and generally user friendly. Value format is a series of hex bytes (09314f3200fe), optionally colons as byte separators (9:31:4f:32::fe). MAC address MAC address wildcard pattern. Vendor class ID Vendor class ID wildcard pattern. User class ID User class ID wildcard pattern. The IDHCPServer interface represents the VirtualBox DHCP server configuration. To enumerate all the DHCP servers on the host, use the attribute. specifies if the DHCP server is enabled specifies server IP specifies server network mask specifies internal network name the server is used for specifies from IP address in server address range specifies to IP address in server address range Global configuration that applies to all clients. Configuration groups that applies to selected clients, selection is flexible. Individual NIC configurations either by MAC address or VM + NIC number. configures the server invalid configuration supplied server IP address server network mask server From IP address for address range server To IP address for address range Starts DHCP server process. Failed to start the process. Name of internal network trunk. Type of internal network trunk. Stops DHCP server process. Failed to stop the process. Restart running DHCP server process. Failed to restart the process. Queries the persistent lease database by MAC address. This is handy if the host wants to connect to a server running inside a VM on a host only network. If MAC address not in the database. If not able to read the lease database file. The MAC address to look up. Reserved, MBZ. The assigned address. The lease state. Timestamp of when the lease was issued, in seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. Timestamp of when the lease expires/expired, in seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. Gets or adds a configuration. The kind of configuration being sought or added. Meaning depends on the @a scope: - Ignored when the @a scope is . - A VM name or UUID for . - A MAC address for . - A group name for . The NIC slot when @a scope is set to , must be zero for all other scope values. Set to @c TRUE if the configuration should be added if not found. If set to @c FALSE the method will fail with VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND. The requested configuration. The DHCP server has several configuration levels: global, group and individual MAC. This interface implements the settings common to each level. Indicates the kind of config this is (mostly for IDHCPIndividualConfig). The minimum lease time in seconds, ignored if zero. The default lease time in seconds, ignored if zero. The maximum lease time in seconds, ignored if zero. List of DHCP options which should be forced upon the clients in this config scope when they are available, whether the clients asks for them or not. List of DHCP options which should not be sent to the clients in this config scope. This is intended for cases where one client or a group of clients shouldn't see one or more (typically global) options. Sets a DHCP option. The DHCP option. The value encoding. The DHCP option value. The exact format depends on the DHCP @a option value and @a encoding, see see for the format. Removes the given DHCP option. Removes all the options. One exception here is the DhcpOpt_SubnetMask option in the global scope that is linked to the attribute and therefore cannot be removed. Gets the value of a single DHCP option. The DHCP option being sought. The value encoding. The value of the requested DHCP option. The exact format depends on the DHCP @a option value and the @a encoding, see for the format. Gets all DHCP options and their values Array containing the DHCP option numbers. Array of value encodings that runs parallel to @a options. Array of values that runs parallel to @a options and @a encodings. The format depends on both of those. Remove this group or individual configuration. Will of course not work on global configurations. The global DHCP server configuration, see . Whether this is an inclusive or exclusive group membership condition Defines how the is interpreted. The condition value. Remove this condition from the group. A configuration that applies to a group of NICs. The group name. Group membership conditions. Add new conditions by calling and use to remove. Adds a new condition. Removes all conditions. Configuration for a single NIC, either given directly by MAC address or by VM + adaptor slot number. The MAC address. If a config, this will be queried via the VM ID. The virtual machine ID if a config, null UUID for . The NIC slot number of the VM if a config. Fixed IPv4 address assignment, dynamic if empty. The IVirtualBox interface represents the main interface exposed by the product that provides virtual machine management. An instance of IVirtualBox is required for the product to do anything useful. Even though the interface does not expose this, internally, IVirtualBox is implemented as a singleton and actually lives in the process of the VirtualBox server (VBoxSVC.exe). This makes sure that IVirtualBox can track the state of all virtual machines on a particular host, regardless of which frontend started them. To enumerate all the virtual machines on the host, use the attribute. Error information handling is a bit special with IVirtualBox: creating an instance will always succeed. The return of the actual error code/information is postponed to any attribute or method call. The reason for this is that COM likes to mutilate the error code and lose the detailed error information returned by instance creation. A string representing the version number of the product. The format is 3 integer numbers divided by dots (e.g. 1.0.1). The last number represents the build number and will frequently change. This may be followed by a _ALPHA[0-9]*, _BETA[0-9]* or _RC[0-9]* tag in prerelease builds. Non-Oracle builds may (/shall) also have a publisher tag, at the end. The publisher tag starts with an underscore just like the prerelease build type tag. A string representing the version number of the product, without the publisher information (but still with other tags). See . The internal build revision number of the product. A string representing the package type of this product. The format is OS_ARCH_DIST where OS is either WINDOWS, LINUX, SOLARIS, DARWIN. ARCH is either 32BITS or 64BITS. DIST is either GENERIC, UBUNTU_606, UBUNTU_710, or something like this. A string representing the VirtualBox API version number. The format is 2 integer numbers divided by an underscore (e.g. 1_0). After the first public release of packages with a particular API version the API will not be changed in an incompatible way. Note that this guarantee does not apply to development builds, and also there is no guarantee that this version is identical to the first two integer numbers of the package version. This is mainly intended for the VBox Validation Kit so it can fluently deal with incompatible API changes and new functionality during development (i.e. on trunk). The high 7 bits (62:56) is the major version number, the next 8 bits (55:48) are the minor version number, the next 8 bits (47:40) are the build number, and the rest (39:0) is the API revision number. The API revision number is manually increased on trunk when making incompatible changes that the validation kit or others needs to be able to detect and cope with dynamically. It can also be used to indicate the presence of new features on both trunk and branches. Full path to the directory where the global settings file, VirtualBox.xml, is stored. In this version of VirtualBox, the value of this property is always <user_dir>/.VirtualBox (where <user_dir> is the path to the user directory, as determined by the host OS), and cannot be changed. This path is also used as the base to resolve relative paths in places where relative paths are allowed (unless otherwise expressly indicated). Full name of the global settings file. The value of this property corresponds to the value of plus /VirtualBox.xml. Associated host object. Associated system information object. Array of machine objects registered within this VirtualBox instance. Array of all machine group names which are used by the machines which are accessible. Each group is only listed once, however they are listed in no particular order and there is no guarantee that there are no gaps in the group hierarchy (i.e. "/", "/group/subgroup" is a valid result). Array of medium objects known to this VirtualBox installation. This array contains only base media. All differencing media of the given base medium can be enumerated using . Array of CD/DVD image objects currently in use by this VirtualBox instance. Array of floppy image objects currently in use by this VirtualBox instance. Collection of global shared folders. Global shared folders are available to all virtual machines. New shared folders are added to the collection using . Existing shared folders can be removed using . In the current version of the product, global shared folders are not implemented and therefore this collection is always empty. Associated performance collector object. DHCP servers. Event source for VirtualBox events. The extension pack manager. Names of all internal networks. Names of all host-only networks. Names of all generic network drivers. Names of all configured cloud networks. The cloud provider manager (singleton). Returns a recommended full path of the settings file name for a new virtual machine. This API serves two purposes:
  • It gets called by if @c null or empty string (which is recommended) is specified for the @a settingsFile argument there, which means that API should use a recommended default file name.
  • It can be called manually by a client software before creating a machine, e.g. if that client wants to pre-create the machine directory to create virtual hard disks in that directory together with the new machine settings file. In that case, the file name should be stripped from the full settings file path returned by this function to obtain the machine directory.
See and for more details about the machine name. @a groupName defines which additional subdirectory levels should be included. It must be either a valid group name or @c null or empty string which designates that the machine will not be related to a machine group. If @a baseFolder is a @c null or empty string (which is recommended), the default machine settings folder (see ) will be used as a base folder for the created machine, resulting in a file name like "/home/user/VirtualBox VMs/name/name.vbox". Otherwise the given base folder will be used. This method does not access the host disks. In particular, it does not check for whether a machine with this name already exists.
Suggested machine name. Machine group name for the new machine or machine group. It is used to determine the right subdirectory. Machine creation flags, see (optional). Base machine folder (optional). Fully qualified path where the machine would be created.
Creates a new virtual machine by creating a machine settings file at the given location. VirtualBox machine settings files use a custom XML dialect. Starting with VirtualBox 4.0, a ".vbox" extension is recommended, but not enforced, and machine files can be created at arbitrary locations. However, it is recommended that machines are created in the default machine folder (e.g. "/home/user/VirtualBox VMs/name/name.vbox"; see ). If you specify @c null or empty string (which is recommended) for the @a settingsFile argument, is called automatically to have such a recommended name composed based on the machine name given in the @a name argument and the primary group. If the resulting settings file already exists, this method will fail, unless the forceOverwrite flag is set. The new machine is created unregistered, with the initial configuration set according to the specified guest OS type. A typical sequence of actions to create a new virtual machine is as follows:
  1. Call this method to have a new machine created. The returned machine object will be "mutable" allowing to change any machine property.
  2. Configure the machine using the appropriate attributes and methods.
  3. Call to write the settings to the machine's XML settings file. The configuration of the newly created machine will not be saved to disk until this method is called.
  4. Call to add the machine to the list of machines known to VirtualBox.
The specified guest OS type identifier must match an ID of one of known guest OS types listed in the array. will return @c false for the created machine, until any of machine settings are changed. There is no way to change the name of the settings file or subfolder of the created machine directly. @a osTypeId is invalid. Resulting settings file name is invalid or the settings file already exists or could not be created due to an I/O error. @a name is empty or @c null.
Fully qualified path where the settings file should be created, empty string or @c null for a default folder and file based on the @a name argument and the primary group. (see ). Machine name. Array of group names. @c null or an empty array have the same meaning as an array with just the empty string or "/", i.e. create a machine without group association. Guest OS Type ID. Additional property parameters, passed as a comma-separated list of "name=value" type entries. The following ones are recognized: forceOverwrite=1 to overwrite an existing machine settings file, UUID=<uuid> to specify a machine UUID and directoryIncludesUUID=1 to switch to a special VM directory naming scheme which should not be used unless necessary. The cipher. It should be empty if encryption is not required. The password id. It should be empty if encryption is not required. The password. It should be empty if encryption is not required. Created machine object.
Opens a virtual machine from the existing settings file. The opened machine remains unregistered until you call . The specified settings file name must be fully qualified. The file must exist and be a valid machine XML settings file whose contents will be used to construct the machine object. If the VM is encrypted and password is incorrect the method returns success allowing you to register the encrypted machine but it remains in inaccessible state. You can check and properties to determine the real machine state. will return @c false for the opened machine, until any of machine settings are changed. Settings file name invalid, not found or sharing violation. Name of the machine settings file. The password. If the machine is not encrypted the parameter is ignored. Opened machine object. Registers the machine previously created using or opened using within this VirtualBox installation. After successful method invocation, the event is fired. This method implicitly calls to save all current machine settings before registering it. No matching virtual machine found. Virtual machine was not created within this VirtualBox instance. Attempts to find a virtual machine given its name or UUID. Inaccessible machines cannot be found by name, only by UUID, because their name cannot safely be determined. Could not find registered machine matching @a nameOrId. What to search for. This can either be the UUID or the name of a virtual machine. Machine object, if found. Gets all machine references which are in one of the specified groups. What groups to match. The usual group list rules apply, i.e. passing an empty list will match VMs in the toplevel group, likewise the empty string. All machines which matched. Gets the state of several machines in a single operation. Array with the machine references. Machine states, corresponding to the machines. Creates a new appliance object, which represents an appliance in the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF). This can then be used to import an OVF appliance into VirtualBox or to export machines as an OVF appliance; see the documentation for for details. New appliance. Creates a new guest installation object. This can be used to analyze an installation ISO to create and configure a new machine for it to be installed on. It can also be used to (re)install an existing machine. New unattended object. Creates a new base medium object that will use the given storage format and location for medium data. The actual storage unit is not created by this method. In order to do it, and before you are able to attach the created medium to virtual machines, you must call one of the following methods to allocate a format-specific storage unit at the specified location:
Some medium attributes, such as , may remain uninitialized until the medium storage unit is successfully created by one of the above methods. Depending on the given device type, the file at the storage location must be in one of the media formats understood by VirtualBox:
  • With a "HardDisk" device type, the file must be a hard disk image in one of the formats supported by VirtualBox (see ). After the storage unit is successfully created and this method succeeds, if the medium is a base medium, it will be added to the array attribute.
  • With a "DVD" device type, the file must be an ISO 9960 CD/DVD image. After this method succeeds, the medium will be added to the array attribute.
  • With a "Floppy" device type, the file must be an RAW floppy image. After this method succeeds, the medium will be added to the array attribute.
The list of all storage formats supported by this VirtualBox installation can be obtained using . If the @a format attribute is empty or @c null then the default storage format specified by will be used for disks r creating a storage unit of the medium. Note that the format of the location string is storage format specific. See and IMedium for more details. @a format identifier is invalid. See . @a location is a not valid file name (for file-based formats only).
Identifier of the storage format to use for the new medium. Location of the storage unit for the new medium. Whether to open the image in read/write or read-only mode. For a "DVD" device type, this is ignored and read-only mode is always assumed. Must be one of "HardDisk", "DVD" or "Floppy". Created medium object.
Finds existing media or opens a medium from an existing storage location. Once a medium has been opened, it can be passed to other VirtualBox methods, in particular to . Depending on the given device type, the file at the storage location must be in one of the media formats understood by VirtualBox:
  • With a "HardDisk" device type, the file must be a hard disk image in one of the formats supported by VirtualBox (see ). After this method succeeds, if the medium is a base medium, it will be added to the array attribute.
  • With a "DVD" device type, the file must be an ISO 9960 CD/DVD image. After this method succeeds, the medium will be added to the array attribute.
  • With a "Floppy" device type, the file must be an RAW floppy image. After this method succeeds, the medium will be added to the array attribute.
After having been opened, the medium can be re-found by this method and can be attached to virtual machines. See for more details. The UUID of the newly opened medium will either be retrieved from the storage location, if the format supports it (e.g. for hard disk images), or a new UUID will be randomly generated (e.g. for ISO and RAW files). If for some reason you need to change the medium's UUID, use . If a differencing hard disk medium is to be opened by this method, the operation will succeed only if its parent medium and all ancestors, if any, are already known to this VirtualBox installation (for example, were opened by this method before). This method attempts to guess the storage format of the specified medium by reading medium data at the specified location. If @a accessMode is ReadWrite (which it should be for hard disks and floppies), the image is opened for read/write access and must have according permissions, as VirtualBox may actually write status information into the disk's metadata sections. Note that write access is required for all typical hard disk usage in VirtualBox, since VirtualBox may need to write metadata such as a UUID into the image. The only exception is opening a source image temporarily for copying and cloning (see when the image will be closed again soon. The format of the location string is storage format specific. See and IMedium for more details. Invalid medium storage file location or could not find the medium at the specified location. Could not get medium storage format. Invalid medium storage format. Medium has already been added to a media registry.
Location of the storage unit that contains medium data in one of the supported storage formats. Must be one of "HardDisk", "DVD" or "Floppy". Whether to open the image in read/write or read-only mode. For a "DVD" device type, this is ignored and read-only mode is always assumed. Allows the caller to request a completely new medium UUID for the image which is to be opened. Useful if one intends to open an exact copy of a previously opened image, as this would normally fail due to the duplicate UUID. Opened medium object.
Returns an object describing the specified guest OS type. The requested guest OS type is specified using a string which is a mnemonic identifier of the guest operating system, such as "win31" or "ubuntu". The guest OS type ID of a particular virtual machine can be read or set using the attribute. The collection contains all available guest OS type objects. Each object has an attribute which contains an identifier of the guest OS this object describes. While this function returns an error for unknown guest OS types, they can be still used without serious problems (if one accepts the fact that there is no default VM config information). @a id is not a valid Guest OS type. Guest OS type ID string. Guest OS type object. Creates a new global shared folder by associating the given logical name with the given host path, adds it to the collection of shared folders and starts sharing it. Refer to the description of to read more about logical names. In the current implementation, this operation is not implemented. Unique logical name of the shared folder. Full path to the shared folder in the host file system. Whether the share is writable or readonly Whether the share gets automatically mounted by the guest or not. Where the guest should automatically mount the folder, if possible. For Windows and OS/2 guests this should be a drive letter, while other guests it should be a absolute directory. Removes the global shared folder with the given name previously created by from the collection of shared folders and stops sharing it. In the current implementation, this operation is not implemented. Logical name of the shared folder to remove. Returns an array representing the global extra data keys which currently have values defined. Array of extra data keys. Returns associated global extra data. If the requested data @a key does not exist, this function will succeed and return an empty string in the @a value argument. Settings file not accessible. Could not parse the settings file. Name of the data key to get. Value of the requested data key. Sets associated global extra data. If you pass @c null or an empty string as a key @a value, the given @a key will be deleted. Key must contain printable (non-control) UTF-8 characters only. Before performing the actual data change, this method will ask all registered event listeners using the notification for a permission. If one of the listeners refuses the new value, the change will not be performed. On success, the notification is called to inform all registered listeners about a successful data change. Settings file not accessible. Could not parse the settings file. Modification request refused. Key contains invalid characters. Name of the data key to set. Value to assign to the key. Unlocks the secret data by passing the unlock password to the server. The server will cache the password for that machine. Virtual machine is not mutable. The cipher key. Creates a DHCP server settings to be used for the given internal network name Host network interface @a name already exists. server name DHCP server settings Searches a DHCP server settings to be used for the given internal network name Host network interface @a name already exists. server name DHCP server settings Removes the DHCP server settings Host network interface @a name already exists. DHCP server settings to be removed Searches through all host networks for one with the given GUID. The method returns an error if the given GUID does not correspond to any host network. GUID of the host-only network to search for. Found host-only network object. Check if this VirtualBox installation has a firmware of the given type available, either system-wide or per-user. Optionally, this may return a hint where this firmware can be downloaded from. Type of firmware to check. Expected version number, usually empty string (presently ignored). Suggested URL to download this firmware from. Filename of firmware, only valid if result == TRUE. If firmware of this type and version is available. Searches through all progress objects known to VBoxSVC for an instance with the given GUID. The method returns an error if the given GUID does not correspond to any currently known progress object. GUID of the progress object to search for. Found progress object.
Virtual file systems supported by VFSExplorer. The VFSExplorer interface unifies access to different file system types. This includes local file systems as well remote file systems like S3. For a list of supported types see . An instance of this is returned by . Returns the current path in the virtual file system. Returns the file system type which is currently in use. Updates the internal list of files/directories from the current directory level. Use to get the full list after a call to this method. Progress object to track the operation completion. Change the current directory level. The name of the directory to go in. Progress object to track the operation completion. Go one directory upwards from the current directory level. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns a list of files/directories after a call to . The user is responsible for keeping this internal list up do date. The list of names for the entries. The list of types for the entries. The list of sizes (in bytes) for the entries. The list of file modes (in octal form) for the entries. Checks if the given file list exists in the current directory level. The names to check. The names which exist. Deletes the given files in the current directory level. The names to remove. Progress object to track the operation completion. Import options, used with . Don't generate new MAC addresses of the attached network adapters. Don't generate new MAC addresses of the attached network adapters when they are using NAT. Import all disks to VDI format Export options, used with . Write the optional manifest file (.mf) which is used for integrity checks prior import. Export DVD images. Default is not to export them as it is rarely needed for typical VMs. Do not export any MAC address information. Default is to keep them to avoid losing information which can cause trouble after import, at the price of risking duplicate MAC addresses, if the import options are used to keep them. Do not export any MAC address information, except for adapters using NAT. Default is to keep them to avoid losing information which can cause trouble after import, at the price of risking duplicate MAC addresses, if the import options are used to keep them. X.509 certificate version numbers. X.509 certificate details. Certificate version number. Certificate serial number. The dotted OID of the signature algorithm. The signature algorithm name if known (if known). Issuer name. Each member of the array is on the format COMPONENT=NAME, e.g. "C=DE", "ST=Example", "L=For Instance", "O=Beispiel GmbH", "CN=beispiel.example.org". Subject name. Same format as issuerName. Friendly subject name or similar. Certificate not valid before ISO timestamp. Certificate not valid after ISO timestamp. The dotted OID of the public key algorithm. The public key algorithm name (if known). The raw public key bytes. Unique identifier of the issuer (empty string if not present). Unique identifier of this certificate (empty string if not present). Whether this certificate is a certificate authority. Will return E_FAIL if this attribute is not present. Key usage mask. Will return 0 if not present. Array of dotted extended key usage OIDs. Empty array if not present. The raw certificate bytes. Set if self signed certificate. Set if the certificate is trusted (by the parent object). Set if the certificate has expired (relevant to the parent object)/ Tests if the certificate has expired at the present time according to the X.509 validity of the certificate. Way to extend the interface. Represents a platform-independent appliance in OVF format. An instance of this is returned by , which can then be used to import and export virtual machines within an appliance with VirtualBox. The OVF standard suggests two different physical file formats:
  1. If the appliance is distributed as a set of files, there must be at least one XML descriptor file that conforms to the OVF standard and carries an .ovf file extension. If this descriptor file references other files such as disk images, as OVF appliances typically do, those additional files must be in the same directory as the descriptor file.
  2. If the appliance is distributed as a single file, it must be in TAR format and have the .ova file extension. This TAR file must then contain at least the OVF descriptor files and optionally other files. At this time, VirtualBox does not not yet support the packed (TAR) variant; support will be added with a later version.
Importing an OVF appliance into VirtualBox as instances of involves the following sequence of API calls:
  1. Call . This will create an empty IAppliance object.
  2. On the new object, call with the full path of the OVF file you would like to import. So long as this file is syntactically valid, this will succeed and fill the appliance object with the parsed data from the OVF file.
  3. Next, call , which analyzes the OVF data and sets up the contents of the IAppliance attributes accordingly. These can be inspected by a VirtualBox front-end such as the GUI, and the suggestions can be displayed to the user. In particular, the array contains instances of which represent the virtual systems (machines) in the OVF, which in turn describe the virtual hardware prescribed by the OVF (network and hardware adapters, virtual disk images, memory size and so on). The GUI can then give the user the option to confirm and/or change these suggestions.
  4. If desired, call for each virtual system (machine) to override the suggestions made by the routine.
  5. Finally, call to create virtual machines in VirtualBox as instances of that match the information in the virtual system descriptions. After this call succeeded, the UUIDs of the machines created can be found in the array attribute.
Exporting VirtualBox machines into an OVF appliance involves the following steps:
  1. As with importing, first call to create an empty IAppliance object.
  2. For each machine you would like to export, call with the IAppliance object you just created. Each such call creates one instance of inside the appliance.
  3. If desired, call for each virtual system (machine) to override the suggestions made by the routine.
  4. Finally, call with a path specification to have the OVF file written.
Path to the main file of the OVF appliance, which is either the .ovf or the .ova file passed to (for import) or (for export). This attribute is empty until one of these methods has been called. Array of virtual disk definitions. One such description exists for each disk definition in the OVF; each string array item represents one such piece of disk information, with the information fields separated by tab (\\t) characters. The caller should be prepared for additional fields being appended to this string in future versions of VirtualBox and therefore check for the number of tabs in the strings returned. In the current version, the following eight fields are returned per string in the array:
  1. Disk ID (unique string identifier given to disk)
  2. Capacity (unsigned integer indicating the maximum capacity of the disk)
  3. Populated size (optional unsigned integer indicating the current size of the disk; can be approximate; -1 if unspecified)
  4. Format (string identifying the disk format, typically "http://www.vmware.com/specifications/vmdk.html#sparse")
  5. Reference (where to find the disk image, typically a file name; if empty, then the disk should be created on import)
  6. Image size (optional unsigned integer indicating the size of the image, which need not necessarily be the same as the values specified above, since the image may be compressed or sparse; -1 if not specified)
  7. Chunk size (optional unsigned integer if the image is split into chunks; presently unsupported and always -1)
  8. Compression (optional string equaling "gzip" if the image is gzip-compressed)
Array of virtual system descriptions. One such description is created for each virtual system (machine) found in the OVF. This array is empty until either (for import) or (for export) has been called. Contains the UUIDs of the machines created from the information in this appliances. This is only relevant for the import case, and will only contain data after a call to succeeded. The X.509 signing certificate, if the imported OVF was signed, @c null if not signed. This is available after calling . Reads an OVF file into the appliance object. This method succeeds if the OVF is syntactically valid and, by itself, without errors. The mere fact that this method returns successfully does not mean that VirtualBox supports all features requested by the appliance; this can only be examined after a call to . Name of appliance file to open (either with an .ovf or .ova extension, depending on whether the appliance is distributed as a set of files or as a single file, respectively). Progress object to track the operation completion. Interprets the OVF data that was read when the appliance was constructed. After calling this method, one can inspect the array attribute, which will then contain one for each virtual machine found in the appliance. Calling this method is the second step of importing an appliance into VirtualBox; see for an overview. After calling this method, one should call to find out if problems were encountered during the processing which might later lead to errors. Imports the appliance into VirtualBox by creating instances of and other interfaces that match the information contained in the appliance as closely as possible, as represented by the import instructions in the array. Calling this method is the final step of importing an appliance into VirtualBox; see for an overview. Since importing the appliance will most probably involve copying and converting disk images, which can take a long time, this method operates asynchronously and returns an IProgress object to allow the caller to monitor the progress. After the import succeeded, the UUIDs of the IMachine instances created can be retrieved from the array attribute. Options for the importing operation. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns a object for the given URI. The URI describing the file system to use. Writes the contents of the appliance exports into a new OVF file. Calling this method is the final step of exporting an appliance from VirtualBox; see for an overview. Since exporting the appliance will most probably involve copying and converting disk images, which can take a long time, this method operates asynchronously and returns an IProgress object to allow the caller to monitor the progress. Output format, as a string. Currently supported formats are "ovf-0.9", "ovf-1.0", "ovf-2.0" and "opc-1.0"; future versions of VirtualBox may support additional formats. The "opc-1.0" format is for creating tarballs for the Oracle Public Cloud. Options for the exporting operation. Name of appliance file to create. There are certain restrictions with regard to the file name suffix. If the format parameter is "opc-1.0" a .tar.gz suffix is required. Otherwise the suffix must either be .ovf or .ova, depending on whether the appliance is distributed as a set of files or as a single file, respectively. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns textual warnings which occurred during execution of . Returns a list of password identifiers which must be supplied to import or export encrypted virtual machines. The list of password identifiers required for export on success. Returns a list of medium identifiers which use the given password identifier. The password identifier to get the medium identifiers for. The list of medium identifiers returned on success. Adds a list of passwords required to import or export encrypted virtual machines. List of identifiers. List of matching passwords. Creates a number of objects and store them in the array. Requested number of new virtual system description objects Actually created number of virtual system description objects
Used with to describe the type of a configuration value. Optional, may be unset by the API caller. If this is changed by the API caller it defines the absolute path of the VM settings file and therefore also the VM folder with highest priority. Optional, may be unset by the API caller. If set (and is not changed), defines the VM base folder (taking the primary group into account if also set). Optional, empty by default and may be unset by the API caller. Defines the primary group of the VM after import. May influence the selection of the VM folder. Additional groups may be configured later using , after importing. Used with to describe the value type to fetch. Represents one virtual system (machine) in an appliance. This interface is used in the array. After has been called, that array contains information about how the virtual systems described in the OVF should best be imported into VirtualBox virtual machines. See for the steps required to import an OVF into VirtualBox. Return the number of virtual system description entries. Returns information about the virtual system as arrays of instruction items. In each array, the items with the same indices correspond and jointly represent an import instruction for VirtualBox. The list below identifies the value sets that are possible depending on the enum value in the array item in @a aTypes[]. In each case, the array item with the same index in @a OVFValues[] will contain the original value as contained in the OVF file (just for informational purposes), and the corresponding item in @a aVBoxValues[] will contain a suggested value to be used for VirtualBox. Depending on the description type, the @a aExtraConfigValues[] array item may also be used.
  • "OS": the guest operating system type. There must be exactly one such array item on import. The corresponding item in @a aVBoxValues[] contains the suggested guest operating system for VirtualBox. This will be one of the values listed in . The corresponding item in @a OVFValues[] will contain a numerical value that described the operating system in the OVF.
  • "Name": the name to give to the new virtual machine. There can be at most one such array item; if none is present on import, then an automatic name will be created from the operating system type. The corresponding item im @a OVFValues[] will contain the suggested virtual machine name from the OVF file, and @a aVBoxValues[] will contain a suggestion for a unique VirtualBox name that does not exist yet.
  • "Description": an arbitrary description.
  • "License": the EULA section from the OVF, if present. It is the responsibility of the calling code to display such a license for agreement; the Main API does not enforce any such policy.
  • Miscellaneous: reserved for future use.
  • "CPU": the number of CPUs. There can be at most one such item, which will presently be ignored.
  • "Memory": the amount of guest RAM, in bytes. There can be at most one such array item; if none is present on import, then VirtualBox will set a meaningful default based on the operating system type.
  • "HardDiskControllerIDE": an IDE hard disk controller. There can be at most two such items. An optional value in @a OVFValues[] and @a aVBoxValues[] can be "PIIX3" or "PIIX4" to specify the type of IDE controller; this corresponds to the ResourceSubType element which VirtualBox writes into the OVF. The matching item in the @a aRefs[] array will contain an integer that items of the "Harddisk" type can use to specify which hard disk controller a virtual disk should be connected to. Note that in OVF, an IDE controller has two channels, corresponding to "master" and "slave" in traditional terminology, whereas the IDE storage controller that VirtualBox supports in its virtual machines supports four channels (primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave) and thus maps to two IDE controllers in the OVF sense.
  • "HardDiskControllerSATA": an SATA hard disk controller. There can be at most one such item. This has no value in @a OVFValues[] or @a aVBoxValues[]. The matching item in the @a aRefs[] array will be used as with IDE controllers (see above).
  • "HardDiskControllerSCSI": a SCSI hard disk controller. There can be at most one such item. The items in @a OVFValues[] and @a aVBoxValues[] will either be "LsiLogic", "BusLogic" or "LsiLogicSas". (Note that in OVF, the LsiLogicSas controller is treated as a SCSI controller whereas VirtualBox considers it a class of storage controllers of its own; see ). The matching item in the @a aRefs[] array will be used as with IDE controllers (see above).
  • "HardDiskImage": a virtual hard disk, most probably as a reference to an image file. There can be an arbitrary number of these items, one for each virtual disk image that accompanies the OVF. The array item in @a OVFValues[] will contain the file specification from the OVF file (without a path since the image file should be in the same location as the OVF file itself), whereas the item in @a aVBoxValues[] will contain a qualified path specification to where VirtualBox uses the hard disk image. This means that on import the image will be copied and converted from the "ovf" location to the "vbox" location; on export, this will be handled the other way round. The matching item in the @a aExtraConfigValues[] array must contain a string of the following format: "controller=<index>;channel=<c>" In this string, <index> must be an integer specifying the hard disk controller to connect the image to. That number must be the index of an array item with one of the hard disk controller types (HardDiskControllerSCSI, HardDiskControllerSATA, HardDiskControllerIDE). In addition, <c> must specify the channel to use on that controller. For IDE controllers, this can be 0 or 1 for master or slave, respectively. For compatibility with VirtualBox versions before 3.2, the values 2 and 3 (for secondary master and secondary slave) are also supported, but no longer exported. For SATA and SCSI controllers, the channel can range from 0-29.
  • "CDROM": a virtual CD-ROM drive. The matching item in @a aExtraConfigValue[] contains the same attachment information as with "HardDiskImage" items.
  • "CDROM": a virtual floppy drive. The matching item in @a aExtraConfigValue[] contains the same attachment information as with "HardDiskImage" items.
  • "NetworkAdapter": a network adapter. The array item in @a aVBoxValues[] will specify the hardware for the network adapter, whereas the array item in @a aExtraConfigValues[] will have a string of the "type=<X>" format, where <X> must be either "NAT" or "Bridged".
  • "USBController": a USB controller. There can be at most one such item. If, and only if, such an item is present, USB support will be enabled for the new virtual machine.
  • "SoundCard": a sound card. There can be at most one such item. If and only if such an item is present, sound support will be enabled for the new virtual machine. Note that the virtual machine in VirtualBox will always be presented with the standard VirtualBox soundcard, which may be different from the virtual soundcard expected by the appliance.
This is the same as except that you can specify which types should be returned. Delete all records which are equal to the passed type from the list This is the same as except that you can specify which value types should be returned. See for possible values. This method allows the appliance's user to change the configuration for the virtual system descriptions. For each array item returned from , you must pass in one boolean value and one configuration value. Each item in the boolean array determines whether the particular configuration item should be enabled. You can only disable items of the types HardDiskControllerIDE, HardDiskControllerSATA, HardDiskControllerSCSI, HardDiskImage, CDROM, Floppy, NetworkAdapter, USBController and SoundCard. For the "vbox" and "extra configuration" values, if you pass in the same arrays as returned in the aVBoxValues and aExtraConfigValues arrays from , the configuration remains unchanged. Please see the documentation for for valid configuration values for the individual array item types. If the corresponding item in the aEnabled array is @c false, the configuration value is ignored. This method adds an additional description entry to the stack of already available descriptions for this virtual system. This is handy for writing values which aren't directly supported by VirtualBox. One example would be the License type of .
The IUnattended interface represents the pipeline for preparing the Guest OS for fully automated install. The typical workflow is:
  1. Call to create the object
  2. Set and call
  3. Create, configure and register a machine according to and the other detectedOS* attributes.
  4. Set to the new IMachine instance.
  5. Set the other IUnattended attributes as desired.
  6. Call for the object to check the attribute values and create an internal installer instance.
  7. Call to create additional media files (ISO/floppy) needed.
  8. Call to reconfigure the VM with the installation ISO, additional media files and whatnot
  9. Optionally call to destroy the internal installer and allow restarting from the second step.
Note! Step two is currently not implemented.
Guest operating system ISO image The associated machine object. This must be set before is called. The VM must be registered. Assign an user login name. Assign a password to the user. The password is the same for both normal user and for Administrator / 'root' accounts. The full name of the user. This is optional and defaults to . Please note that not all guests picks up this attribute. Any key which is used as authorization of access to install genuine OS Guest Additions ISO image path. This defaults to when the Unattended object is instantiated. This property is ignored when is false. Indicates whether the Guest Additions should be installed or not. Setting this to false does not affect additions shipped with the linux distribution, only the installation of additions pointed to by . VirtualBox ValidationKit ISO image path. This is used when is set to true. Indicates whether the test execution service (TXS) from the VBox ValidationKit should be installed. The TXS binary will be taken from the ISO indicated by . The guest time zone specifier. This is unfortunately guest OS specific. Windows XP and earlier takes the index number from this table: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/973627/microsoft-time-zone-index-values Windows Vista and later takes the time zone string from this table: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749073(v=ws.10).aspx Linux usually takes the TZ string from this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones The default is currently UTC/GMT, but this may change to be same as the host later. TODO: Investigate automatic mapping between linux and the two windows time zone formats. TODO: Take default from host (this requires mapping). The 5 letter locale identifier, no codesets or such. The format is two lower case language letters (ISO 639-1), underscore ('_'), and two upper case country letters (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2). For instance 'en_US', 'de_DE', or 'ny_NO'. The default is taken from the host if possible, with 'en_US' as fallback. This is more or less a Windows specific setting for choosing the UI language setting of the installer. The value should be from the list available via . The typical format is {language-code}-{COUNTRY} but windows may also use {16-bit code}:{32-bit code} or insert another component between the language and country codes. We consider the format guest OS specific. Note that it is crucial that this is correctly specified for Windows installations. If an unsupported value is given the installer will ask for an installation language and wait for user input. Best to leave it to the default value. The default is the first one from . The 2 upper case letter country identifier, ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. This is used for mirrors and such. The default is taken from the host when possible, falling back on . Proxy incantation to pass on to the guest OS installer. This is important to get right if the guest OS installer is of the type that goes online to fetch the packages (e.g. debian-*-netinst.iso) or to fetch updates during the install process. Format: [schema=]schema://[login[:password]@]proxy[:port][;...] The default is taken from the host proxy configuration (once implemented). Guest OS specific package selection adjustments. This is a semicolon separated list of keywords, and later maybe guest OS package specifiers. Currently the 'minimal' is the only recognized value, and this only works with a selection of linux installers. The fully qualified guest hostname. This defaults to machine-name + ".myguest.virtualbox.org", though it may change to the host domain name later. The path + basename for auxiliary files generated by the unattended installation. This defaults to the VM folder + Unattended + VM UUID. The files which gets generated depends on the OS being installed. When installing Windows there is currently only a auxiliaryBasePath + "floppy.img" being created. But for linux, a "cdrom.viso" and one or more configuration files are generate generated. The image index on installation CD/DVD used to install. This index should be one of the indices of . Changing this after ISO detection may cause , , , , and to be updated with values specific to the selected image. Used only with Windows installation CD/DVD: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766022%28v=ws.10%29.aspx The unattended installation script template file. The template default is based on the guest OS type and is determined by the internal installer when when is invoked. Most users will want the defaults. After is called, it can be read to see which file is being used. The post installation (shell/batch) script template file. The template default is based on the guest OS type and is determined by the internal installer when when is invoked. Most users will want the defaults. After is called, it can be read to see which file is being used. Custom post installation command. Exactly what is expected as input here depends on the guest OS installer and the post installation script template (see ). Most users will not need to set this attribute. Extra kernel arguments passed to the install kernel of some guests. This is currently only picked up by linux guests. The exact parameters are specific to the guest OS being installed of course. After is called, it can be read to see which parameters are being used. The detected OS type ID (). Set by or . Not yet implemented. The detected OS version string. Set by or . Not yet implemented. The detected OS flavor (e.g. server, desktop, etc) Set by or . Not yet implemented. The space separated list of (Windows) installation UI languages we detected (lang.ini). The language specifier format is specific to the guest OS. They are used to set . Set by or . Partially implemented. Space separated list of other stuff detected about the OS and the installation ISO. Set by or . Not yet implemented. A list of names of the images detected from install.wim file of a Windows Vista or later ISO. This array is parallel to . This will be empty for older Windows ISOs and non-Windows ISOs. A list of image indexes detected from install.wim file of a Windows ISO. This array is parallel to . should be set to one of these indices for Vista and later Windows ISOs. Checks the detected OS type and version against a set of rules and returns whether unattended install is supported or not. Note that failing detecting OS type from the ISO causes this attribute to be false by default. When set to true installation is configured to abstain from using network to update/get data. Especially useful when network is not available (as in our test boxes). Detects the OS on the ISO given by and sets , , , , , and , Not really yet implemented. Prepare for running the unattended process of installation. This will perform if not yet called on the current value. It may then may cause , , , , and to be updated with values specific to the image selected by if the ISO contains images. This method will then instantiate the installer based on the detected guest type (see ). Constructors the necessary ISO/VISO/Floppy images, with unattended scripts and all necessary bits on them. Reconfigures the machine to start the installation. This involves mounting the ISOs and floppy images created by , attaching new DVD and floppy drives as necessary, and possibly modifying the boot order. Done - time to start the VM. This deletes the internal installer instance that created. Before done() is called, it is not possible to start over again from .
Updates the VM state. This operation will also update the settings file with the correct information about the saved state file and delete this file from disk when appropriate. Tells VBoxSVC that is under ways and gives it the progress object that should be part of any pending operations. The progress object may be called back to reflect an early cancelation, so some care have to be taken with respect to any cancelation callbacks. The console object will call to signal the completion of the progress object. Tells VBoxSVC that has completed. This method may query status information from the progress object it received in and copy it over to any in-progress call in order to complete that progress object. Called by the VM process to inform the server it wants to stop the VM execution and power down. Progress object created by VBoxSVC to wait until the VM is powered down. Called by the VM process to inform the server that powering down previously requested by #beginPoweringDown is either successfully finished or there was a failure. Settings file not accessible. Could not parse the settings file. @c S_OK to indicate success. @c human readable error message in case of failure. Asks the server to run USB devices filters of the associated machine against the given USB device and tell if there is a match. Intended to be used only for remote USB devices. Local ones don't require to call this method (this is done implicitly by the Host and USBProxyService). Requests a capture of the given host USB device. When the request is completed, the VM process will get a notification. Notification that a VM is going to detach (@a done = @c false) or has already detached (@a done = @c true) the given USB device. When the @a done = @c true request is completed, the VM process will get a notification. In the @a done = @c true case, the server must run its own filters and filters of all VMs but this one on the detached device as if it were just attached to the host computer. Requests a capture all matching USB devices attached to the host. When the request is completed, the VM process will get a notification per every captured device. Notification that a VM that is being powered down. The done parameter indicates whether which stage of the power down we're at. When @a done = @c false the VM is announcing its intentions, while when @a done = @c true the VM is reporting what it has done. In the @a done = @c true case, the server must run its own filters and filters of all VMs but this one on all detach devices as if they were just attached to the host computer. Triggered by the given session object when the session is about to close normally. Session that is being closed Used to wait until the corresponding machine is actually dissociated from the given session on the server. Returned only when this session is a direct one. Gets called by . All necessary state information is available at the called object. Get the list of the guest properties matching a set of patterns along with their values, timestamps and flags and give responsibility for managing properties to the console. The names of the properties returned. The values of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a name array. The timestamps of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a name array. The flags of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a name array. Update a single guest property in IMachine. The name of the property to be updated. The value of the property. The timestamp of the property. The flags of the property. The flag which indicates if property was deleted. Locks all media attached to the machine for writing and parents of attached differencing media (if any) for reading. This operation is atomic so that if it fails no media is actually locked. This method is intended to be called when the machine is in Starting or Restoring state. The locked media will be automatically unlocked when the machine is powered off or crashed. Unlocks all media previously locked using . This method is intended to be used with teleportation so that it is possible to teleport between processes on the same machine. Tells VBoxSVC that the guest has ejected the medium associated with the medium attachment. The medium attachment where the eject happened. A new reference to the medium attachment, as the config change can result in the creation of a new instance. Passes statistics collected by VM (including guest statistics) to VBoxSVC. Mask defining which parameters are valid. For example: 0x11 means that cpuIdle and XXX are valid. Other parameters should be ignored. Percentage of processor time spent in user mode as seen by the guest. Percentage of processor time spent in kernel mode as seen by the guest. Percentage of processor time spent idling as seen by the guest. Total amount of physical guest RAM. Free amount of physical guest RAM. Amount of ballooned physical guest RAM. Amount of shared physical guest RAM. Total amount of guest (disk) cache memory. Total amount of space in the page file. Total amount of memory allocated by the hypervisor. Total amount of free memory available in the hypervisor. Total amount of memory ballooned by the hypervisor. Total amount of shared memory in the hypervisor. Network receive rate for VM. Network transmit rate for VM. Verify credentials using the external auth library. The auth parameters, credentials, etc. The authentification result. The IGraphicsAdapter interface represents the graphics adapter of the virtual machine. Graphics controller type. Video memory size in megabytes. This setting determines whether VirtualBox allows this machine to make use of the 3D graphics support available on the host. This setting determines whether VirtualBox allows this machine to make use of the 2D video acceleration support available on the host. Number of virtual monitors. Only effective on Windows XP and later guests with Guest Additions installed. The IBIOSSettings interface represents BIOS settings of the virtual machine. This is used only in the attribute. Fade in flag for BIOS logo animation. Fade out flag for BIOS logo animation. BIOS logo display time in milliseconds (0 = default). Local file system path for external BIOS splash image. Empty string means the default image is shown on boot. Mode of the BIOS boot device menu. ACPI support flag. I/O-APIC support flag. If set, VirtualBox will provide an I/O-APIC and support IRQs above 15. APIC mode to set up by the firmware. Offset in milliseconds from the host system time. This allows for guests running with a different system date/time than the host. It is equivalent to setting the system date/time in the BIOS except it is not an absolute value but a relative one. Guest Additions time synchronization honors this offset. PXE debug logging flag. If set, VirtualBox will write extensive PXE trace information to the release log. Flag to control whether the SMBIOS system UUID is presented in little endian form to the guest as mandated by the SMBIOS spec chapter 7.2.1. Before VirtualBox version 6.1 it was always presented in big endian form and to retain the old behavior this flag was introduced so it can be changed. VMs created with VBox 6.1 will default to true for this flag. TPM type enumeration. No TPM present in the virtual machine. A TPM compliant to the 1.2 TCG specification is emulated. A TPM compliant to the 2.0 TCG specification is emulated. The host TPM is passed through, might not be available on all host platforms. The VM will attach to an external software TPM emulation compliant to swtpm. The ITrustedPlatformModule interface represents the settings of the virtual machine's trusted platform module. This is used only in the attribute. Type of TPM configured for the virtual machine. Location of the TPM. This is only used for the TpmType_Swtpm type of TPM where the location denotes a hostname:port where to connect to. Recording destination enumeration. No destination. Destination is a regular file. Recording feature flags. More than one flag may be set. No feature set. Video recording. Audio recording. Recording audio codec enumeration. No codec set. WAV format, linear PCM, uncompressed. MPEG-2 Audio Layer III. Ogg Vorbis. Opus Audio. Other codec. Recording codec deadline. How (and if at all) this deadline is being implemented depends on the codec being used. Default deadline. Realtime quality, often resulting in poor / basic quality. Balance between realtime and best deadline. Best quality, slowest. Recording video codec enumeration. No codec set. Motion JPEG. MPEG-2, Part 2. Advanced Video Coding (AVC), MPEG-4 Part 10. High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), MPEG-H Part 2. Versatile Video Coding (VVC), MPEG-I Part 3. VP8 codec. VP9 codec. AOMedia Video 1 codec. Other codec. Recording video scaling method enumeration. No scaling performed. The image wil be cropped when the source is bigger than the target size. Performs scaling via nearest-neighbor interpolation. Not yet implemented. Performs scaling via bilinear interpolation. Not yet implemented. Performs scaling via bicubic interpolation. Not yet implemented. Recording video rate control mode enumeration. Not all codecs may support all rate control modes. Average bit rate (ABR). Constrained to a certain size. Constant bit rate (CBR). Constrained to a certain size. Variable bit rate (VBR). Constrained to a certain quality. The IRecordingScreenSettings interface represents recording settings of a single virtual screen. This is used only in the interface. Returns whether a particular recording feature is enabled for this screen or not. Feature to check for. @c true if the feature is enabled, @c false if not. This attribute contains the screen ID bound to these settings. This setting determines whether this screen is enabled while recording. This setting determines all enabled recording features for this screen. This setting determines the recording destination for this screen. This setting determines the filename VirtualBox uses to save the recorded content. This setting cannot be changed while video recording is enabled. When setting this attribute, the specified path has to be absolute (full path). When reading this attribute, a full path is always returned. This setting defines the maximum amount of time in seconds to record. Recording will stop as soon as the defined time interval has elapsed. If this value is zero, recording will not be limited by time. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. This setting determines the maximal number of recording file size in MB. Recording will stop as soon as the file size has reached the defined value. If this value is zero, recording will not be limited by the file size. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. This setting contains any additional recording options required in comma-separated key=value format, which are currently not represented via own attribtues. Consider these options as experimental and mostly for codec-specific settings, and are subject to change. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the audio codec to use for encoding the recorded audio data. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Only the Opus codec is supported currently. Determines the audio rate control mode. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the audio deadline to use. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the Hertz (Hz) rate of the recorded audio data. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the bits per sample of the recorded audio data. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the audio channels of the recorded audio data. Specifiy 2 for stereo or 1 for mono. More than stereo (2) channels are not supported at the moment. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the video codec to use for encoding the recorded video data. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Only the VP8 codec is supported currently. Determines the video deadline to use. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the horizontal resolution of the recorded video data. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the vertical resolution of the recorded video data. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the bitrate in kilobits per second. Increasing this value makes the video look better for the cost of an increased file size or transfer rate. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the video rate control mode. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the maximum number of frames per second (FPS). Frames with a higher frequency will be skipped. Reducing this value increases the number of skipped frames and reduces the file size or transfer rate. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. Determines the video scaling mode to use. This setting cannot be changed while recording is enabled. The IRecordingSettings interface represents recording settings of the virtual machine. This is used only in the attribute. Returns the recording settings for a particular screen. Screen ID to retrieve recording screen settings for. Recording screen settings for the requested screen. This setting determines whether VirtualBox uses recording to record a VM session. This setting returns an array for recording settings of all configured virtual screens. Address on the PCI bus. Bus number. Device number. Device function number. Convert PCI address into long. Make PCI address from long. Information about PCI attachments. Device name. If this is physical or virtual device. Address of device on the host, applicable only to host devices. Address of device in the guest. UEFI signature type enumeration. X.509 certificate. SHA256 hash. Possible variable attributes. More than one flag may be set. No attributes set. Variable is stored in non volatile storage. Variable can be accessed from the boot services. Variable can be accessed from the runtime. Variable contains a hardware error record. Writing to this variable requires an authenticated source. Variable was written with a time based authentication. The variable can be appended only. The IUefiVariableStore interface allows inspecting and manipulating the content of an existing UEFI variable store in a NVRAM file. This is used only in the attribute. Flag whether secure boot is currently enabled for the VM. Adds a new variable to the non volatile storage area. Name of the variable. UUID of the variable owner. Attributes of the variable. The variable data. Deletes the given variable from the non volatile storage area. Name of the variable. UUID of the variable owner. Changes the data of the given variable. Name of the variable. The new variable data. Queries the variable content variable by the given name. Name of the variable to look for. UUID of the variable owner returned on success. Attributes of the variable. The variable data returned on success. Queries all variables in the non volatile storage and returns their names. The variable names returned on success. UUID of the variable owners returned on success. Enroll the default platform key from Oracle for enabling Secure Boot. Convenience method to enroll a new platform key (PK) for enabling Secure Boot. The platform key (PK) to enroll. UUID of the PK owner. Convenience method to add a new Key Encryption Key (KEK) for Secure Boot. The Key Encryption Key (KEK) to add. UUID of the KEK owner. Type of the signature. Convenience method to add a new entry to the signature database. The signature to add. UUID of the signature owner. Type of the signature. Convenience method to add a new entry to the forbidden signature database. The signature to add. UUID of the signature owner. Type of the signature. Convenience method to enroll the standard Microsoft KEK and signatures in the signature databases. Convenience method to add a new entry to the MOK (Machine Owner Key) signature database. The signature to add. UUID of the signature owner. Type of the signature. Provides access to the NVRAM store collecting all permanent states from different sources (UEFI, TPM, etc.). The location of the file storing the non-volatile memory content when the VM is powered off. The file does not always exist. Object to manipulate the data in an existing UEFI variable store. Key Id of the password used for encrypting the NVRAM file. Internal use only for now. Key store used for encrypting the NVRAM file. Internal use only for now. Initializes the UEFI variable store. Size in bytes of the UEFI variable store. Must be 0 for now to initialize to the default size. Graphics controller type, used with . Reserved value, invalid. VirtualBox VGA device. VMware SVGA II device. VirtualBox VGA device with VMware SVGA II extensions. Cleanup mode, used with . Unregister only the machine, but neither delete snapshots nor detach media. Delete all snapshots and detach all media but return none; this will keep all media registered. Delete all snapshots, detach all media and return hard disks for closing, but not removable media. Delete all snapshots, detach all media and return all media for closing. Delete all snapshots, detach all media and return hard disks and removable media located in the folder of the machine to be deleted and referenced only by this machine, for closing. Clone mode, used with . Clone the state of the selected machine. Clone the state of the selected machine and its child snapshots if present. Clone all states (including all snapshots) of the machine, regardless of the machine object used. Clone options, used with . Create a clone VM where all virtual disks are linked to the original VM. Don't generate new MAC addresses of the attached network adapters. Don't generate new MAC addresses of the attached network adapters when they are using NAT. Don't change the disk names. Don't change UUID of the machine hardware. Autostop types, used with . Stopping the VM during system shutdown is disabled. The state of the VM will be saved when the system shuts down. The VM is powered off when the system shuts down. An ACPI shutdown event is generated. Virtual machine process priorities. Invalid priority, do not use. Default process priority determined by the OS. Assumes a scheduling policy which puts the process at the default priority and with all threads at the same priority Assumes a scheduling policy which puts the process mostly below the default priority of the host OS. Assume a scheduling policy which shares the CPU resources fairly with other processes running with the default priority of the host OS. Assumes a scheduling policy which puts the task above the default priority of the host OS. This policy might easily cause other tasks in the system to starve. The IOMMU type. This enumeration represents possible values for the attribute. No IOMMU is present. No IOMMU is present. An AMD IOMMU. An Intel IOMMU. The IMachine interface represents a virtual machine, or guest, created in VirtualBox. This interface is used in two contexts. First of all, a collection of objects implementing this interface is stored in the attribute which lists all the virtual machines that are currently registered with this VirtualBox installation. Also, once a session has been opened for the given virtual machine (e.g. the virtual machine is running), the machine object associated with the open session can be queried from the session object; see for details. The main role of this interface is to expose the settings of the virtual machine and provide methods to change various aspects of the virtual machine's configuration. For machine objects stored in the collection, all attributes are read-only unless explicitly stated otherwise in individual attribute and method descriptions. In order to change a machine setting, a session for this machine must be opened using one of the or methods. After the machine has been successfully locked for a session, a mutable machine object needs to be queried from the session object and then the desired settings changes can be applied to the returned object using IMachine attributes and methods. See the interface description for more information about sessions. Note that IMachine does not provide methods to control virtual machine execution (such as start the machine, or power it down) -- these methods are grouped in a separate interface called . , Associated parent object. Overridden VM Icon details. Whether this virtual machine is currently accessible or not. A machine is always deemed accessible unless it is registered and its settings file cannot be read or parsed (either because the file itself is unavailable or has invalid XML contents). Every time this property is read, the accessibility state of this machine is re-evaluated. If the returned value is @c false, the property may be used to get the detailed error information describing the reason of inaccessibility, including XML error messages. When the machine is inaccessible, only the following properties can be used on it:
An attempt to access any other property or method will return an error. The only possible action you can perform on an inaccessible machine is to unregister it using the call (or, to check for the accessibility state once more by querying this property). In the current implementation, once this property returns @c true, the machine will never become inaccessible later, even if its settings file cannot be successfully read/written any more (at least, until the VirtualBox server is restarted). This limitation may be removed in future releases.
Error information describing the reason of machine inaccessibility. Reading this property is only valid after the last call to returned @c false (i.e. the machine is currently inaccessible). Otherwise, a @c null IVirtualBoxErrorInfo object will be returned. Name of the virtual machine. Besides being used for human-readable identification purposes everywhere in VirtualBox, the virtual machine name is also used as a name of the machine's settings file and as a name of the subdirectory this settings file resides in. Thus, every time you change the value of this property, the settings file will be renamed once you call to confirm the change. The containing subdirectory will be also renamed, but only if it has exactly the same name as the settings file itself prior to changing this property (for backward compatibility with previous API releases). The above implies the following limitations:
  • The machine name cannot be empty.
  • The machine name can contain only characters that are valid file name characters according to the rules of the file system used to store VirtualBox configuration.
  • You cannot have two or more machines with the same name if they use the same subdirectory for storing the machine settings files.
  • You cannot change the name of the machine if it is running, or if any file in the directory containing the settings file is being used by another running machine or by any other process in the host operating system at a time when is called.
If any of the above limitations are hit, will return an appropriate error message explaining the exact reason and the changes you made to this machine will not be saved. Starting with VirtualBox 4.0, a ".vbox" extension of the settings file is recommended, but not enforced. (Previous versions always used a generic ".xml" extension.)
Description of the virtual machine. The description attribute can contain any text and is typically used to describe the hardware and software configuration of the virtual machine in detail (i.e. network settings, versions of the installed software and so on). UUID of the virtual machine. Array of machine group names of which this machine is a member. "" and "/" are synonyms for the toplevel group. Each group is only listed once, however they are listed in no particular order and there is no guarantee that there are no gaps in the group hierarchy (i.e. "/group", "/group/subgroup/subsubgroup" is a valid result). User-defined identifier of the Guest OS type. You may use to obtain an IGuestOSType object representing details about the given Guest OS type. All Guest OS types are considered valid, even those which are not known to . This value may differ from the value returned by if Guest Additions are installed to the guest OS. Hardware version identifier. Internal use only for now. The UUID presented to the guest via memory tables, hardware and guest properties. For most VMs this is the same as the @a id, but for VMs which have been cloned or teleported it may be the same as the source VM. The latter is because the guest shouldn't notice that it was cloned or teleported. Number of virtual CPUs in the VM. This setting determines whether VirtualBox allows CPU hotplugging for this machine. Means to limit the number of CPU cycles a guest can use. The unit is percentage of host CPU cycles per second. The valid range is 1 - 100. 100 (the default) implies no limit. Virtual CPUID portability level, the higher number the fewer newer or vendor specific CPU feature is reported to the guest (via the CPUID instruction). The default level of zero (0) means that all virtualized features supported by the host is pass thru to the guest. While the three (3) is currently the level supressing the most features. Exactly which of the CPUID features are left out by the VMM at which level is subject to change with each major version. System memory size in megabytes. Memory balloon size in megabytes. This setting determines whether VirtualBox allows page fusion for this machine (64-bit hosts only). Graphics adapter object. Object containing all BIOS settings. Object containing all TPM settings. Object to manipulate data in the non volatile storage file. Object containing all recording settings. Type of firmware (such as legacy BIOS or EFI), used for initial bootstrap in this VM. Type of pointing HID (such as mouse or tablet) used in this VM. The default is typically "PS2Mouse" but can vary depending on the requirements of the guest operating system. Type of keyboard HID used in this VM. The default is typically "PS2Keyboard" but can vary depending on the requirements of the guest operating system. This attribute controls if High Precision Event Timer (HPET) is enabled in this VM. Use this property if you want to provide guests with additional time source, or if guest requires HPET to function correctly. Default is false. Chipset type used in this VM. IOMMU type used in this VM. Full path to the directory used to store snapshot data (differencing media and saved state files) of this machine. The initial value of this property is < path_to_settings_file>/< machine_uuid >. Currently, it is an error to try to change this property on a machine that has snapshots (because this would require to move possibly large files to a different location). A separate method will be available for this purpose later. Setting this property to @c null or to an empty string will restore the initial value. When setting this property, the specified path can be absolute (full path) or relative to the directory where the machine settings file is located. When reading this property, a full path is always returned. The specified path may not exist, it will be created when necessary. VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) server object. Array of media attached to this machine. Array of USB controllers attached to this machine. If USB functionality is not available in the given edition of VirtualBox, this method will set the result code to @c E_NOTIMPL. Associated USB device filters object. If USB functionality is not available in the given edition of VirtualBox, this method will set the result code to @c E_NOTIMPL. The machine's audio settings. Array of storage controllers attached to this machine. Full name of the file containing machine settings data. Full name of the file containing auxiliary machine settings data. Whether the settings of this machine have been modified (but neither yet saved nor discarded). Reading this property is only valid on instances returned by and on new machines created by or opened by but not yet registered, or on unregistered machines after calling . For all other cases, the settings can never be modified. For newly created unregistered machines, the value of this property is always @c true until is called (no matter if any machine settings have been changed after the creation or not). For opened machines the value is set to @c false (and then follows to normal rules). Current session state for this machine. Name of the session. If is Spawning or Locked, this attribute contains the same value as passed to the method in the @a name parameter. If the session was established with , it is the name of the session (if set, otherwise empty string). If is SessionClosed, the value of this attribute is an empty string. Identifier of the session process. This attribute contains the platform-dependent identifier of the process whose session was used with call. The returned value is only valid if is Locked or Unlocking by the time this property is read. Current execution state of this machine. Timestamp of the last execution state change, in milliseconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. Full path to the file that stores the execution state of the machine when it is in either the or state. When the machine is not in the Saved or AbortedSaved state, this attribute is an empty string. Full path to the folder that stores a set of rotated log files recorded during machine execution. The most recent log file is named VBox.log, the previous log file is named VBox.log.1 and so on (up to VBox.log.3 in the current version). Current snapshot of this machine. This is @c null if the machine currently has no snapshots. If it is not @c null, then it was set by one of , or , depending on which was called last. See for details. Number of snapshots taken on this machine. Zero means the machine doesn't have any snapshots. Returns @c true if the current state of the machine is not identical to the state stored in the current snapshot. The current state is identical to the current snapshot only directly after one of the following calls are made:
  • (issued on a "powered off" or "saved" machine, for which returns @c false)
The current state remains identical until one of the following happens:
  • settings of the machine are changed
  • the saved state is deleted
  • the current snapshot is deleted
  • an attempt to execute the machine is made
For machines that don't have snapshots, this property is always @c false.
Collection of shared folders for this machine (permanent shared folders). These folders are shared automatically at machine startup and available only to the guest OS installed within this machine. New shared folders are added to the collection using . Existing shared folders can be removed using . Synchronization mode between the host OS clipboard and the guest OS clipboard. Sets or retrieves whether clipboard file transfers are allowed or not. When set to @a true, clipboard file transfers between supported host and guest OSes are allowed. Sets or retrieves the current drag'n drop mode. When set to @a true, the virtual machine becomes a target teleporter the next time it is powered on. This can only set to @a true when the VM is in the @a PoweredOff or @a Aborted state. The TCP port the target teleporter will listen for incoming teleportations on. 0 means the port is automatically selected upon power on. The actual value can be read from this property while the machine is waiting for incoming teleportations. The address the target teleporter will listen on. If set to an empty string, it will listen on all addresses. The password to check for on the target teleporter. This is just a very basic measure to prevent simple hacks and operators accidentally beaming a virtual machine to the wrong place. Note that you SET a plain text password while reading back a HASHED password. Setting a hashed password is currently not supported. The paravirtualized guest interface provider. When set to @a true, the RTC device of the virtual machine will run in UTC time, otherwise in local time. Especially Unix guests prefer the time in UTC. When set to @a true, the builtin I/O cache of the virtual machine will be enabled. Maximum size of the I/O cache in MB. Array of PCI devices assigned to this machine, to get list of all PCI devices attached to the machine use attribute, as this attribute is intended to list only devices additional to what described in virtual hardware config. Usually, this list keeps host's physical devices assigned to the particular machine. Bandwidth control manager. Enables the tracing facility in the VMM (including PDM devices + drivers). The VMM will consume about 0.5MB of more memory when enabled and there may be some extra overhead from tracepoints that are always enabled. Tracepoint configuration to apply at startup when is true. The string specifies a space separated of tracepoint group names to enable. The special group 'all' enables all tracepoints. Check DBGFR3TracingConfig for more details on available tracepoint groups and such. Note that on hosts supporting DTrace (or similar), a lot of the tracepoints may be implemented exclusively as DTrace probes. So, the effect of the same config may differ between Solaris and Windows for example. Enables tracepoints in PDM devices and drivers to use the VMCPU or VM structures when firing off trace points. This is especially useful with DTrace tracepoints, as it allows you to use the VMCPU or VM pointer to obtain useful information such as guest register state. This is disabled by default because devices and drivers normally has no business accessing the VMCPU or VM structures, and are therefore unable to get any pointers to these. Enables autostart of the VM during system boot. Number of seconds to wait until the VM should be started during system boot. Action type to do when the system is shutting down. Selects which VM frontend should be used by default when launching this VM through the method. Empty or @c null strings do not define a particular default, it is up to to select one. See the description of for the valid frontend types. This per-VM setting overrides the default defined by attribute, and is overridden by a frontend type passed to . Returns whether there is an USB proxy available. Sets the priority of the VM process. It is a VM setting which can be changed both before starting the VM and at runtime. The default value is 'Default', which selects the default process priority. This attribute is currently not implemented. Debug parameters for the paravirtualized guest interface provider. Experimental feature to select the guest CPU profile. The default is "host", which indicates the host CPU. All other names are subject to change. Use the method to get currently available CPU profiles. Key Id of the password used for encrypting the state file. Internal use only for now. Key store used for encrypting the state file. Internal use only for now. Key Id of the password used for encrypting the log files. Internal use only for now. Key store used for encrypting the log files. Internal use only for now. Guest debugging configuration. Locks the machine for the given session to enable the caller to make changes to the machine or start the VM or control VM execution. There are two ways to lock a machine for such uses:
  • If you want to make changes to the machine settings, you must obtain an exclusive write lock on the machine by setting @a lockType to @c Write. This will only succeed if no other process has locked the machine to prevent conflicting changes. Only after an exclusive write lock has been obtained using this method, one can change all VM settings or execute the VM in the process space of the session object. (Note that the latter is only of interest if you actually want to write a new front-end for virtual machines; but this API gets called internally by the existing front-ends such as VBoxHeadless and the VirtualBox GUI to acquire a write lock on the machine that they are running.) On success, write-locking the machine for a session creates a second copy of the IMachine object. It is this second object upon which changes can be made; in VirtualBox terminology, the second copy is "mutable". It is only this second, mutable machine object upon which you can call methods that change the machine state. After having called this method, you can obtain this second, mutable machine object using the attribute.
  • If you only want to check the machine state or control machine execution without actually changing machine settings (e.g. to get access to VM statistics or take a snapshot or save the machine state), then set the @a lockType argument to @c Shared. If no other session has obtained a lock, you will obtain an exclusive write lock as described above. However, if another session has already obtained such a lock, then a link to that existing session will be established which allows you to control that existing session. To find out which type of lock was obtained, you can inspect , which will have been set to either @c WriteLock or @c Shared.
In either case, you can get access to the object which controls VM execution. Also in all of the above cases, one must always call to release the lock on the machine, or the machine's state will eventually be set to "Aborted". To change settings on a machine, the following sequence is typically performed:
  1. Call this method to obtain an exclusive write lock for the current session.
  2. Obtain a mutable IMachine object from .
  3. Change the settings of the machine by invoking IMachine methods.
  4. Call .
  5. Release the write lock by calling .
Virtual machine not registered. Process not started by . Session already open or being opened. Failed to assign machine to session.
Session object for which the machine will be locked. If set to @c Write, then attempt to acquire an exclusive write lock or fail. If set to @c Shared, then either acquire an exclusive write lock or establish a link to an existing session.
Spawns a new process that will execute the virtual machine and obtains a shared lock on the machine for the calling session. If launching the VM succeeds, the new VM process will create its own session and write-lock the machine for it, preventing conflicting changes from other processes. If the machine is already locked (because it is already running or because another session has a write lock), launching the VM process will therefore fail. Reversely, future attempts to obtain a write lock will also fail while the machine is running. The caller's session object remains separate from the session opened by the new VM process. It receives its own object which can be used to control machine execution, but it cannot be used to change all VM settings which would be available after a call. The caller must eventually release the session's shared lock by calling on the local session object once this call has returned. However, the session's state (see ) will not return to "Unlocked" until the remote session has also unlocked the machine (i.e. the machine has stopped running). Launching a VM process can take some time (a new VM is started in a new process, for which memory and other resources need to be set up). Because of this, an object is returned to allow the caller to wait for this asynchronous operation to be completed. Until then, the caller's session object remains in the "Unlocked" state, and its and attributes cannot be accessed. It is recommended to use or similar calls to wait for completion. Completion is signalled when the VM is powered on. If launching the VM fails, error messages can be queried via the progress object, if available. The progress object will have at least 2 sub-operations. The first operation covers the period up to the new VM process calls powerUp. The subsequent operations mirror the progress object. Because may require some extra sub-operations, the may change at the completion of operation. For details on the teleportation progress operation, see . The @a environmentChanges argument is a list of strings where every string contains environment variable in the putenv style, i.e. "VAR=VALUE" for setting/replacing and "VAR" for unsetting. These environment variables will be applied to the environment of the VirtualBox server process. If an environment variable exists both in the server process and in this list, the value from this list takes precedence over the server's variable. If the value of the environment variable is omitted, this variable will be removed from the resulting environment. If the list is empty, the server environment is inherited by the started process as is. Virtual machine not registered. Invalid session type @a type. No machine matching @a machineId found. Session already open or being opened. Launching process for machine failed. Failed to assign machine to session. Client session object to which the VM process will be connected (this must be in "Unlocked" state). Front-end to use for the new VM process. The following are currently supported:
  • "gui": VirtualBox Qt GUI front-end
  • "headless": VBoxHeadless (VRDE Server) front-end
  • "sdl": VirtualBox SDL front-end
  • "emergencystop": reserved value, used for aborting the currently running VM or session owner. In this case the @a session parameter may be @c null (if it is non-null it isn't used in any way), and the @a progress return value will be always @c null. The operation completes immediately.
  • "": use the per-VM default frontend if set, otherwise the global default defined in the system properties. If neither are set, the API will launch a "gui" session, which may fail if there is no windowing environment available. See and .
The list of putenv-style changes to the VM process environment. Progress object to track the operation completion.
Puts the given device to the specified position in the boot order. To indicate that no device is associated with the given position, should be used. @todo setHardDiskBootOrder(), setNetworkBootOrder() Boot @a position out of range. Booting from USB @a device currently not supported. Position in the boot order (@c 1 to the total number of devices the machine can boot from, as returned by ). The type of the device used to boot at the given position. Returns the device type that occupies the specified position in the boot order. @todo [remove?] If the machine can have more than one device of the returned type (such as hard disks), then a separate method should be used to retrieve the individual device that occupies the given position. If here are no devices at the given position, then is returned. @todo getHardDiskBootOrder(), getNetworkBootOrder() Boot @a position out of range. Position in the boot order (@c 1 to the total number of devices the machine can boot from, as returned by ). Device at the given position. Attaches a device and optionally mounts a medium to the given storage controller (, identified by @a name), at the indicated port and device. This method is intended for managing storage devices in general while a machine is powered off. It can be used to attach and detach fixed and removable media. The following kind of media can be attached to a machine:
  • For fixed and removable media, you can pass in a medium that was previously opened using .
  • Only for storage devices supporting removable media (such as DVDs and floppies), you can also specify a null pointer to indicate an empty drive or one of the medium objects listed in the and arrays to indicate a host drive. For removable devices, you can also use to change the media while the machine is running.
In a VM's default configuration of virtual machines, the secondary master of the IDE controller is used for a CD/DVD drive. After calling this returns successfully, a new instance of will appear in the machine's list of medium attachments (see ). See and for more information about attaching media. The specified device slot must not have a device attached to it, or this method will fail. You cannot attach a device to a newly created machine until this machine's settings are saved to disk using . If the medium is being attached indirectly, a new differencing medium will implicitly be created for it and attached instead. If the changes made to the machine settings (including this indirect attachment) are later cancelled using , this implicitly created differencing medium will implicitly be deleted. SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range, or file or UUID not found. Machine must be registered before media can be attached. Invalid machine state. A medium is already attached to this or another virtual machine.
Name of the storage controller to attach the device to. Port to attach the device to. For an IDE controller, 0 specifies the primary controller and 1 specifies the secondary controller. For a SCSI controller, this must range from 0 to 15; for a SATA controller, from 0 to 29; for an SAS controller, from 0 to 7. Device slot in the given port to attach the device to. This is only relevant for IDE controllers, for which 0 specifies the master device and 1 specifies the slave device. For all other controller types, this must be 0. Device type of the attached device. For media opened by , this must match the device type specified there. Medium to mount or @c null for an empty drive.
Attaches a device and optionally mounts a medium to the given storage controller (, identified by @a name), at the indicated port and device. This method is intended for managing storage devices in general while a machine is powered off. It can be used to attach and detach fixed and removable media. The following kind of media can be attached to a machine:
  • For fixed and removable media, you can pass in a medium that was previously opened using .
  • Only for storage devices supporting removable media (such as DVDs and floppies) with an empty drive or one of the medium objects listed in the and arrays to indicate a host drive. For removable devices, you can also use to change the media while the machine is running.
In a VM's default configuration of virtual machines, the secondary master of the IDE controller is used for a CD/DVD drive. will appear in the machine's list of medium attachments (see ). See and for more information about attaching media. The specified device slot must not have a device attached to it, or this method will fail. You cannot attach a device to a newly created machine until this machine's settings are saved to disk using . If the medium is being attached indirectly, a new differencing medium will implicitly be created for it and attached instead. If the changes made to the machine settings (including this indirect attachment) are later cancelled using , this implicitly created differencing medium will implicitly be deleted. SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range, or file or UUID not found. Machine must be registered before media can be attached. Invalid machine state. A medium is already attached to this or another virtual machine.
Name of the storage controller to attach the device to. Port to attach the device to. For an IDE controller, 0 specifies the primary controller and 1 specifies the secondary controller. For a SCSI controller, this must range from 0 to 15; for a SATA controller, from 0 to 29; for an SAS controller, from 0 to 7. Device slot in the given port to attach the device to. This is only relevant for IDE controllers, for which 0 specifies the master device and 1 specifies the slave device. For all other controller types, this must be 0. Device type of the attached device. For media opened by , this must match the device type specified there.
Detaches the device attached to a device slot of the specified bus. Detaching the device from the virtual machine is deferred. This means that the medium remains associated with the machine when this method returns and gets actually de-associated only after a successful call. See for more detailed information about attaching media. You cannot detach a device from a running machine. Detaching differencing media implicitly created by for the indirect attachment using this method will not implicitly delete them. The operation should be explicitly performed by the caller after the medium is successfully detached and the settings are saved with , if it is the desired action. Attempt to detach medium from a running virtual machine. No medium attached to given slot/bus. Medium format does not support storage deletion (only for implicitly created differencing media, should not happen). Name of the storage controller to detach the medium from. Port number to detach the medium from. Device slot number to detach the medium from. Sets the passthrough mode of an existing DVD device. Changing the setting while the VM is running is forbidden. The setting is only used if at VM start the device is configured as a host DVD drive, in all other cases it is ignored. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to modify an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Name of the storage controller. Storage controller port. Device slot in the given port. New value for the passthrough setting. Sets the behavior for guest-triggered medium eject. In some situations it is desirable that such ejects update the VM configuration, and in others the eject should keep the VM configuration. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to modify an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Name of the storage controller. Storage controller port. Device slot in the given port. New value for the eject behavior. Sets a flag in the device information which indicates that the medium is not based on rotational technology, i.e. that the access times are more or less independent of the position on the medium. This may or may not be supported by a particular drive, and is silently ignored in the latter case. At the moment only hard disks (which is a misnomer in this context) accept this setting. Changing the setting while the VM is running is forbidden. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to modify an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Name of the storage controller. Storage controller port. Device slot in the given port. New value for the non-rotational device flag. Sets a flag in the device information which indicates that the medium supports discarding unused blocks (called trimming for SATA or unmap for SCSI devices) .This may or may not be supported by a particular drive, and is silently ignored in the latter case. At the moment only hard disks (which is a misnomer in this context) accept this setting. Changing the setting while the VM is running is forbidden. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . SATA device, SATA port, SCSI port out of range. Attempt to modify an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Name of the storage controller. Storage controller port. Device slot in the given port. New value for the discard device flag. Sets a flag in the device information which indicates that the attached device is hot pluggable or not. This may or may not be supported by a particular controller and/or drive, and is silently ignored in the latter case. Changing the setting while the VM is running is forbidden. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to modify an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Controller doesn't support hot plugging. Name of the storage controller. Storage controller port. Device slot in the given port. New value for the hot-pluggable device flag. Sets the bandwidth group of an existing storage device. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to modify an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Name of the storage controller. Storage controller port. Device slot in the given port. New value for the bandwidth group or @c null for no group. Sets no bandwidth group for an existing storage device. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to modify an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Name of the storage controller. Storage controller port. Device slot in the given port. Unmounts any currently mounted medium (, identified by the given UUID @a id) to the given storage controller (, identified by @a name), at the indicated port and device. The device must already exist; This method is intended only for managing removable media, where the device is fixed but media is changeable at runtime (such as DVDs and floppies). It cannot be used for fixed media such as hard disks. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . The specified device slot must have a medium mounted, which will be unmounted. If there is no mounted medium it will do nothing. See for more detailed information about attaching/unmounting media. SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to unmount medium that is not removable - not DVD or floppy. Invalid machine state. Medium already attached to this or another virtual machine. Medium not attached to specified port, device, controller. Name of the storage controller to unmount the medium from. Port to unmount the medium from. Device slot in the given port to unmount the medium from. Allows to force unmount of a medium which is locked by the device slot in the given port medium is attached to. Mounts a medium (, identified by the given UUID @a id) to the given storage controller (, identified by @a name), at the indicated port and device. The device must already exist; see for how to attach a new device. This method is intended only for managing removable media, where the device is fixed but media is changeable at runtime (such as DVDs and floppies). It cannot be used for fixed media such as hard disks. The @a controllerPort and @a device parameters specify the device slot and have have the same meaning as with . The specified device slot can have a medium mounted, which will be unmounted first. Specifying a zero UUID (or an empty string) for @a medium does just an unmount. See for more detailed information about attaching media. SATA device, SATA port, IDE port or IDE slot out of range. Attempt to attach medium to an unregistered virtual machine. Invalid machine state. Medium already attached to this or another virtual machine. Name of the storage controller to attach the medium to. Port to attach the medium to. Device slot in the given port to attach the medium to. Medium to mount or @c null for an empty drive. Allows to force unmount/mount of a medium which is locked by the device slot in the given port to attach the medium to. Returns the virtual medium attached to a device slot of the specified bus. Note that if the medium was indirectly attached by to the given device slot then this method will return not the same object as passed to the call. See for more detailed information about mounting a medium. No medium attached to given slot/bus. Name of the storage controller the medium is attached to. Port to query. Device slot in the given port to query. Attached medium object. Returns an array of medium attachments which are attached to the the controller with the given name. A storage controller with given name doesn't exist. Returns a medium attachment which corresponds to the controller with the given name, on the given port and device slot. No attachment exists for the given controller/port/device combination. Attaches host PCI device with the given (host) PCI address to the PCI bus of the virtual machine. Please note, that this operation is two phase, as real attachment will happen when VM will start, and most information will be delivered as IHostPCIDevicePlugEvent on IVirtualBox event source. Virtual machine state is not stopped (PCI hotplug not yet implemented). Virtual machine does not have a PCI controller allowing attachment of physical devices. Hardware or host OS doesn't allow PCI device passthrough. Address of the host PCI device. Desired position of this device on guest PCI bus. If VMM shall try to unbind existing drivers from the device before attaching it to the guest. Detach host PCI device from the virtual machine. Also HostPCIDevicePlugEvent on IVirtualBox event source will be delivered. As currently we don't support hot device unplug, IHostPCIDevicePlugEvent event is delivered immediately. Virtual machine state is not stopped (PCI hotplug not yet implemented). This host device is not attached to this machine. Virtual machine does not have a PCI controller allowing attachment of physical devices. Hardware or host OS doesn't allow PCI device passthrough. Address of the host PCI device. Returns the network adapter associated with the given slot. Slots are numbered sequentially, starting with zero. The total number of adapters per machine is defined by the property, so the maximum slot number is one less than that property's value. Invalid @a slot number. Adds a new storage controller (SCSI, SAS or SATA controller) to the machine and returns it as an instance of . @a name identifies the controller for subsequent calls such as , , , or . After the controller has been added, you can set its exact type by setting the . A storage controller with given name exists already. Invalid @a controllerType. Returns a storage controller with the given name. A storage controller with given name doesn't exist. Returns a storage controller of a specific storage bus with the given instance number. A storage controller with given instance number doesn't exist. Removes a storage controller from the machine with all devices attached to it. A storage controller with given name doesn't exist. Medium format does not support storage deletion (only for implicitly created differencing media, should not happen). Sets the bootable flag of the storage controller with the given name. A storage controller with given name doesn't exist. Another storage controller is marked as bootable already. Adds a new USB controller to the machine and returns it as an instance of . A USB controller with given type exists already. Invalid @a controllerType. Removes a USB controller from the machine. A USB controller with given type doesn't exist. Returns a USB controller with the given type. A USB controller with given name doesn't exist. Returns the number of USB controllers of the given type attached to the VM. Returns the serial port associated with the given slot. Slots are numbered sequentially, starting with zero. The total number of serial ports per machine is defined by the property, so the maximum slot number is one less than that property's value. Invalid @a slot number. Returns the parallel port associated with the given slot. Slots are numbered sequentially, starting with zero. The total number of parallel ports per machine is defined by the property, so the maximum slot number is one less than that property's value. Invalid @a slot number. Returns an array representing the machine-specific extra data keys which currently have values defined. Array of extra data keys. Returns associated machine-specific extra data. If the requested data @a key does not exist, this function will succeed and return an empty string in the @a value argument. Settings file not accessible. Could not parse the settings file. Name of the data key to get. Value of the requested data key. Sets associated machine-specific extra data. If you pass @c null or an empty string as a key @a value, the given @a key will be deleted. Key must contain printable (non-control) UTF-8 characters only. Before performing the actual data change, this method will ask all registered event listeners using the notification for a permission. If one of the listeners refuses the new value, the change will not be performed. On success, the notification is called to inform all registered listeners about a successful data change. This method can be called outside the machine session and therefore it's a caller's responsibility to handle possible race conditions when several clients change the same key at the same time. Settings file not accessible. Could not parse the settings file. Key contains invalid characters. Name of the data key to set. Value to assign to the key. Returns the virtual CPU boolean value of the specified property. Invalid property. Property type to query. Property value. Sets the virtual CPU boolean value of the specified property. Invalid property. Property type to query. Property value. Used to enumerate CPUID information override values. Invalid ordinal number is out of range. The ordinal number of the leaf to get. CPUID leaf index. CPUID leaf sub-index. CPUID leaf value for register eax. CPUID leaf value for register ebx. CPUID leaf value for register ecx. CPUID leaf value for register edx. Returns the virtual CPU cpuid information for the specified leaf. Currently supported index values for cpuid: Standard CPUID leaves: 0 - 0x1f Extended CPUID leaves: 0x80000000 - 0x8000001f VIA CPUID leaves: 0xc0000000 - 0xc000000f See the Intel, AMD and VIA programmer's manuals for detailed information about the CPUID instruction and its leaves. Invalid index. CPUID leaf index. CPUID leaf sub-index (ECX). Set to 0xffffffff (or 0) if not applicable. CPUID leaf value for register eax. CPUID leaf value for register ebx. CPUID leaf value for register ecx. CPUID leaf value for register edx. Sets the virtual CPU cpuid information for the specified leaf. Note that these values are not passed unmodified. VirtualBox clears features that it doesn't support. Currently supported index values for cpuid: Standard CPUID leaves: 0 - 0x1f Extended CPUID leaves: 0x80000000 - 0x8000001f VIA CPUID leaves: 0xc0000000 - 0xc000000f The subleaf index is only applicable to certain leaves (see manuals as this is subject to change). See the Intel, AMD and VIA programmer's manuals for detailed information about the cpuid instruction and its leaves. Do not use this method unless you know exactly what you're doing. Misuse can lead to random crashes inside VMs. Invalid index. CPUID leaf index. CPUID leaf sub-index (ECX). Set to 0xffffffff (or 0) if not applicable. The 0xffffffff causes it to remove all other subleaves before adding one with sub-index 0. CPUID leaf value for register eax. CPUID leaf value for register ebx. CPUID leaf value for register ecx. CPUID leaf value for register edx. Removes the virtual CPU cpuid leaf for the specified index Invalid index. CPUID leaf index. CPUID leaf sub-index (ECX). Set to 0xffffffff (or 0) if not applicable. The 0xffffffff value works like a wildcard. Removes all the virtual CPU cpuid leaves Returns the value of the specified hardware virtualization boolean property. Invalid property. Property type to query. Property value. Sets a new value for the specified hardware virtualization boolean property. Invalid property. Property type to set. New property value. Currently, it is an error to change this property on any machine. Later this will allow setting a new path for the settings file, with automatic relocation of all files (including snapshots and disk images) which are inside the base directory. This operation is only allowed when there are no pending unsaved settings. Setting this property to @c null or to an empty string is forbidden. When setting this property, the specified path must be absolute. The specified path may not exist, it will be created when necessary. The operation is not implemented yet. New settings file path, will be used to determine the new location for the attached media if it is in the same directory or below as the original settings file. Progress object to track the operation completion. Saves any changes to machine settings made since the session has been opened or a new machine has been created, or since the last call to or . For registered machines, new settings become visible to all other VirtualBox clients after successful invocation of this method. The method sends notification event after the configuration has been successfully saved (only for registered machines). Calling this method is only valid on instances returned by and on new machines created by but not yet registered, or on unregistered machines after calling . Settings file not accessible. Could not parse the settings file. Modification request refused. Discards any changes to the machine settings made since the session has been opened or since the last call to or . Calling this method is only valid on instances returned by and on new machines created by or opened by but not yet registered, or on unregistered machines after calling . Virtual machine is not mutable. Unregisters a machine previously registered with and optionally do additional cleanup before the machine is unregistered. This method does not delete any files. It only changes the machine configuration and the list of registered machines in the VirtualBox object. To delete the files which belonged to the machine, including the XML file of the machine itself, call , optionally with the array of IMedium objects which was returned from this method. How thoroughly this method cleans up the machine configuration before unregistering the machine depends on the @a cleanupMode argument.
  • With "UnregisterOnly", the machine will only be unregistered, but no additional cleanup will be performed. The call will fail if the machine has any snapshots or any media attached (see ). It is the responsibility of the caller to delete all such configuration in this mode. In this mode, the API behaves like the former @c IVirtualBox::unregisterMachine() API which it replaces.
  • With "DetachAllReturnNone", the call will succeed even if the machine is in "Saved" state or if it has snapshots or media attached. All media attached to the current machine state or in snapshots will be detached. No medium objects will be returned; all of the machine's media will remain open.
  • With "DetachAllReturnHardDisksOnly", the call will behave like with "DetachAllReturnNone", except that all the hard disk medium objects which were detached from the machine will be returned as an array. This allows for quickly passing them to the API for closing and deletion.
  • With "Full", the call will behave like with "DetachAllReturnHardDisksOnly", except that all media will be returned in the array, including removable media like DVDs and floppies. This might be useful if the user wants to inspect in detail which media were attached to the machine. Be careful when passing the media array to in that case because users will typically want to preserve ISO and RAW image files.
A typical implementation will use "DetachAllReturnHardDisksOnly" and then pass the resulting IMedium array to . This way, the machine is completely deleted with all its saved states and hard disk images, but images for removable drives (such as ISO and RAW files) will remain on disk. This API does not verify whether the media files returned in the array are still attached to other machines (i.e. shared between several machines). If such a shared image is passed to however, closing the image will fail there and the image will be silently skipped. This API may, however, move media from this machine's media registry to other media registries (see for details on media registries). For machines created with VirtualBox 4.0 or later, if media from this machine's media registry are also attached to another machine (shared attachments), each such medium will be moved to another machine's registry. This is because without this machine's media registry, the other machine cannot find its media any more and would become inaccessible. This API implicitly calls to save all current machine settings before unregistering it. It may also silently call on other machines if media are moved to other machines' media registries. After successful method invocation, the event is fired. The call will fail if the machine is currently locked (see ). If the given machine is inaccessible (see ), it will be unregistered and fully uninitialized right afterwards. As a result, the returned machine object will be unusable and an attempt to call any method will return the "Object not ready" error. Machine is currently locked for a session.
How to clean up after the machine has been unregistered. List of media detached from the machine, depending on the @a cleanupMode parameter.
Deletes the files associated with this machine from disk. If medium objects are passed in with the @a aMedia argument, they are closed and, if closing was successful, their storage files are deleted as well. For convenience, this array of media files can be the same as the one returned from a previous call. This method must only be called on machines which are either write-locked (i.e. on instances returned by ) or on unregistered machines (i.e. not yet registered machines created by or opened by , or after having called ). The following files will be deleted by this method:
  • If had been previously called with a @a cleanupMode argument other than "UnregisterOnly", this will delete all saved state files that the machine had in use; possibly one if the machine was in either the "Saved" or "AbortedSaved" state and one for each online snapshot that the machine had.
  • On each medium object passed in the @a aMedia array, this will call . If that succeeds, this will attempt to delete the medium's storage on disk. Since the call will fail if the medium is still in use, e.g. because it is still attached to a second machine; in that case the storage will not be deleted.
  • Finally, the machine's own XML file will be deleted.
Since deleting large disk image files can be a time-consuming I/O operation, this method operates asynchronously and returns an IProgress object to allow the caller to monitor the progress. There will be one sub-operation for each file that is being deleted (saved state or medium storage file). will return @c true after this method successfully returns. Machine is registered but not write-locked. Could not delete the settings file.
List of media to be closed and whose storage files will be deleted. Progress object to track the operation completion.
Exports the machine to an OVF appliance. See for the steps required to export VirtualBox machines to OVF. Appliance to export this machine to. The target location. VirtualSystemDescription object which is created for this machine. Returns a snapshot of this machine with the given name or UUID. Returns a snapshot of this machine with the given UUID. A @c null argument can be used to obtain the first snapshot taken on this machine. To traverse the whole tree of snapshots starting from the root, inspect the root snapshot's attribute and recurse over those children. Virtual machine has no snapshots or snapshot not found. What to search for. Name or UUID of the snapshot to find Snapshot object with the given name. Creates a new permanent shared folder by associating the given logical name with the given host path, adds it to the collection of shared folders and starts sharing it. Refer to the description of to read more about logical names. Shared folder already exists. Shared folder @a hostPath not accessible. Unique logical name of the shared folder. Full path to the shared folder in the host file system. Whether the share is writable or read-only. Whether the share gets automatically mounted by the guest or not. Where the guest should automatically mount the folder, if possible. For Windows and OS/2 guests this should be a drive letter, while other guests it should be a absolute directory. Removes the permanent shared folder with the given name previously created by from the collection of shared folders and stops sharing it. Virtual machine is not mutable. Shared folder @a name does not exist. Logical name of the shared folder to remove. Returns @c true if the VM console process can activate the console window and bring it to foreground on the desktop of the host PC. This method will fail if a session for this machine is not currently open. Machine session is not open. @c true if the console window can be shown and @c false otherwise. Activates the console window and brings it to foreground on the desktop of the host PC. Many modern window managers on many platforms implement some sort of focus stealing prevention logic, so that it may be impossible to activate a window without the help of the currently active application. In this case, this method will return a non-zero identifier that represents the top-level window of the VM console process. The caller, if it represents a currently active process, is responsible to use this identifier (in a platform-dependent manner) to perform actual window activation. This method will fail if a session for this machine is not currently open. Machine session is not open. Platform-dependent identifier of the top-level VM console window, or zero if this method has performed all actions necessary to implement the show window semantics for the given platform and/or VirtualBox front-end. Reads an entry from the machine's guest property store. Machine session is not open. The name of the property to read. The value of the property. If the property does not exist then this will be empty. The time at which the property was last modified, as seen by the server process. Additional property parameters, passed as a comma-separated list of "name=value" type entries. Reads a value from the machine's guest property store. Machine session is not open. The name of the property to read. The value of the property. If the property does not exist then this will be empty. Reads a property timestamp from the machine's guest property store. Machine session is not open. The name of the property to read. The timestamp. If the property does not exist then this will be empty. Sets, changes or deletes an entry in the machine's guest property store. Property cannot be changed. Invalid @a flags. Virtual machine is not mutable or session not open. Cannot set transient property when machine not running. The name of the property to set, change or delete. The new value of the property to set, change or delete. If the property does not yet exist and value is non-empty, it will be created. If the value is @c null or empty, the property will be deleted if it exists. Additional property parameters, passed as a comma-separated list of "name=value" type entries. Sets or changes a value in the machine's guest property store. The flags field will be left unchanged or created empty for a new property. Property cannot be changed. Virtual machine is not mutable or session not open. Cannot set transient property when machine not running. The name of the property to set or change. The new value of the property to set or change. If the property does not yet exist and value is non-empty, it will be created. Deletes an entry from the machine's guest property store. Machine session is not open. The name of the property to delete. Return a list of the guest properties matching a set of patterns along with their values, timestamps and flags. The patterns to match the properties against, separated by '|' characters. If this is empty or @c null, all properties will match. The names of the properties returned. The values of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a name array. The timestamps of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a name array. The flags of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a name array. Returns the guest dimensions from the saved state. Saved guest screen to query info from. The X position of the guest monitor top left corner. The Y position of the guest monitor top left corner. Guest width at the time of the saved state was taken. Guest height at the time of the saved state was taken. Whether the monitor is enabled in the guest. Thumbnail is retrieved to an array of bytes in the requested format. Saved guest screen to read from. The requested format. Bitmap width. Bitmap height. Array with resulting bitmap data. Returns available formats and size of the screenshot from saved state. Saved guest screen to query info from. Image width. Image height. Formats supported by readSavedScreenshotToArray. Screenshot in requested format is retrieved to an array of bytes. Saved guest screen to read from. The requested format. Image width. Image height. Array with resulting image data. Plugs a CPU into the machine. The CPU id to insert. Removes a CPU from the machine. The CPU id to remove. Returns the current status of the given CPU. The CPU id to check for. Status of the CPU. Returns the effective paravirtualization provider for this VM. The effective paravirtualization provider for this VM. Queries for the VM log file name of an given index. Returns an empty string if a log file with that index doesn't exists. Which log file name to query. 0=current log file. On return the full path to the log file or an empty string on error. Reads the VM log file. The chunk size is limited, so even if you ask for a big piece there might be less data returned. Which log file to read. 0=current log file. Offset in the log file. Chunk size to read in the log file. Data read from the log file. A data size of 0 means end of file if the requested chunk size was not 0. This is the unprocessed file data, i.e. the line ending style depends on the platform of the system the server is running on. Creates a clone of this machine, either as a full clone (which means creating independent copies of the hard disk media, save states and so on), or as a linked clone (which uses its own differencing media, sharing the parent media with the source machine). The target machine object must have been created previously with , and all the settings will be transferred except the VM name and the hardware UUID. You can set the VM name and the new hardware UUID when creating the target machine. The network MAC addresses are newly created for all enabled network adapters. You can change that behaviour with the options parameter. The operation is performed asynchronously, so the machine object will be not be usable until the @a progress object signals completion. @a target is @c null. Target machine object. Which states should be cloned. Options for the cloning operation. Progress object to track the operation completion. Move machine on to new place/folder Target folder where machine is moved. May be the same folder where the VM already is located or the empty string, in which case the machine is kept in this location and the disk images and other files which are stored elsewhere are moved. Type of moving. Possible values: basic - Only the files which belong solely to this machine are moved from the original machine's folder to a new folder. Progress object to track the operation completion. Saves the current execution state of a running virtual machine and stops its execution. After this operation completes, the machine will go to the Saved state. The next time it is powered up this state will be restored and the machine will continue its execution from the place where it was saved. This operation differs from taking a snapshot to the effect that it doesn't create new differencing media. Also, once the machine is powered up from the state saved using this method, the saved state is deleted, so it will be impossible to return to this state later. On success, this method implicitly calls to save all current machine settings (including runtime changes to the DVD medium, etc.). Together with the impossibility to change any VM settings when it is in the Saved state, this guarantees adequate hardware configuration of the machine when it is restored from the saved state file. The machine must be in the Running or Paused state, otherwise the operation will fail. Virtual machine state neither Running nor Paused. Failed to create directory for saved state file. Progress object to track the operation completion. Associates the given saved state file to the virtual machine. On success, the machine will go to the Saved state. The next time it is powered up it will be restored from the adopted saved state and continue execution from the place where the saved state file was created. The specified saved state file path may be absolute or relative to the folder the VM normally saves the state to (usually, ). It's a caller's responsibility to make sure the given saved state file is compatible with the settings of this virtual machine that represent its virtual hardware (memory size, storage disk configuration etc.). If there is a mismatch, the behavior of the virtual machine is undefined. Virtual machine state neither PoweredOff nor Aborted. Path to the saved state file to adopt. Forcibly resets the machine to "Powered Off" state if it is currently in the "Saved" state previously created by ) or in the "AbortedSaved" state. The next time the machine is powered up a clean boot will occur. This operation is equivalent to resetting or powering off the machine without doing a proper shutdown of the guest operating system; as with resetting a running phyiscal computer, it can can lead to data loss. If @a fRemoveFile is @c true, the file in the machine directory into which the machine state was saved is also deleted. If this is @c false, then the state can be recovered and later re-inserted into a machine using . The location of the file can be found in the attribute. Virtual machine not in either the Saved or AbortedSaved state. Whether to also remove the saved state file. Saves the current execution state and all settings of the machine and creates differencing images for all normal (non-independent) media. See for an introduction to snapshots. This method can be called for a PoweredOff, Saved (see ), AbortedSaved, Running or Paused virtual machine. When the machine is PoweredOff, an offline snapshot is created. When the machine is Running a live snapshot is created, and an online snapshot is created when Paused. The taken snapshot is always based on the current snapshot of the associated virtual machine and becomes a new current snapshot. This method implicitly calls to save all current machine settings before taking an offline snapshot. Virtual machine currently changing state. Short name for the snapshot. Optional description of the snapshot. Whether the VM should be paused while taking the snapshot. Only relevant when the VM is running, and distinguishes between online (@c true) and live (@c false) snapshots. When the VM is not running the result is always an offline snapshot. UUID of the snapshot which will be created. Useful for follow-up operations after the snapshot has been created. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts deleting the specified snapshot asynchronously. See for an introduction to snapshots. The execution state and settings of the associated machine stored in the snapshot will be deleted. The contents of all differencing media of this snapshot will be merged with the contents of their dependent child media to keep the medium chain valid (in other words, all changes represented by media being deleted will be propagated to their child medium). After that, this snapshot's differencing medium will be deleted. The parent of this snapshot will become a new parent for all its child snapshots. If the deleted snapshot is the current one, its parent snapshot will become a new current snapshot. The current machine state is not directly affected in this case, except that currently attached differencing media based on media of the deleted snapshot will be also merged as described above. If the deleted snapshot is the first or current snapshot, then the respective IMachine attributes will be adjusted. Deleting the current snapshot will also implicitly call to make all current machine settings permanent. Deleting a snapshot has the following preconditions:
  • Child media of all normal media of the deleted snapshot must be accessible (see ) for this operation to succeed. If only one running VM refers to all images which participates in merging the operation can be performed while the VM is running. Otherwise all virtual machines whose media are directly or indirectly based on the media of deleted snapshot must be powered off. In any case, online snapshot deleting usually is slower than the same operation without any running VM.
  • You cannot delete the snapshot if a medium attached to it has more than one child medium (differencing images) because otherwise merging would be impossible. This might be the case if there is more than one child snapshot or differencing images were created for other reason (e.g. implicitly because of multiple machine attachments).
The virtual machine's state is changed to "DeletingSnapshot", "DeletingSnapshotOnline" or "DeletingSnapshotPaused" while this operation is in progress. Merging medium contents can be very time and disk space consuming, if these media are big in size and have many children. However, if the snapshot being deleted is the last (head) snapshot on the branch, the operation will be rather quick. The running virtual machine prevents deleting this snapshot. This happens only in very specific situations, usually snapshots can be deleted without trouble while a VM is running. The error message text explains the reason for the failure.
UUID of the snapshot to delete. Progress object to track the operation completion.
Starts deleting the specified snapshot and all its children asynchronously. See for an introduction to snapshots. The conditions and many details are the same as with . This operation is very fast if the snapshot subtree does not include the current state. It is still significantly faster than deleting the snapshots one by one if the current state is in the subtree and there are more than one snapshots from current state to the snapshot which marks the subtree, since it eliminates the incremental image merging. This API method is right now not implemented! The running virtual machine prevents deleting this snapshot. This happens only in very specific situations, usually snapshots can be deleted without trouble while a VM is running. The error message text explains the reason for the failure. The method is not implemented yet. UUID of the snapshot to delete, including all its children. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts deleting the specified snapshot range. This is limited to linear snapshot lists, which means there may not be any other child snapshots other than the direct sequence between the start and end snapshot. If the start and end snapshot point to the same snapshot this method is completely equivalent to . See for an introduction to snapshots. The conditions and many details are the same as with . This operation is generally faster than deleting snapshots one by one and often also needs less extra disk space before freeing up disk space by deleting the removed disk images corresponding to the snapshot. This API method is right now not implemented! The running virtual machine prevents deleting this snapshot. This happens only in very specific situations, usually snapshots can be deleted without trouble while a VM is running. The error message text explains the reason for the failure. The method is not implemented yet. UUID of the first snapshot to delete. UUID of the last snapshot to delete. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts resetting the machine's current state to the state contained in the given snapshot, asynchronously. All current settings of the machine will be reset and changes stored in differencing media will be lost. See for an introduction to snapshots. After this operation is successfully completed, new empty differencing media are created for all normal media of the machine. If the given snapshot is an online snapshot, the machine will go to the Saved state, so that the next time it is powered on, the execution state will be restored from the state of the snapshot. The machine must not be running, otherwise the operation will fail. If the machine is in the Saved state prior to this operation, the saved state file will be implicitly deleted (as if were called). Virtual machine is running. The snapshot to restore the VM state from. Progress object to track the operation completion. Applies the defaults for the configured guest OS type. This is primarily for getting sane settings straight after creating a new VM, but it can also be applied later. This is primarily a shortcut, centralizing the tedious job of getting the recommended settings and translating them into settings updates. The settings are made at the end of the call, but not saved. General error. The machine is in invalid state. Some of the applied objects already exist. The method has been called to already configured machine. Additional flags, to be defined later. Starts encryption of this VM. This means that the stored data of the VM is encrypted. Please note that the results can be either returned straight away, or later as the result of the background operation via the object returned via the @a progress parameter. Encryption is not supported for various reasons e.g. unsupported cipher. The current password the VM is protected with. Use an empty string to indicate that the VM isn't encrypted. The cipher to use for encryption. An empty string indicates no encryption for the result. The new password the VM should be protected with. An empty password and password ID will result in the VM being encrypted with the current password. The ID of the new password when unlocking the VM. Force reencryption of the data if just password is changed. Otherwise, if data already encrypted and cipher doesn't changed only the password is changed. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the encryption settings for this VM. Encryption is not configured for this VM. The cipher used for encryption. The ID of the password when unlocking the VM. Checks whether the supplied password is correct for the VM. Encryption is not configured for this VM. The given password is incorrect. The password to check. Adds a password used for encryption. Updates the accesibility state if password used the VM encryption. The password provided wasn't correct for the VM using the provided ID. The identifier used for the password. Must match the identifier used when the encrypted VM was created. The password. Adds passwords used for encryption. Updates the accesibility state if the list contains password used the VM encryption. The password provided wasn't correct for the VM using the provided ID. Id and passwords arrays have different size. List of identifiers for the passwords. Must match the identifier used when the encrypted VM was created. List of passwords. Removes a password used for the VM encryption/decryption. The password can be removed only if the VM is powered off. Removing the password causes the VM goes to the inaccessible state and the password must be provided again. If machine becomes inaccessible all passwords are purged. One has to add required passwords again using either or methods. The VM is not in proper state e.g powered on. The identifier used for the password. Must match the identifier used when the encrypted VM was created. Clears all provided VM passwords. The passwords can be removed only if the VM is powered off. Removing the passwords causes the VM goes to the inaccessible state and the password must be provided again. The VM is not in proper state e.g powered on.
Manages emulated USB devices. Attaches the emulated USB webcam to the VM, which will use a host video capture device. The host path of the capture device to use. Optional settings. Detaches the emulated USB webcam from the VM The host path of the capture device to detach. Lists attached virtual webcams. Contains information about the remote desktop (VRDE) server capabilities and status. This is used in the attribute. Whether the remote desktop connection is active. VRDE server port number. If this property is equal to 0, then the VRDE server failed to start, usually because there are no free IP ports to bind to. If this property is equal to -1, then the VRDE server has not yet been started. How many times a client connected. When the last connection was established, in milliseconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. When the last connection was terminated or the current time, if connection is still active, in milliseconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. How many bytes were sent in last or current, if still active, connection. How many bytes were sent in all connections. How many bytes were received in last or current, if still active, connection. How many bytes were received in all connections. Login user name supplied by the client. Login domain name supplied by the client. The client name supplied by the client. The IP address of the client. The client software version number. Public key exchange method used when connection was established. Values: 0 - RDP4 public key exchange scheme. 1 - X509 certificates were sent to client. The IConsole interface represents an interface to control virtual machine execution. A console object gets created when a machine has been locked for a particular session (client process) using or . The console object can then be found in the session's attribute. Methods of the IConsole interface allow the caller to query the current virtual machine execution state, pause the machine or power it down, save the machine state or take a snapshot, attach and detach removable media and so on. Machine object for this console session. This is a convenience property, it has the same value as of the corresponding session object. Current execution state of the machine. This property always returns the same value as the corresponding property of the IMachine object for this console session. For the process that owns (executes) the VM, this is the preferable way of querying the VM state, because no IPC calls are made. Guest object. Virtual keyboard object. If the machine is not running, any attempt to use the returned object will result in an error. Virtual mouse object. If the machine is not running, any attempt to use the returned object will result in an error. Virtual display object. If the machine is not running, any attempt to use the returned object will result in an error. Debugging interface. Collection of USB devices currently attached to the virtual USB controller. The collection is empty if the machine is not running. List of USB devices currently attached to the remote VRDE client. Once a new device is physically attached to the remote host computer, it appears in this list and remains there until detached. Collection of shared folders for the current session. These folders are called transient shared folders because they are available to the guest OS running inside the associated virtual machine only for the duration of the session (as opposed to which represent permanent shared folders). When the session is closed (e.g. the machine is powered down), these folders are automatically discarded. New shared folders are added to the collection using . Existing shared folders can be removed using . Interface that provides information on Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) connection. Event source for console events. Array of PCI devices attached to this machine. Whether the guest clipboard should be connected to the host one or whether it should only be allowed access to the VRDE clipboard. This setting may not affect existing guest clipboard connections which are already connected to the host clipboard. Interface that manages emulated USB devices. Starts the virtual machine execution using the current machine state (that is, its current execution state, current settings and current storage devices). This method is only useful for front-ends that want to actually execute virtual machines in their own process (like the VirtualBox or VBoxSDL front-ends). Unless you are intending to write such a front-end, do not call this method. If you simply want to start virtual machine execution using one of the existing front-ends (for example the VirtualBox GUI or headless server), use instead; these front-ends will power up the machine automatically for you. If the machine is powered off or aborted, the execution will start from the beginning (as if the real hardware were just powered on). If the machine is in the state or the state it will continue its execution from the point where the state was saved. If the machine property is enabled on the machine being powered up, the machine will wait for an incoming teleportation in the state. The returned progress object will have at least three operations where the last three are defined as: (1) powering up and starting TCP server, (2) waiting for incoming teleportations, and (3) perform teleportation. These operations will be reflected as the last three operations of the progress objected returned by as well. Virtual machine already running. Host interface does not exist or name not set. Invalid saved state file. Progress object to track the operation completion. Identical to powerUp except that the VM will enter the state, instead of . Virtual machine already running. Host interface does not exist or name not set. Invalid saved state file. Progress object to track the operation completion. Initiates the power down procedure to stop the virtual machine execution. The completion of the power down procedure is tracked using the returned IProgress object. After the operation is complete, the machine will go to the PoweredOff state. Virtual machine must be Running, Paused or Stuck to be powered down. Progress object to track the operation completion. Resets the virtual machine. Virtual machine not in Running state. Virtual machine error in reset operation. Pauses the virtual machine execution. Virtual machine not in Running state. Virtual machine error in suspend operation. Resumes the virtual machine execution. Virtual machine not in Paused state. Virtual machine error in resume operation. Sends the ACPI power button event to the guest. Virtual machine not in Running state. Controlled power off failed. Sends the ACPI sleep button event to the guest. Virtual machine not in Running state. Sending sleep button event failed. Checks if the last power button event was handled by guest. Checking if the event was handled by the guest OS failed. Checks if the guest entered the ACPI mode G0 (working) or G1 (sleeping). If this method returns @c false, the guest will most likely not respond to external ACPI events. Virtual machine not in Running state. Gets the current activity type of given devices or device groups. Invalid device type. Attaches a host USB device with the given UUID to the USB controller of the virtual machine. The device needs to be in one of the following states: , or , otherwise an error is immediately returned. When the device state is Busy, an error may also be returned if the host computer refuses to release it for some reason. , Virtual machine state neither Running nor Paused. Virtual machine does not have a USB controller. UUID of the host USB device to attach. Filename to capture the USB traffic to. Detaches an USB device with the given UUID from the USB controller of the virtual machine. After this method succeeds, the VirtualBox server re-initiates all USB filters as if the device were just physically attached to the host, but filters of this machine are ignored to avoid a possible automatic re-attachment. , Virtual machine does not have a USB controller. USB device not attached to this virtual machine. UUID of the USB device to detach. Detached USB device. Searches for a USB device with the given host address. Given @c name does not correspond to any USB device. Address of the USB device (as assigned by the host) to search for. Found USB device object. Searches for a USB device with the given UUID. Given @c id does not correspond to any USB device. UUID of the USB device to search for. Found USB device object. Creates a transient new shared folder by associating the given logical name with the given host path, adds it to the collection of shared folders and starts sharing it. Refer to the description of to read more about logical names. Virtual machine is in the Saved or AbortedSaved state or currently changing state. Shared folder already exists or not accessible. Unique logical name of the shared folder. Full path to the shared folder in the host file system. Whether the share is writable or readonly Whether the share gets automatically mounted by the guest or not. Where the guest should automatically mount the folder, if possible. For Windows and OS/2 guests this should be a drive letter, while other guests it should be a absolute directory. Removes a transient shared folder with the given name previously created by from the collection of shared folders and stops sharing it. Virtual machine is in the Saved or AbortedSaved state or currently changing state. Shared folder does not exists. Logical name of the shared folder to remove. Teleport the VM to a different host machine or process. @todo Explain the details. Virtual machine not running or paused. The name or IP of the host to teleport to. The TCP port to connect to (1..65535). The password. The maximum allowed downtime given as milliseconds. 0 is not a valid value. Recommended value: 250 ms. The higher the value is, the greater the chance for a successful teleportation. A small value may easily result in the teleportation process taking hours and eventually fail. The current implementation treats this a guideline, not as an absolute rule. Progress object to track the operation completion. Adds a password used for encryption/decryption. The password provided wasn't correct for at least one disk using the provided ID. The identifier used for the password. Must match the identifier used when the encrypted medium was created. The password. Flag whether to clear the password on VM suspend (due to a suspending host for example). The password must be supplied again before the VM can resume. Adds a password used for encryption/decryption. The password provided wasn't correct for at least one disk using the provided ID. List of identifiers for the passwords. Must match the identifier used when the encrypted medium was created. List of passwords. Flag whether to clear the given passwords on VM suspend (due to a suspending host for example). The passwords must be supplied again before the VM can resume. Removes a password used for hard disk encryption/decryption from the running VM. As soon as the medium requiring this password is accessed the VM is paused with an error and the password must be provided again. The identifier used for the password. Must match the identifier used when the encrypted medium was created. Clears all provided supplied encryption passwords. Type of encapsulation. Ethernet encapsulation includes both wired and wireless Ethernet connections. The type of interface cannot be determined. Ethernet frame encapsulation. Point-to-point protocol encapsulation. Serial line IP encapsulation. Current status of the interface. The state of interface cannot be determined. The interface is fully operational. The interface is not functioning. Network interface type. Represents one of host's network interfaces. IP V6 address and network mask are strings of 32 hexadecimal digits grouped by four. Groups are separated by colons. For example, fe80:0000:0000:0000:021e:c2ff:fed2:b030. Returns the host network interface name. Returns the host network interface short name. Returns the interface UUID. Returns the name of a virtual network the interface gets attached to. Specifies whether the DHCP is enabled for the interface. Returns the IP V4 address of the interface. Returns the network mask of the interface. Specifies whether the IP V6 is supported/enabled for the interface. Returns the IP V6 address of the interface. Returns the length IP V6 network mask prefix of the interface. Returns the hardware address. For Ethernet it is MAC address. Type of protocol encapsulation used. Status of the interface. specifies the host interface type. Specifies whether the interface is wireless. sets and enables the static IP V4 configuration for the given interface. IP address. network mask. sets and enables the static IP V6 configuration for the given interface. IP address. network mask. enables the dynamic IP configuration. refreshes the IP configuration for DHCP-enabled interface. Represents one of host's video capture devices, for example a webcam. User friendly name. The host path of the device. An alias which can be used for No channel specified. Do not use this. All stable releases (maintenance and minor releases within the same major release). All stable releases, including major versions. All stable and major releases, including beta versions. All stable, major and beta releases, including testing versions. No severity specified. Do not use this. Update contains critical patches. Update contains a major version. Update contains a minor version. Update contains a testing version. Use with caution! Invalid / not set update state. An uppdate is available. No update available. Update is being downloaded currently. Update has been successfully downloaded. Update is being installed currently. Update has been successfully installed. Update requires user interaction to continue. Update has been canceled. Update service currently is in maintenance mode. An error occurred while updating. Abstract parent interface for handling updateable software components. Checks for an update. Progress object to track operation completion. Downloads the update. Downloading update not supported. Progress object to track operation completion. Installs the update. Installing update not supported. Progress object to track operation completion. Rolls back installing the update. Rolling back update not supported. Name of the update component. Event source for update agent events. Order hint the update component needs to run at, in conjunction with other update components. No order preferred / disabled. Lower numbers mean higher priority. 0 means no order or disabled. Array of other update component names this component depends on before being able to get installed. Ordered entries, highest priority first. No dependencies when array is empty. Dependency entries also can contain a minimum version number after the update component name, separated by an "@", e.g. "Guest Additions@7.1.0_BETA2". Result not available yet. Version the update contains. Result not available yet. Download URL of the update. Result not available yet. Web URL of the update. Result not available yet. Release notes of the update. Enables or disables the update component. Whether the update component shall be hidden from the user or not. Returns the current update state. The update check frequency (in seconds). Update channel to use for checking for updates. Update repository URL to use for retrieving the update. Only repositories with the https:// URL scheme are allowed. Date of last update check. In ISO 8601 format (e.g. 2020-05-11T21:13:39.348416000Z). How many times the update check has happened already. Returns @c TRUE if an update check is needed, or @c FALSE if not. Compares the system's current date with the last update check date and currently set check frequency. Returns a safe array of all supported update channels this agents offers. Implementation of the object for VirtualBox host updates. If no proxy is explicitly set, the proxy settings from will be used. The IHostDrivePartition interface represents the partition of the host drive. To enumerate all available drives partitions in the host, use the attribute. The number of the partition. Represents the system number of the partition, e.g. /dev/sdX in the linux, where X is the number returned. The partition size in bytes. The start byte offset of this partition in bytes relative to the beginning of the hard disk. A translation of and when possible, otherwise set to . The partition is bootable when TRUE. The raw MBR partition type, 0 for non-MBR disks. The cylinder (0..1023) of the first sector in the partition on an MBR disk, zero for not an MBR disk. The head (0..255) of the first sector in the partition on an MBR disk, zero for not an MBR disk. The sector (0..63) of the first sector in the partition on an MBR disk, zero for not an MBR disk. The cylinder (0..1023) of the last sector (inclusive) in the partition on an MBR disk, zero for not an MBR disk. The head (0..255) of the last sector (inclusive) in the partition on an MBR disk, zero for not an MBR disk. The sector (1..63) of the last sector (inclusive) in the partition on an MBR disk, zero for not an MBR disk. The partition type when GUID partitioning scheme is used, NULL UUID value for not a GPT disks. The GUID of the partition when GUID partitioning scheme is used, NULL UUID value for not a GPT disks. The name of the partition if GPT partitioning is used, empty if not a GPT disk. The IHostDrive interface represents the drive of the physical machine. It is not a complete medium description and, therefore, it is not IMedium based. The interface is used to get information about a host drive and its partitioning. The object operates in limited mode if the user cannot open the drive and parse the partition table. In limited mode on the and attributes can be accessed, the rest will fail with E_ACCESSDENIED. The path of the drive. Platform dependent. The scheme of the partitions the disk has. The GUID of the disk. The size of the sector in bytes. The size of the disk in bytes. The model string of the drive if available. List of partitions available on the host drive. The IHost interface represents the physical machine that this VirtualBox installation runs on. An object implementing this interface is returned by the attribute. This interface contains read-only information about the host's physical hardware (such as what processors and disks are available, what the host operating system is, and so on) and also allows for manipulating some of the host's hardware, such as global USB device filters and host interface networking. List of DVD drives available on the host. List of floppy drives available on the host. List of audio devices currently available on the host. This attribute is not implemented yet. List of USB devices currently attached to the host. Once a new device is physically attached to the host computer, it appears in this list and remains there until detached. If USB functionality is not available in the given edition of VirtualBox, this method will set the result code to @c E_NOTIMPL. List of USB device filters in action. When a new device is physically attached to the host computer, filters from this list are applied to it (in order they are stored in the list). The first matched filter will determine the action performed on the device. Unless the device is ignored by these filters, filters of all currently running virtual machines () are applied to it. If USB functionality is not available in the given edition of VirtualBox, this method will set the result code to @c E_NOTIMPL. , List of host network interfaces currently defined on the host. The list of nameservers registered in host's name resolving system. Domain name used for name resolving. Search string registered for name resolving. Number of (logical) CPUs installed in the host system. Number of (logical) CPUs online in the host system. Number of physical processor cores installed in the host system. Number of physical processor cores online in the host system. List of the host drive available to use in the VirtualBox. Query the (approximate) maximum speed of a specified host CPU in Megahertz. Identifier of the CPU. Speed value. 0 is returned if value is not known or @a cpuId is invalid. Query whether a CPU feature is supported or not. CPU Feature identifier. Feature is supported or not. Query the model string of a specified host CPU. Identifier of the CPU. The current implementation might not necessarily return the description for this exact CPU. Model string. An empty string is returned if value is not known or @a cpuId is invalid. Returns the CPU cpuid information for the specified leaf. Identifier of the CPU. The CPU most be online. The current implementation might not necessarily return the description for this exact CPU. CPUID leaf index (eax). CPUID leaf sub index (ecx). This currently only applies to cache information on Intel CPUs. Use 0 if retrieving values for . CPUID leaf value for register eax. CPUID leaf value for register ebx. CPUID leaf value for register ecx. CPUID leaf value for register edx. Amount of system memory in megabytes installed in the host system. Available system memory in the host system. Name of the host system's operating system. Host operating system's version string. Returns the current host time in milliseconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. Returns @c true when the host supports 3D hardware acceleration. Creates a new adapter for Host Only Networking. Host network interface @a name already exists. Created host interface object. Progress object to track the operation completion. Removes the given Host Only Networking interface. No host network interface matching @a id found. Adapter GUID. Progress object to track the operation completion. Creates a new USB device filter. All attributes except the filter name are set to empty (any match), active is @c false (the filter is not active). The created filter can be added to the list of filters using . Filter name. See for more information. Created filter object. Inserts the given USB device to the specified position in the list of filters. Positions are numbered starting from @c 0. If the specified position is equal to or greater than the number of elements in the list, the filter is added at the end of the collection. Duplicates are not allowed, so an attempt to insert a filter already in the list is an error. If USB functionality is not available in the given edition of VirtualBox, this method will set the result code to @c E_NOTIMPL. USB device filter is not created within this VirtualBox instance. USB device filter already in list. Position to insert the filter to. USB device filter to insert. Removes a USB device filter from the specified position in the list of filters. Positions are numbered starting from @c 0. Specifying a position equal to or greater than the number of elements in the list will produce an error. If USB functionality is not available in the given edition of VirtualBox, this method will set the result code to @c E_NOTIMPL. USB device filter list empty or invalid @a position. Position to remove the filter from. Searches for a host DVD drive with the given @c name. Given @c name does not correspond to any host drive. Name of the host drive to search for Found host drive object Searches for a host floppy drive with the given @c name. Given @c name does not correspond to any host floppy drive. Name of the host floppy drive to search for Found host floppy drive object Searches through all host network interfaces for an interface with the given @c name. The method returns an error if the given @c name does not correspond to any host network interface. Name of the host network interface to search for. Found host network interface object. Searches through all host network interfaces for an interface with the given GUID. The method returns an error if the given GUID does not correspond to any host network interface. GUID of the host network interface to search for. Found host network interface object. Searches through all host network interfaces and returns a list of interfaces of the specified type type of the host network interfaces to search for. Found host network interface objects. Searches for a USB device with the given UUID. Given @c id does not correspond to any USB device. UUID of the USB device to search for. Found USB device object. Searches for a USB device with the given host address. Given @c name does not correspond to any USB device. Address of the USB device (as assigned by the host) to search for. Found USB device object. Generates a valid Ethernet MAC address, 12 hexadecimal characters. New Ethernet MAC address. List of currently available host video capture devices. Adds a new USB device source. The backend to use as the new device source. Unique ID to identify the source. Address to use, the format is dependent on the backend. For USB/IP backends for example the notation is host[:port]. Array of property names for more detailed configuration. Not used at the moment. Array of property values for more detailed configuration. Not used at the moment. Removes a previously added USB device source. The identifier used when the source was added. Checks for new VirtualBox host versions. Checks for new VirtualBox Extension Pack versions. Checks for new Guest Additions versions. CPU profile. Immutable. The name. The full name. The CPU architecture. Proxy setting: System (default), NoProxy and Manual. Use the system proxy settings as far as possible. Direct connection to the Internet. Use the manual proxy from . The ISystemProperties interface represents global properties of the given VirtualBox installation. These properties define limits and default values for various attributes and parameters. Most of the properties are read-only, but some can be changed by a user. Minimum guest system memory in Megabytes. Maximum guest system memory in Megabytes. Minimum guest video memory in Megabytes. Maximum guest video memory in Megabytes. Minimum CPU count. Maximum CPU count. Maximum of monitors which could be connected. Maximum size of a virtual disk image in bytes. Informational value, does not reflect the limits of any virtual disk image format. Maximum number of serial ports associated with every instance. Maximum number of parallel ports associated with every instance. Maximum device position in the boot order. This value corresponds to the total number of devices a machine can boot from, to make it possible to include all possible devices to the boot list. Indicates whether VirtualBox was built with raw-mode support. When this reads as False, the setting will be ignored and assumed to be True. Exclusive use of hardware virtualization by VirtualBox. When enabled, VirtualBox assumes it can obtain full and exclusive access to the VT-x or AMD-V feature of the host. To share hardware virtualization with other hypervisors, this property must be disabled. This is ignored on OS X, the kernel mediates hardware access there. Full path to the default directory used to create new or open existing machines when a machine settings file name contains no path. Starting with VirtualBox 4.0, by default, this attribute contains the full path of folder named "VirtualBox VMs" in the user's home directory, which depends on the host platform. When setting this attribute, a full path must be specified. Setting this property to @c null or an empty string or the special value "Machines" (for compatibility reasons) will restore that default value. If the folder specified herein does not exist, it will be created automatically as needed. , Specifies the logging level in current use by VirtualBox. List of all medium storage formats supported by this VirtualBox installation. Keep in mind that the medium format identifier () used in other API calls like to refer to a particular medium format is a case-insensitive string. This means that, for example, all of the following strings:
          "VDI"
          "vdi"
          "VdI"
refer to the same medium format. Note that the virtual medium framework is backend-based, therefore the list of supported formats depends on what backends are currently installed.
Identifier of the default medium format used by VirtualBox. The medium format set by this attribute is used by VirtualBox when the medium format was not specified explicitly. One example is with the empty format argument. A more complex example is implicit creation of differencing media when taking a snapshot of a virtual machine: this operation will try to use a format of the parent medium first and if this format does not support differencing media the default format specified by this argument will be used. The list of supported medium formats may be obtained by the call. Note that the default medium format must have a capability to create differencing media; otherwise operations that create media implicitly may fail unexpectedly. The initial value of this property is "VDI" in the current version of the VirtualBox product, but may change in the future. Setting this property to @c null or empty string will restore the initial value. , , Issue a warning if the free disk space is below (or in some disk intensive operation is expected to go below) the given size in bytes. Issue a warning if the free disk space is below (or in some disk intensive operation is expected to go below) the given percentage. Issue an error if the free disk space is below (or in some disk intensive operation is expected to go below) the given size in bytes. Issue an error if the free disk space is below (or in some disk intensive operation is expected to go below) the given percentage. Library that provides authentication for Remote Desktop clients. The library is used if a virtual machine's authentication type is set to "external" in the VM RemoteDisplay configuration. The system library extension (".DLL" or ".so") must be omitted. A full path can be specified; if not, then the library must reside on the system's default library path. The default value of this property is "VBoxAuth". There is a library of that name in one of the default VirtualBox library directories. For details about VirtualBox authentication libraries and how to implement them, please refer to the VirtualBox manual. Setting this property to @c null or empty string will restore the initial value. Library that provides authentication for webservice clients. The library is used if a virtual machine's authentication type is set to "external" in the VM RemoteDisplay configuration and will be called from within the implementation. As opposed to , there is no per-VM setting for this, as the webservice is a global resource (if it is running). Only for this setting (for the webservice), setting this value to a literal "null" string disables authentication, meaning that will always succeed, no matter what user name and password are supplied. The initial value of this property is "VBoxAuth", meaning that the webservice will use the same authentication library that is used by default for VRDE (again, see ). The format and calling convention of authentication libraries is the same for the webservice as it is for VRDE. Setting this property to @c null or empty string will restore the initial value. The name of the extension pack providing the default VRDE. This attribute is for choosing between multiple extension packs providing VRDE. If only one is installed, it will automatically be the default one. The attribute value can be empty if no VRDE extension pack is installed. For details about VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension and how to implement one, please refer to the VirtualBox SDK. The name of the extension pack providing the default cryptographic support for full VM encryption. This attribute is for choosing between multiple extension packs providing cryptographic support. If only one is installed, it will automatically be the default one. The attribute value can be empty if no cryptographic extension pack is installed. This value specifies how many old release log files are kept. This value hold the default audio driver for the current system. The path to the autostart database. Depending on the host this might be a filesystem path or something else. The path to the default Guest Additions ISO image. Can be empty if the location is not known in this installation. Selects which VM frontend should be used by default when launching a VM through the method. Empty or @c null strings do not define a particular default, it is up to to select one. See the description of for the valid frontend types. This global setting is overridden by the per-VM attribute or a frontend type passed to . Supported bitmap formats which can be used with takeScreenShot and takeScreenShotToArray methods. The proxy mode setting: System, NoProxy or Manual. Proxy server URL for the proxy mode. The format is: [{type}"://"][{userid}[:{password}]@]{server}[":"{port}] Valid types are: http (default), https, socks4, socks4a, socks5, socks5h and direct. Please note that these are proxy types defining how the proxy operates rather than how to proxy any similarly named protocol (i.e. don't confuse a http-proxy with proxying the http protocol, as a http-proxy usually can proxy https and other protocols too). The port number defaults to 80 for http, 443 for https and 1080 for the socks ones. The password is currently stored as plain text! Use the mode if you consider the proxy password to be sensitive. An empty string will cause the behavior to be identical to . For compatibility with libproxy, an URL starting with "direct://" will cause behavior. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported audio codec values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported video codec values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. Returns an array of officially supported values for enum , in the sense of what is e.g. worth offering in the VirtualBox GUI. The API language ID used to translate messages to client. Maximum total number of network adapters associated with every instance. The chipset type to get the value for. The maximum total number of network adapters allowed. Maximum number of network adapters of a given attachment type, associated with every instance. The chipset type to get the value for. Type of attachment. The maximum number of network adapters allowed for particular chipset and attachment type. Returns the maximum number of devices which can be attached to a port for the given storage bus. The storage bus type to get the value for. The maximum number of devices which can be attached to the port for the given storage bus. Returns the minimum number of ports the given storage bus supports. The storage bus type to get the value for. The minimum number of ports for the given storage bus. Returns the maximum number of ports the given storage bus supports. The storage bus type to get the value for. The maximum number of ports for the given storage bus. Returns the maximum number of storage bus instances which can be configured for each VM. This corresponds to the number of storage controllers one can have. Value may depend on chipset type used. The chipset type to get the value for. The storage bus type to get the value for. The maximum number of instances for the given storage bus. Returns list of all the supported device types () for the given type of storage bus. The storage bus type to get the value for. The list of all supported device types for the given storage bus. Returns the enum value for a given storage controller type. The storage controller type to get the value for. The storage bus which is applicable. Returns the possible enum values for a given storage bus. The storage bus type to get the values for. The enum values (sorted by what should be a sensible decreasing importance of the type) which are valid. Returns the default I/O cache setting for the given storage controller The storage controller type to get the setting for. Returned flag indicating the default value Returns whether the given storage controller supports hot-plugging devices. The storage controller to check the setting for. Returned flag indicating whether the controller is hotplug capable Returns the maximum number of USB controller instances which can be configured for each VM. This corresponds to the number of USB controllers one can have. Value may depend on chipset type used. The chipset type to get the value for. The USB controller type to get the value for. The maximum number of instances for the given USB controller type. Returns CPU profiles matching the given criteria. The architecture to get profiles for. Required. Name pattern. Simple wildcard matching using asterisk (*) and question mark (?). The matching CPU profiles.
Guest OS family identifier string. Human readable description of the guest OS family. Guest OS identifier string. Human readable description of the guest OS. Returns @c true if the given OS is 64-bit Returns @c true if I/O-APIC recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true if VT-x or AMD-V recommended for this OS type. Recommended RAM size in Megabytes. Recommended graphics controller type. Recommended video RAM size in Megabytes. Returns @c true if 2D video acceleration is recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true if 3D acceleration is recommended for this OS type. Recommended hard disk size in bytes. Returns recommended network adapter for this OS type. Returns @c true if using PAE is recommended for this OS type. Recommended storage controller type for DVD/CD drives. Recommended storage bus type for DVD/CD drives. Recommended storage controller type for HD drives. Recommended storage bus type for HD drives. Recommended firmware type. Returns @c true if using USB Human Interface Devices, such as keyboard and mouse recommended. Returns @c true if using HPET is recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true if using a USB Tablet is recommended. Returns @c true if the RTC of this VM should be set to UTC Recommended chipset type. Recommended IOMMU type. Recommended audio controller type. Recommended audio codec type. Returns @c true a floppy drive is recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true a USB controller is recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true an xHCI (USB 3) controller is recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true if using VCPU reset on triple fault is recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true if X2APIC is recommended for this OS type. Number of vCPUs recommended for this OS type. Returns the recommended trusted platform module type for this OS type. Returns @c true if EFI secure boot is recommended for this OS type. Returns @c true if this OS usually has a WDDM graphics driver from guest additions. Guest Additions facility IDs. No/invalid facility. VirtualBox base driver (VBoxGuest). Auto-logon modules (VBoxGINA, VBoxCredProv, pam_vbox). VirtualBox system service (VBoxService). VirtualBox desktop integration (VBoxTray on Windows, VBoxClient on non-Windows). Seamless guest desktop integration. Guest graphics mode. If not enabled, seamless rendering will not work, resize hints are not immediately acted on and guest display resizes are probably not initiated by the Guest Additions. Guest supports monitor hotplug. All facilities selected. Guest Additions facility classes. No/invalid class. Driver. System service. Program. Feature. Third party. All facility classes selected. Guest Additions facility states. Facility is not active. Facility has been paused. Facility is preparing to initialize. Facility is initializing. Facility is up and running. Facility is shutting down. Facility successfully shut down. Facility failed to start. Facility status is unknown. Structure representing a Guest Additions facility. The class this facility is part of. Timestamp of the last status update, in milliseconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. The facility's friendly name. The current status. The facility's type ID. Guest Additions run level type. Guest Additions are not loaded. Guest drivers are loaded. Common components (such as application services) are loaded. Per-user desktop components are loaded. Guest Additions update flags. No flag set. Starts the regular updating process and waits until the actual Guest Additions update inside the guest was started. This can be necessary due to needed interaction with the guest OS during the installation phase. Guest shutdown flags. No flag set. Performs a reboot after shutdown. Performs a reboot after shutdown. Force the system to shutdown/reboot regardless of objecting application or other stuff. This flag might not be realized on all systems. Guest session status. This enumeration represents possible values of the attribute. Guest session is in an undefined state. Guest session is being started. Guest session has been started. Guest session is being terminated. Guest session terminated normally. Guest session timed out and was killed. Guest session timed out and was not killed successfully. Service/OS is stopping, guest session was killed. Something went wrong. Guest session waiting flags. No waiting flags specified. Do not use this. Wait for the guest session being started. Wait for the guest session being terminated. Wait for the next guest session status change. Guest session waiting results. Depending on the session waiting flags (for more information see ) the waiting result can vary based on the session's current status. To wait for a guest session to terminate after it has been created by one would specify GuestSessionWaitResult_Terminate. No result was returned. Not being used. The guest session has been started. The guest session has been terminated. The guest session has changed its status. The status then can be retrieved via . Error while executing the process. The waiting operation timed out. This also will happen when no event has been occurred matching the current waiting flags in a call. A waiting flag specified in the call is not supported by the guest. State a guest user has been changed to. Unknown state. Not being used. A guest user has been successfully logged into the guest OS. This property is not implemented yet! A guest user has been successfully logged out of the guest OS. This property is not implemented yet! A guest user has locked its account. This might include running a password-protected screensaver in the guest. This property is not implemented yet! A guest user has unlocked its account. This property is not implemented yet! A guest user has been disabled by the guest OS. This property is not implemented yet! A guest user currently is not using the guest OS. Currently only available for Windows guests since Windows 2000 SP2. On Windows guests this function currently only supports reporting contiguous idle times up to 49.7 days per user. The event will be triggered if a guest user is not active for at least 5 seconds. This threshold can be adjusted by either altering VBoxService's command line in the guest to
--vminfo-user-idle-threshold <ms>
, or by setting the per-VM guest property
/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/VBoxService/--vminfo-user-idle-threshold <ms>
with the RDONLYGUEST flag on the host. In both cases VBoxService needs to be restarted in order to get the changes applied.
A guest user continued using the guest OS after being idle. A guest user has been successfully created. This property is not implemented yet! A guest user has been successfully deleted. This property is not implemented yet! To guest OS has changed the session of a user. This property is not implemented yet! To guest OS has changed the authentication credentials of a user. This might include changed passwords and authentication types. This property is not implemented yet! To guest OS has changed the role of a user permanently, e.g. granting / denying administrative rights. This property is not implemented yet! To guest OS has added a user to a specific user group. This property is not implemented yet! To guest OS has removed a user from a specific user group. This property is not implemented yet! To guest OS temporarily has elevated a user to perform a certain task. This property is not implemented yet!
What a file seek () is relative to. Seek from the beginning of the file. Seek from the current file position. Seek relative to the end of the file. To seek to the position two bytes from the end of the file, specify -2 as the seek offset. Guest process input flags. No flag set. End of file (input) reached. Guest process output flags for specifying which type of output to retrieve. No flags set. Get output from stdout. Get output from stderr. Process waiting flags. No waiting flags specified. Do not use this. Wait for the process being started. Wait for the process being terminated. Wait for stdin becoming available. Not implemented; will currently return . Writing process input can be performed via or waiting for the event. Wait for data becoming available on stdout. Not implemented; will currently return . Reading process stdout output can be performed via or waiting for the event. Wait for data becoming available on stderr. Not implemented; will currently return . Reading process stderr output can be performed via or waiting for the event. Process waiting results. Depending on the process waiting flags (for more information see ) the waiting result can vary based on the processes' current status. To wait for a guest process to terminate after it has been created by or one would specify ProcessWaitFor_Terminate. If a guest process has been started with ProcessCreateFlag_WaitForStdOut a client can wait with ProcessWaitResult_StdOut for new data to arrive on stdout; same applies for ProcessCreateFlag_WaitForStdErr and ProcessWaitResult_StdErr. No result was returned. Not being used. The process has been started. The process has been terminated. The process has changed its status. The status then can be retrieved via . Error while executing the process. The waiting operation timed out. Also use if the guest process has timed out in the guest side (kill attempted). The process signalled that stdin became available for writing. Data on stdout became available for reading. Data on stderr became available for reading. A waiting flag specified in the call is not supported by the guest. File copying flags. No flag set. Do not replace the destination file if it exists. Follow symbolic links. Only copy when the source file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing. File moving flags. No flag set. Replace the destination file, symlink, etc if it exists, however this does not allow replacing any directories. Follow symbolic links in the final components or not (only applied to the given source and target paths, not to anything else). Allow moving directories accross file system boundraries. Because it is could be a big undertaking, we require extra assurance that we should do it when requested. Directory creation flags. No flag set. No error if existing, make parent directories as needed. Directory copying flags. No flag set. Allow copying into an existing destination directory. Copy directories recursively. Follow symbolic links. Directory recursive removement flags. No flag set. Delete the content of the directory and the directory itself. Only delete the content of the directory, omit the directory it self. Flags for use when renaming file system objects (files, directories, symlink, etc), see . Do not replace any destination object. This will attempt to replace any destination object other except directories. (The default is to fail if the destination exists.) Guest process execution flags. The values are passed to the Guest Additions, so its not possible to change (move) or reuse values.here. See GUEST_PROC_CREATE_FLAG_XXX in GuestControlSvc.h. No flag set. Only use the specified timeout value to wait for starting the guest process - the guest process itself then uses an infinite timeout. Do not report an error when executed processes are still alive when VBoxService or the guest OS is shutting down. Do not show the started process according to the guest OS guidelines. Utilize the user's profile data when exeuting a process. Only available for Windows guests at the moment. The guest process waits until all data from stdout is read out. The guest process waits until all data from stderr is read out. Expands environment variables in process arguments. This is not yet implemented and is currently silently ignored. We will document the protocolVersion number for this feature once it appears, so don't use it till then. Work around for Windows and OS/2 applications not following normal argument quoting and escaping rules. The arguments are passed to the application without any extra quoting, just a single space between each. Present since VirtualBox 4.3.28 and 5.0 beta 3. Process priorities. Invalid priority, do not use. Default process priority determined by the OS. Symbolic link types. This is significant when creating links on the Windows platform, ignored elsewhere. It is not known what is being targeted. The link targets a directory. The link targets a file (or whatever else except directories). Symbolic link reading flags. No flags set. Don't allow symbolic links as part of the path. Process execution statuses. Process is in an undefined state. Process is being started. Process has been started. Process has been paused. Process is being terminated. Process terminated normally. Process terminated via signal. Process terminated abnormally. Process timed out and was killed. Process timed out and was not killed successfully. Service/OS is stopping, process was killed. Something went wrong. Process input statuses. Undefined state. Input pipe is broken. Input pipe became available for writing. Data has been successfully written. Too much input data supplied, data overflow. The path style of a system. (Values matches the RTPATH_STR_F_STYLE_XXX defines in iprt/path.h!) DOS-style paths with forward and backward slashes, drive letters and UNC. Known from DOS, OS/2 and Windows. UNIX-style paths with forward slashes only. The path style is not known, most likely because the Guest Additions aren't active yet. Directory statuses. Directory is in an undefined state. Guest directory has been successfully opened. Guest directory has been closed. Guest directory reading was rewound. Service/OS is stopping, guest directory was closed. Something went wrong. File open access mode for use with and . Open the file only with read access. Open the file only with write access. Open the file with both read and write access. Open the file for appending only, no read or seek access. Not yet implemented. Open the file for appending and read. Writes always goes to the end of the file while reads are done at the current or specified file position. Not yet implemented. What action and should take whether the file being opened exists or not. Opens an existing file, fails if no file exists. (Was "oe".) Opens an existing file, creates a new one if no file exists. (Was "oc".) Creates a new file is no file exists, fails if there is a file there already. (Was "ce".) Creates a new file, replace any existing file. (Was "ca".) Currently undefined whether we will inherit mode and ACLs from the existing file or replace them. Opens and truncate an existing file, fails if no file exists. (Was "ot".) Opens an existing file and places the file pointer at the end of the file, creates the file if it does not exist. This action implies write access. (Was "oa".) Deprecated. Only here for historical reasons. Do not use! File sharing mode for . Only share read access to the file. Only share write access to the file. Share both read and write access to the file, but deny deletion. Only share delete access, denying read and write. Share read and delete access to the file, denying writing. Share write and delete access to the file, denying reading. Share all access, i.e. read, write and delete, to the file. Open flags for . No flag set. File statuses. File is in an undefined state. Guest file is opening. Guest file has been successfully opened. Guest file closing. Guest file has been closed. Service/OS is stopping, guest file was closed. Something went wrong. File system object (file) types. Used either if the object has type that is not in this enum, or if the type has not yet been determined or set. FIFO or named pipe, depending on the platform/terminology. Character device. Directory. Block device. Regular file. Symbolic link. Socket. A white-out file. Found in union mounts where it is used for hiding files after deletion, I think. Possible actions of a drag'n drop operation. Do nothing. Copy the item to the target. Move the item to the target. Link the item from within the target. Directory open flags. No flag set. Don't allow symbolic links as part of the path. Base abstract interface for drag'n drop. Returns all supported drag'n drop formats. Checks if a specific drag'n drop MIME / Content-type format is supported. Format to check for. Returns @c true if the specified format is supported, @c false if not. Adds MIME / Content-type formats to the supported formats. Collection of formats to add. Removes MIME / Content-type formats from the supported formats. Collection of formats to remove. Abstract interface for handling drag'n drop sources. Ask the source if there is any drag and drop operation pending. If no drag and drop operation is pending currently, DnDAction_Ignore is returned. VMM device is not available. The screen ID where the drag and drop event occurred. On return the supported mime types. On return the actions which are allowed. On return the default action to use. Informs the source that a drop event occurred for a pending drag and drop operation. VMM device is not available. The mime type the data must be in. The action to use. Progress object to track the operation completion. Receive the data of a previously drag and drop event from the source. VMM device is not available. The actual data. Implementation of the object for source drag'n drop operations on the guest. Abstract interface for handling drag'n drop targets. Informs the target about a drag and drop enter event. VMM device is not available. The screen ID where the drag and drop event occurred. Y-position of the event. X-position of the event. The default action to use. The actions which are allowed. The supported MIME types. The resulting action of this event. Informs the target about a drag and drop move event. VMM device is not available. The screen ID where the drag and drop event occurred. X-position of the event. Y-position of the event. The default action to use. The actions which are allowed. The supported MIME types. The resulting action of this event. Informs the target about a drag and drop leave event. VMM device is not available. The screen ID where the drag and drop event occurred. Informs the target about a drop event. VMM device is not available. The screen ID where the Drag and Drop event occurred. X-position of the event. Y-position of the event. The default action to use. The actions which are allowed. The supported MIME types. The resulting format of this event. The resulting action of this event. Initiates sending data to the target. VMM device is not available. The screen ID where the drag and drop event occurred. The MIME type the data is in. The actual data. Progress object to track the operation completion. Requests cancelling the current operation. The target can veto the request in case the operation is not cancelable at the moment. VMM device is not available. Whether the target has vetoed cancelling the operation. Implementation of the object for target drag'n drop operations on the guest. A guest session represents one impersonated user account in the guest, so every operation will use the same credentials specified when creating the session object via . There can be a maximum of 32 sessions at once per VM, whereas session 0 always is reserved for the root session (the root session is part of that limit). This root session is controlling all other guest sessions and also is responsible for actions which require system level privileges. Each guest session keeps track of the guest directories and files that it opened as well as guest processes it has created. To work on guest files or directories a guest session offers methods to open or create such objects (see or for instance). Similarly, there a methods for creating guest processes. There can be up to 2048 objects (guest processes, files and directories) a time per guest session. Exceeding the limit will result in an error (see the corresponding functions for more). When done with either of these objects, including the guest session itself, use the appropriate close() method to let the object do its cleanup work. Closing a session via will try to close all the mentioned objects above unless these objects are still used by a client. A set of environment variables changes is associated with each session (). These are applied to the base environment of the impersonated guest user when creating a new guest process. For additional flexibility the and methods allows you to specify individual environment changes for each process you create. With newer guest addition versions, the base environment is also made available via . (One reason for why we record changes to a base environment instead of working directly on an environment block is that we need to be compatible with older Guest Additions. Another reason is that this way it is always possible to undo all the changes you've scheduled.) Returns the user name used by this session to impersonate users in the guest. Returns the domain name used by this session to impersonate users in the guest. Returns the session's friendly name. Returns the internal session ID. Gets or sets the session timeout (in ms). This attribute is not implemented yet. Returns the protocol version which is used by this session to communicate with the guest. Returns the current session status. The set of scheduled environment changes to the base environment of the session. They are in putenv format, i.e. "VAR=VALUE" for setting and "VAR" for unsetting. One entry per variable (change). The changes are applied when creating new guest processes. This is writable, so to undo all the scheduled changes, assign it an empty array. The base environment of the session. They are on the "VAR=VALUE" form, one array entry per variable. Access fails with VBOX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED if the Guest Additions does not support the session base environment feature. Support for this was introduced with protocol version XXXX. Access fails with VBOX_E_INVALID_OBJECT_STATE if the Guest Additions has yet to report the session base environment. Returns all current guest processes. The style of paths used by the guest. Handy for giving the right kind of path specifications to and similar methods. Gets or sets the current directory of the session. Guest path style. This attribute is not implemented yet. Returns the user's home / profile directory. Guest path style. Returns the user's documents directory. Guest path style. Returns all currently opened guest directories. Returns all currently opened guest files. Event source for guest session events. Closes this session. All opened guest directories, files and processes which are not referenced by clients anymore will be closed. Guest processes which fall into this category and still are running in the guest will be terminated automatically. Copies directories and/or files from guest to the host. This function requires several parallel arrays to be supplied, one set for each source. Paths to directories and/or files on the guest side that should be copied to the host. If the path ends with a path delimiter, only the directory's content is being copied. Guest path style. Array of source filters. This uses the DOS/NT style wildcard characters '?' and '*'. Array of comma-separated list of source flags. The following flags are available:
CopyIntoExisting
Allow copying into an existing destination directory.
NoReplace
Do not replace any existing destination files on the destination.
FollowLinks
Follows (and handles) (symbolic) links.
Update
Only copy when the source file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing.
Where to put the sources on the host. Host path style. Progress object to track the operation to completion.
Copies directories and/or files from host to the guest. This function requires several parallel arrays to be supplied, one set for each source. Paths to directories and/or files on the host side that should be copied to the guest. If the path ends with a path delimiter, only the directory's content is being copied. Host path style. Array of source filters. This uses the DOS/NT style wildcard characters '?' and '*'. Array of comma-separated list of source flags. The following flags are available:
CopyIntoExisting
Allow copying into an existing destination directory.
NoReplace
Do not replace any existing destination files on the destination.
FollowLinks
Follows (and handles) (symbolic) links.
Update
Only copy when the source file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing.
Where to put the sources on the guest. Guest path style. Progress object to track the operation to completion.
Recursively copies a directory from one guest location to another. Not yet implemented. The path to the directory to copy (in the guest). Guest path style. The path to the target directory (in the guest). Unless the flag is given, the directory shall not already exist. Guest path style. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Recursively copies a directory from the guest to the host. Path to the directory on the guest side that should be copied to the host. Guest path style. Where to put the directory on the host. Unless the flag is given, the directory shall not already exist. Host path style. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Recursively copies a directory from the host to the guest. Path to the directory on the host side that should be copied to the guest. Host path style. Where to put the file in the guest. Unless the flag is given, the directory shall not already exist. Guest style path. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Creates a directory in the guest. Error while creating the directory. Path to the directory directory to be created. Guest path style. The UNIX-style access mode mask to create the directory with. Whether/how all three access groups and associated access rights are realized is guest OS dependent. The API does the best it can on each OS. Zero or more flags. Creates a temporary directory in the guest. The operation is not possible as requested on this particular guest type. Invalid argument. This includes an incorrectly formatted template, or a non-absolute path. The temporary directory could not be created. Possible reasons include a non-existing path or an insecure path when the secure option was requested. Template for the name of the directory to create. This must contain at least one 'X' character. The first group of consecutive 'X' characters in the template will be replaced by a random alphanumeric string to produce a unique name. The UNIX-style access mode mask to create the directory with. Whether/how all three access groups and associated access rights are realized is guest OS dependent. The API does the best it can on each OS. This parameter is ignored if the @a secure parameter is set to @c true. It is strongly recommended to use 0700. The path to the directory in which the temporary directory should be created. Guest path style. Whether to fail if the directory can not be securely created. Currently this means that another unprivileged user cannot manipulate the path specified or remove the temporary directory after it has been created. Also causes the mode specified to be ignored. May not be supported on all guest types. On success this will contain the full path to the created directory. Guest path style. Checks whether a directory exists in the guest or not. Error while checking existence of the directory specified. Path to the directory to check if exists. Guest path style. If @c true, symbolic links in the final component will be followed and the existance of the symlink target made the question for this method. If @c false, a symbolic link in the final component will make the method return @c false (because a symlink isn't a directory). Returns @c true if the directory exists, @c false if not, or is not a directory. Opens a directory in the guest and creates a object that can be used for further operations. This method follows symbolic links by default at the moment, this may change in the future. One idiosyncrasy of the current implementation is that you will NOT get VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND returned here if the directory doesn't exist. Instead the read function will fail with VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR. This will be fixed soon. Directory to open was not found. Error while opening the directory. The maximum of concurrent guest directories has been reached. Path to the directory to open. Guest path style. Optional directory listing filter to apply. This uses the DOS/NT style wildcard characters '?' and '*'. Zero or more flags. object containing the opened directory. Removes a guest directory if empty. Symbolic links in the final component will not be followed, instead an not-a-directory error is reported. Path to the directory that should be removed. Guest path style. Removes a guest directory recursively. WARNING!! THE FLAGS ARE NOT CURRENTLY IMPLEMENTED. THE IMPLEMENTATION WORKS AS IF FLAGS WAS SET TO . If the final path component is a symbolic link, this method will fail as it can only be applied to directories. Path of the directory that is to be removed recursively. Guest path style. Zero or more flags. WARNING! SPECIFYING IS MANDATORY AT THE MOMENT!! Progress object to track the operation completion. This is not implemented yet and therefore this method call will block until deletion is completed. Schedules setting an environment variable when creating the next guest process. This affects the attribute. Name of the environment variable to set. This cannot be empty nor can it contain any equal signs. Value to set the session environment variable to. Schedules unsetting (removing) an environment variable when creating the next guest process. This affects the attribute. Name of the environment variable to unset. This cannot be empty nor can it contain any equal signs. Gets an environment variable from the session's base environment (). If the Guest Additions does not support the session base environment feature. Support for this was introduced with protocol version XXXX. If the Guest Additions has yet to report the session base environment. Name of the environment variable to get.This cannot be empty nor can it contain any equal signs. The value of the variable. Empty if not found. To deal with variables that may have empty values, use . Checks if the given environment variable exists in the session's base environment (). If the Guest Additions does not support the session base environment feature. Support for this was introduced with protocol version XXXX. If the Guest Additions has yet to report the session base environment. Name of the environment variable to look for. This cannot be empty nor can it contain any equal signs. TRUE if the variable exists, FALSE if not. Copies a file from one guest location to another. Will overwrite the destination file unless is specified. Not yet implemented. The path to the file to copy (in the guest). Guest path style. The path to the target file (in the guest). This cannot be a directory. Guest path style. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Copies a file from the guest to the host. Will overwrite the destination file unless is specified. Error starting the copy operation. Path to the file on the guest side that should be copied to the host. Guest path style. Where to put the file on the host (file, not directory). Host path style. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Copies a file from the host to the guest. Will overwrite the destination file unless is specified. Error starting the copy operation. Path to the file on the host side that should be copied to the guest. Host path style. Where to put the file in the guest (file, not directory). Guest style path. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Creates a temporary file in the guest. The operation is not possible as requested on this particular guest OS. Invalid argument. This includes an incorrectly formatted template, or a non-absolute path. The temporary file could not be created. Possible reasons include a non-existing path or an insecure path when the secure option was requested. Template for the name of the file to create. This must contain at least one 'X' character. The first group of consecutive 'X' characters in the template will be replaced by a random alphanumeric string to produce a unique name. The UNIX-style access mode mask to create the file with. Whether/how all three access groups and associated access rights are realized is guest OS dependent. The API does the best it can on each OS. This parameter is ignore if the @a secure parameter is set to @c true. It is strongly recommended to use 0600. The path to the directory in which the temporary file should be created. Whether to fail if the file can not be securely created. Currently this means that another unprivileged user cannot manipulate the path specified or remove the temporary file after it has been created. Also causes the mode specified to be ignored. May not be supported on all guest types. On success this will contain an open file object for the new temporary file. Checks whether a regular file exists in the guest or not. Error while checking existence of the file specified. Path to the alleged regular file. Guest path style. If @c true, symbolic links in the final component will be followed and the existance of the symlink target made the question for this method. If @c false, a symbolic link in the final component will make the method return @c false (because a symlink isn't a regular file). Returns @c true if the file exists, @c false if not. @c false is also return if this @a path does not point to a file object. Opens a file and creates a object that can be used for further operations. File to open was not found. Error while opening the file. The maximum of concurrent guest files has been reached. Path to file to open. Guest path style. The file access mode (read, write and/or append). See for details. What action to take depending on whether the file exists or not. See for details. The UNIX-style access mode mask to create the file with if @a openAction requested the file to be created (otherwise ignored). Whether/how all three access groups and associated access rights are realized is guest OS dependent. The API does the best it can on each OS. object representing the opened file. Opens a file and creates a object that can be used for further operations, extended version. File to open was not found. Error while opening the file. Path to file to open. Guest path style. The file access mode (read, write and/or append). See for details. What action to take depending on whether the file exists or not. See for details. The file sharing mode in the guest. This parameter is currently ignore for all guest OSes. It will in the future be implemented for Windows, OS/2 and maybe Solaris guests only, the others will ignore it. Use . The UNIX-style access mode mask to create the file with if @a openAction requested the file to be created (otherwise ignored). Whether/how all three access groups and associated access rights are realized is guest OS dependent. The API does the best it can on each OS. Zero or more values. object representing the opened file. Queries the size of a regular file in the guest. File to was not found. Error querying file size. Path to the file which size is requested. Guest path style. It @c true, symbolic links in the final path component will be followed to their target, and the size of the target is returned. If @c false, symbolic links in the final path component will make the method call fail (symblink is not a regular file). Queried file size. Checks whether a file system object (file, directory, etc) exists in the guest or not. Error while checking existence of the file specified. Path to the file system object to check the existance of. Guest path style. If @c true, symbolic links in the final component will be followed and the method will instead check if the target exists. If @c false, symbolic links in the final component will satisfy the method and it will return @c true in @a exists. Returns @c true if the file exists, @c false if not. Queries information about a file system object (file, directory, etc) in the guest. The file system object was not found. Error while querying information. Path to the file system object to gather information about. Guest path style. Information about symbolic links is returned if @c false. Otherwise, symbolic links are followed and the returned information concerns itself with the symlink target if @c true. object containing the information. Removes a file system object (file, symlink, etc) in the guest. Will not work on directories, use to remove directories. This method will remove symbolic links in the final path component, not follow them. The method has not been implemented yet. The file system object was not found. For most other errors. We know this is unhelpful, will fix shortly... Path to the file system object to remove. Guest style path. Removes multiple file system objects (files, directories, symlinks, etc) in the guest. Use with caution. This method is not implemented yet and will return E_NOTIMPL. This method will remove symbolic links in the final path component, not follow them. The method has not been implemented yet. Array of paths to the file system objects to remove. Guest style path. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Renames a file system object (file, directory, symlink, etc) in the guest. The file system object was not found. For most other errors. We know this is unhelpful, will fix shortly... The current path to the object. Guest path style. The new path to the object. Guest path style. Zero or more values. Moves a file system object (file, directory, symlink, etc) from one guest location to another. This differs from in that it can move accross file system boundraries. In that case it will perform a copy and then delete the original. For directories, this can take a while and is subject to races. Not yet implemented. Path to the file to move. Guest path style. Where to move the file to (file, not directory). Guest path style. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Moves file system objects (files, directories, symlinks, etc) from one guest location to another. Not yet implemented. Array of paths to the file system objects to move. Guest style path. Where to move the file system objects to (directory). Guest path style. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Copies file system objects (files, directories, symlinks, etc) from one guest location to another. Not yet implemented. Array of paths to the file system objects to copy. Guest style path. Where to copy the file system objects to (directory). Guest path style. Zero or more values. Progress object to track the operation to completion. Sets the access control list (ACL) of a file system object (file, directory, etc) in the guest. The method is not implemented yet. Full path of the file system object which ACL to set. If @c true symbolic links in the final component will be followed, otherwise, if @c false, the method will work directly on a symbolic link in the final component. The ACL specification string. To-be-defined. UNIX-style mode mask to use if @a acl is empty. As mention in this is realized on a best effort basis and the exact behavior depends on the Guest OS. Returns the free space (in bytes) of a given path. Full path to return the free space for. Free space (in bytes). Returns file system information for a given path. Full path to return file system information for. IGuestFsInfo object containing the information. Creates a new process running in the guest. The new process will be started asynchronously, meaning on return of this function it is not be guaranteed that the guest process is in a started state. To wait for successful startup, use the call. Starting at VirtualBox 4.2 guest process execution by is default limited to serve up to 255 guest processes at a time. If all 255 guest processes are active and running, creating a new guest process will result in an error. If ProcessCreateFlag_WaitForStdOut and/or ProcessCreateFlag_WaitForStdErr are set, the guest process will not enter the terminated state until all data from the specified streams have been read. Error creating guest process. The maximum of concurrent guest processes has been reached. Full path to the file to execute in the guest. The file has to exist in the guest VM with executable right to the session user in order to succeed. If empty/null, the first entry in the @a arguments array will be used instead (i.e. argv[0]). Array of arguments passed to the new process. Starting with VirtualBox 5.0 this array starts with argument 0 instead of argument 1 as in previous versions. Whether the zeroth argument can be passed to the guest depends on the VBoxService version running there. If you depend on this, check that the is 3 or higher. Path to the directory in which to execute in the guest. The directory has to exist in the guest VM with search rights to the session user in order to succeed. If empty/null, the session user's default (typically 'home') directory is used. If not a full path, it is interpreted relative to the default directory; e.g. 'work' means '$HOME/work' (according to the guest's '$HOME'- like concept). Set of environment changes to complement . Takes precedence over the session ones. The changes are in putenv format, i.e. "VAR=VALUE" for setting and "VAR" for unsetting. The changes are applied to the base environment of the impersonated guest user () when creating the process. (This is done on the guest side of things in order to be compatible with older Guest Additions. That is one of the motivations for not passing in the whole environment here.) Process creation flags; see for more information. Timeout (in ms) for limiting the guest process' running time. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. On timeout the guest process will be killed and its status will be put to an appropriate value. See for more information. Guest process object of the newly created process. Creates a new process running in the guest with the extended options for setting the process priority and affinity. See for more information. Full path to the file to execute in the guest. The file has to exist in the guest VM with executable right to the session user in order to succeed. If empty/null, the first entry in the @a arguments array will be used instead (i.e. argv[0]). Array of arguments passed to the new process. Starting with VirtualBox 5.0 this array starts with argument 0 instead of argument 1 as in previous versions. Whether the zeroth argument can be passed to the guest depends on the VBoxService version running there. If you depend on this, check that the is 3 or higher. Path to the directory in which to execute in the guest. The directory has to exist in the guest VM with search rights to the session user in order to succeed. If empty/null, the session user's default (typically 'home') directory is used. If not a full path, it is interpreted relative to the default directory; e.g. 'work' means '$HOME/work' (according to the guest's '$HOME'- like concept). Set of environment changes to complement . Takes precedence over the session ones. The changes are in putenv format, i.e. "VAR=VALUE" for setting and "VAR" for unsetting. The changes are applied to the base environment of the impersonated guest user () when creating the process. (This is done on the guest side of things in order to be compatible with older Guest Additions. That is one of the motivations for not passing in the whole environment here.) Process creation flags, see for detailed description of available flags. Timeout (in ms) for limiting the guest process' running time. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. On timeout the guest process will be killed and its status will be put to an appropriate value. See for more information. Process priority to use for execution, see for available priority levels. This is silently ignored if not supported by Guest Additions. Processor affinity to set for the new process. This is a list of guest CPU numbers the process is allowed to run on. This is silently ignored if the guest does not support setting the affinity of processes, or if the Guest Additions does not implemet this feature. Guest process object of the newly created process. Gets a certain guest process by its process ID (PID). Process ID (PID) to get guest process for. Guest process of specified process ID (PID). Creates a symbolic link in the guest. The method is not implemented yet. Path to the symbolic link that should be created. Guest path style. The path to the symbolic link target. If not an absolute, this will be relative to the @a symlink location at access time. Guest path style. The symbolic link type (mainly for Windows). See for more information. Checks whether a symbolic link exists in the guest. The method is not implemented yet. Path to the alleged symbolic link. Guest path style. Returns @c true if the symbolic link exists. Returns @c false if it does not exist, if the file system object identified by the path is not a symbolic link, or if the object type is inaccessible to the user, or if the @a symlink argument is empty. Reads the target value of a symbolic link in the guest. The method is not implemented yet. Path to the symbolic link to read. Zero or more values. Target value of the symbolic link. Guest path style. Waits for one or more events to happen. Deprecated and will be removed. Use instead. Specifies what to wait for; see for more information. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. The overall wait result; see for more information. Waits for one or more events to happen. Scriptable version of . Specifies what to wait for; see for more information. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. The overall wait result; see for more information.
Abstract parent interface for processes handled by VirtualBox. The arguments this process is using for execution. The initial process environment. Not yet implemented. Event source for process events. Full path of the actual executable image. The exit code. Only available when the process has been terminated normally. The friendly name of this process. The process ID (PID). The current process status; see for more information. Waits for one or more events to happen. Deprecated and will be removed. Use instead. Specifies what to wait for; see for more information. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. The overall wait result; see for more information. Waits for one or more events to happen. Scriptable version of . Specifies what to wait for; see for more information. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. The overall wait result; see for more information. Reads data from a running process. Handle to read from. Usually 0 is stdin. Number of bytes to read. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. Array of data read. Writes data to a running process. Handle to write to. Usually 0 is stdin, 1 is stdout and 2 is stderr. A combination of flags. Array of bytes to write. The size of the array also specifies how much to write. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. How many bytes were written. Writes data to a running process. Scriptable version of . Handle to write to. Usually 0 is stdin, 1 is stdout and 2 is stderr. A combination of flags. Array of bytes to write. The size of the array also specifies how much to write. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. How may bytes were written. Terminates (kills) a running process. It can take up to 30 seconds to get a guest process killed. In case a guest process could not be killed an appropriate error is returned. Implementation of the object for processes the host has started in the guest. Abstract parent interface for directories handled by VirtualBox. The path specified when opening the directory. Event source for directory events. Directory listing filter to (specified when opening the directory). The ID VirtualBox internally assigned to the open directory. Current directory status. Closes this directory. After closing operations like reading the next directory entry will not be possible anymore. Lists directory entries of this directory. No more directory entries to read. Method not supported by installed Guest Additions. Maximum entries to return per call. The guest might decide to return less than the given maximum, depending on the guest OS. Array of object information of the current directory entry read. Also see . Reads the next directory entry of this directory. No more directory entries to read. Object information of the current directory entry read. Also see . Rewinds the directory reading. Implementation of the object for directories in the guest. Abstract parent interface for files handled by VirtualBox. Event source for file events. The ID VirtualBox internally assigned to the open file. The initial size in bytes when opened. The current file position. The file current position always applies to the method, which updates it upon return. Same goes for the method except when is or , where it will always write to the end of the file and will leave this attribute unchanged. The is used to change this attribute without transfering any file data like read and write does. This will not always be correct with older Guest Additions (version 5.2.30 and earlier, as well as versions 6.0.0 thru 6.0.8) after a calling or , or after calling on a file in append mode. The correct file offset can be obtained using . Current file status. Full path of the actual file name of this file. The UNIX-style creation mode specified when opening the file. The opening action specified when opening the file. The file access mode. Closes this file. After closing operations like reading data, writing data or querying information will not be possible anymore. Queries information about this file. Object information of this file. Also see . Queries the current file size. Queried file size. Reads data from this file. The file current position () is updated on success. Number of bytes to read. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. Array of data read. Reads data from an offset of this file. The file current position () is updated on success. Offset in bytes to start reading. Number of bytes to read. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. Array of data read. Changes the current file position of this file. The file current position always applies to the method. Same for the method it except when the is or . Offset to seek relative to the position specified by @a whence. One of the seek starting points. The new file offset after the seek operation. Sets the ACL of this file. The method is not implemented yet. The ACL specification string. To-be-defined. UNIX-style mode mask to use if @a acl is empty. As mention in this is realized on a best effort basis and the exact behavior depends on the Guest OS. Changes the file size. The new file size. Writes bytes to this file. The file current position () is updated on success. Array of bytes to write. The size of the array also specifies how much to write. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. How many bytes were written. Writes bytes at a certain offset to this file. The file current position () is updated on success. Offset in bytes to start writing. If the file was opened with the set to or , the offset is ignored and the write always goes to the end of the file. Array of bytes to write. The size of the array also specifies how much to write. Timeout (in ms) to wait for the operation to complete. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. How many bytes were written. Implementation of the object for files in the guest. Abstract parent interface for VirtualBox file system information. This can be information about a host or guest file system, for example. Remaining free space (in bytes) of the filesystem. Total space (in bytes) of the filesystem. Block size (in bytes) of the filesystem. Sector size (in bytes) of the filesystem. Serial number of the filesystem. @c TRUE if the filesystem is remote, @c FALSE if the filesystem is local. @c TRUE if the filesystem is case sensitive, @c FALSE if the filesystem is case insensitive. @c TRUE if the filesystem is mounted read only, @c FALSE if the filesystem is mounted read write. @c TRUE if the filesystem is compressed, @c FALSE if it isn't or we don't know. @c TRUE if the filesystem compresses of individual files, @c FALSE if it doesn't or we don't know. The maximum size of a filesystem object name. Name of the filesystem. Label of the filesystem. Mount point of the filesystem. Abstract parent interface for VirtualBox file system object information. This can be information about a file or a directory, for example. The object's name. The object type. See for more. File attributes. The logical size (st_size). For normal files this is the size of the file. For symbolic links, this is the length of the path name contained in the symbolic link. For other objects this fields needs to be specified. Disk allocation size (st_blocks * DEV_BSIZE). Time of last access (st_atime). Time of file birth (st_birthtime). Time of last status change (st_ctime). Time of last data modification (st_mtime). The user owning the filesystem object (st_uid). This is -1 if not available. The user name. The group the filesystem object is assigned (st_gid). This is -1 if not available. The group name. The unique identifier (within the filesystem) of this filesystem object (st_ino). This is zero if not availalbe. The device number of the device which this filesystem object resides on (st_dev). Number of hard links to this filesystem object (st_nlink). The device number of a character or block device type object (st_rdev). The current generation number (st_gen). User flags (st_flags). Represents the guest implementation of the object. Represents the guest implementation of the object. The IGuest interface represents information about the operating system running inside the virtual machine. Used in . IGuest provides information about the guest operating system, whether Guest Additions are installed and other OS-specific virtual machine properties. Identifier of the Guest OS type as reported by the Guest Additions. You may use to obtain an IGuestOSType object representing details about the given Guest OS type. If Guest Additions are not installed, this value will be the same as . Current run level of the installed Guest Additions. Version of the installed Guest Additions in the same format as . The internal build revision number of the installed Guest Additions. See also . Retrieves the drag'n drop source implementation for the guest side, that is, handling and retrieving drag'n drop data from the guest. Retrieves the drag'n drop source implementation for the host side. This will allow the host to handle and initiate a drag'n drop operation to copy data from the host to the guest. Event source for guest events. Returns a collection of current known facilities. Only returns facilities where a status is known, e.g. facilities with an unknown status will not be returned. Returns a collection of all opened guest sessions. Guest system memory balloon size in megabytes (transient property). Interval to update guest statistics in seconds. Internal method; do not use as it might change at any time. Percentage of processor time spent in user mode as seen by the guest. Percentage of processor time spent in kernel mode as seen by the guest. Percentage of processor time spent idling as seen by the guest. Total amount of physical guest RAM. Free amount of physical guest RAM. Amount of ballooned physical guest RAM. Amount of shared physical guest RAM. Total amount of guest (disk) cache memory. Total amount of space in the page file. Total amount of memory allocated by the hypervisor. Total amount of free memory available in the hypervisor. Total amount of memory ballooned by the hypervisor. Total amount of shared memory in the hypervisor. Get the current status of a Guest Additions facility. Facility to check status for. Timestamp (in ms) of last status update seen by the host. The current (latest) facility status. Retrieve the current status of a certain Guest Additions run level. Wrong status level specified. Status level to check Flag whether the status level has been reached or not Store login credentials that can be queried by guest operating systems with Additions installed. The credentials are transient to the session and the guest may also choose to erase them. Note that the caller cannot determine whether the guest operating system has queried or made use of the credentials. VMM device is not available. User name string, can be empty Password string, can be empty Domain name (guest logon scheme specific), can be empty Flag whether the guest should alternatively allow the user to interactively specify different credentials. This flag might not be supported by all versions of the Additions. Creates a new guest session for controlling the guest. The new session will be started asynchronously, meaning on return of this function it is not guaranteed that the guest session is in a started and/or usable state. To wait for successful startup, use the call. A guest session represents one impersonated user account in the guest, so every operation will use the same credentials specified when creating the session object via . Anonymous sessions, that is, sessions without specifying a valid user account in the guest are not allowed reasons of security. There can be a maximum of 32 sessions at once per VM. An error will be returned if this has been reached. For more information please consult Error creating guest session. The maximum of concurrent guest sessions has been reached. User name this session will be using to control the guest; has to exist and have the appropriate rights to execute programs in the VM. Must not be empty. Password of the user account to be used. Empty passwords are allowed. Domain name of the user account to be used if the guest is part of a domain. Optional. This feature is not implemented yet. The session's friendly name. Optional, can be empty. The newly created session object. Finds guest sessions by their friendly name and returns an interface array with all found guest sessions. The session's friendly name to find. Wildcards like ? and * are allowed. Array with all guest sessions found matching the name specified. Shuts down (and optionally halts and/or reboots) the guest. Needs supported Guest Additions installed. Guest OS is not supported for shutting down, or the already installed Guest Additions are not supported. Error while shutting down. flags. Automatically updates already installed Guest Additions in a VM. At the moment only Windows and Linux guests are supported. Because the VirtualBox Guest Additions drivers are not WHQL-certified yet there might be warning dialogs during the actual Guest Additions update. These need to be confirmed manually in order to continue the installation process. This applies to Windows 2000 and Windows XP guests and therefore these guests can't be updated in a fully automated fashion without user interaction. However, to start a Guest Additions update for the mentioned Windows versions anyway, the flag AdditionsUpdateFlag_WaitForUpdateStartOnly can be specified. See for more information. The guest needs to be restarted in order to make use of the updated Guest Additions. Guest OS is not supported for automated Guest Additions updates or the already installed Guest Additions are not ready yet. Error while updating. Path to the Guest Additions .ISO file to use for the update. Optional command line arguments to use for the Guest Additions installer. Useful for retrofitting features which weren't installed before in the guest. flags. Progress object to track the operation completion. The IProgress interface is used to track and control asynchronous tasks within VirtualBox. An instance of this is returned every time VirtualBox starts an asynchronous task (in other words, a separate thread) which continues to run after a method call returns. For example, , which saves the state of a running virtual machine, can take a long time to complete. To be able to display a progress bar, a user interface such as the VirtualBox graphical user interface can use the IProgress object returned by that method. Note that IProgress is a "read-only" interface in the sense that only the VirtualBox internals behind the Main API can create and manipulate progress objects, whereas client code can only use the IProgress object to monitor a task's progress and, if is @c true, cancel the task by calling . A task represented by IProgress consists of either one or several sub-operations that run sequentially, one by one (see and ). Every operation is identified by a number (starting from 0) and has a separate description. You can find the individual percentage of completion of the current operation in and the percentage of completion of the task as a whole in . Similarly, you can wait for the completion of a particular operation via or for the completion of the whole task via . ID of the task. Description of the task. Initiator of the task. Whether the task can be interrupted. Current progress value of the task as a whole, in percent. This value depends on how many operations are already complete. Returns 100 if is @c true. Estimated remaining time until the task completes, in seconds. Returns 0 once the task has completed; returns -1 if the remaining time cannot be computed, in particular if the current progress is 0. Even if a value is returned, the estimate will be unreliable for low progress values. It will become more reliable as the task progresses; it is not recommended to display an ETA before at least 20% of a task have completed. Whether the task has been completed. Whether the task has been canceled. Result code of the progress task. Valid only if is @c true. Extended information about the unsuccessful result of the progress operation. May be @c null if no extended information is available. Valid only if is @c true and indicates a failure. Number of sub-operations this task is divided into. Every task consists of at least one suboperation. Number of the sub-operation being currently executed. Description of the sub-operation being currently executed. Progress value of the current sub-operation only, in percent. Weight value of the current sub-operation only. When non-zero, this specifies the number of milliseconds after which the operation will automatically be canceled. This can only be set on cancelable objects. Waits until the task is done (including all sub-operations) with a given timeout in milliseconds; specify -1 for an indefinite wait. Note that the VirtualBox/XPCOM/COM/native event queues of the calling thread are not processed while waiting. Neglecting event queues may have dire consequences (degrade performance, resource hogs, deadlocks, etc.), this is specially so for the main thread on platforms using XPCOM. Callers are advised wait for short periods and service their event queues between calls, or to create a worker thread to do the waiting. Failed to wait for task completion. Maximum time in milliseconds to wait or -1 to wait indefinitely. Waits until the given operation is done with a given timeout in milliseconds; specify -1 for an indefinite wait. See for event queue considerations. Failed to wait for operation completion. Number of the operation to wait for. Must be less than . Maximum time in milliseconds to wait or -1 to wait indefinitely. Cancels the task. If is @c false, then this method will fail. Operation cannot be canceled. Internal method, not to be called externally. Internal method, not to be called externally. Waits until the other task is completed (including all sub-operations) and forward all changes from the other progress to this progress. This means sub-operation number, description, percent and so on. The caller is responsible for having at least the same count of sub-operations in this progress object as there are in the other progress object. If the other progress object supports cancel and this object gets any cancel request (when here enabled as well), it will be forwarded to the other progress object. Error information is automatically preserved (by transferring it to the current thread's error information). If the caller wants to set it as the completion state of this progress it needs to be done separately. Waiting time has expired. Other progress object to be "cloned". Timeout (in ms). Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. Internal method, not to be called externally. Internal method, not to be called externally. Internal method, not to be called externally. The ISnapshot interface represents a snapshot of the virtual machine. Together with the differencing media that are created when a snapshot is taken, a machine can be brought back to the exact state it was in when the snapshot was taken. The ISnapshot interface has no methods, only attributes; snapshots are controlled through methods of the interface which also manage the media associated with the snapshot. The following operations exist:
  • creates a new snapshot by creating new, empty differencing images for the machine's media and saving the VM settings and (if the VM is running) the current VM state in the snapshot. The differencing images will then receive all data written to the machine's media, while their parent (base) images remain unmodified after the snapshot has been taken (see for details about differencing images). This simplifies restoring a machine to the state of a snapshot: only the differencing images need to be deleted. The current machine state is not changed by taking a snapshot except that is set to the newly created snapshot, which is also added to the machine's snapshots tree.
  • resets a machine to the state of a previous snapshot by deleting the differencing image of each of the machine's media and setting the machine's settings and state to the state that was saved in the snapshot (if any). This destroys the machine's current state. After calling this, points to the snapshot that was restored.
  • deletes a snapshot without affecting the current machine state. This does not change the current machine state, but instead frees the resources allocated when the snapshot was taken: the settings and machine state file are deleted (if any), and the snapshot's differencing image for each of the machine's media gets merged with its parent image. Neither the current machine state nor other snapshots are affected by this operation, except that parent media will be modified to contain the disk data associated with the snapshot being deleted. When deleting the current snapshot, the attribute is set to the current snapshot's parent or @c null if it has no parent. Otherwise the attribute is unchanged.
Each snapshot contains a copy of virtual machine's settings (hardware configuration etc.). This copy is contained in an immutable (read-only) instance of which is available from the snapshot's attribute. When restoring the snapshot, these settings are copied back to the original machine. In addition, if the machine was running when the snapshot was taken ( is ), the current VM state is saved in the snapshot (similarly to what happens when a VM's state is saved). The snapshot is then said to be online because when restoring it, the VM will be running. If the machine was in the Saved or AbortedSaved state, the snapshot receives a copy of the execution state file (). Otherwise, if the machine was not running ( or ), the snapshot is offline; it then contains a so-called "zero execution state", representing a machine that is powered off.
UUID of the snapshot. Short name of the snapshot. Setting this attribute causes to be called implicitly. Optional description of the snapshot. Setting this attribute causes to be called implicitly. Timestamp of the snapshot, in milliseconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. @c true if this snapshot is an online snapshot and @c false otherwise. When this attribute is @c true, the attribute of the object associated with this snapshot will point to the saved state file. Otherwise, it will be an empty string. Virtual machine this snapshot is taken on. This object stores all settings the machine had when taking this snapshot. The returned machine object is immutable, i.e. no any settings can be changed. Parent snapshot (a snapshot this one is based on), or @c null if the snapshot has no parent (i.e. is the first snapshot). Child snapshots (all snapshots having this one as a parent). By inspecting this attribute starting with a machine's root snapshot (which can be obtained by calling with a @c null UUID), a machine's snapshots tree can be iterated over. Returns the number of direct children of this snapshot.
Virtual medium state. Associated medium storage does not exist (either was not created yet or was deleted). Associated storage exists and accessible; this gets set if the accessibility check performed by was successful. Medium is locked for reading (see ), no data modification is possible. Medium is locked for writing (see ), no concurrent data reading or modification is possible. Medium accessibility check (see ) has not yet been performed, or else, associated medium storage is not accessible. In the first case, is empty, in the second case, it describes the error that occurred. Associated medium storage is being created. Associated medium storage is being deleted. Virtual medium type. For each , this defines how the medium is attached to a virtual machine (see ) and what happens when a snapshot (see ) is taken of a virtual machine which has the medium attached. At the moment DVD and floppy media are always of type "writethrough". Normal medium (attached directly or indirectly, preserved when taking snapshots). Immutable medium (attached indirectly, changes are wiped out the next time the virtual machine is started). Write through medium (attached directly, ignored when taking snapshots). Allow using this medium concurrently by several machines. Present since VirtualBox 3.2.0, and accepted since 3.2.8. A readonly medium, which can of course be used by several machines. Present and accepted since VirtualBox 4.0. A medium which is indirectly attached, so that one base medium can be used for several VMs which have their own differencing medium to store their modifications. In some sense a variant of Immutable with unset AutoReset flag in each differencing medium. Present and accepted since VirtualBox 4.0. Virtual medium image variant. More than one flag may be set. No particular variant requested, results in using the backend default. VMDK image split in chunks of less than 2GByte. VMDK image representing a raw disk. VMDK streamOptimized image. Special import/export format which is read-only/append-only. VMDK format variant used on ESX products. Fill new blocks with zeroes while expanding image file. Fixed image. Only allowed for base images. Differencing image. Only allowed for child images. Special flag which requests formatting the disk image. Right now supported for floppy images only. Special flag which suppresses automatic creation of the subdirectory. Only used when passing the medium variant as an input parameter. The IMediumAttachment interface links storage media to virtual machines. For each medium () which has been attached to a storage controller () of a machine () via the method, one instance of IMediumAttachment is added to the machine's array attribute. Each medium attachment specifies the storage controller as well as a port and device number and the IMedium instance representing a virtual hard disk or floppy or DVD image. For removable media (DVDs or floppies), there are two additional options. For one, the IMedium instance can be @c null to represent an empty drive with no media inserted (see ); secondly, the medium can be one of the pseudo-media for host drives listed in or .

Attaching Hard Disks

Hard disks are attached to virtual machines using the method and detached using the method. Depending on a medium's type (see ), hard disks are attached either directly or indirectly. When a hard disk is being attached directly, it is associated with the virtual machine and used for hard disk operations when the machine is running. When a hard disk is being attached indirectly, a new differencing hard disk linked to it is implicitly created and this differencing hard disk is associated with the machine and used for hard disk operations. This also means that if performs a direct attachment then the same hard disk will be returned in response to the subsequent call; however if an indirect attachment is performed then will return the implicitly created differencing hard disk, not the original one passed to . In detail:
  • Normal base hard disks that do not have children (i.e. differencing hard disks linked to them) and that are not already attached to virtual machines in snapshots are attached directly. Otherwise, they are attached indirectly because having dependent children or being part of the snapshot makes it impossible to modify hard disk contents without breaking the integrity of the dependent party. The attribute allows to quickly determine the kind of the attachment for the given hard disk. Note that if a normal base hard disk is to be indirectly attached to a virtual machine with snapshots then a special procedure called smart attachment is performed (see below).
  • Normal differencing hard disks are like normal base hard disks: they are attached directly if they do not have children and are not attached to virtual machines in snapshots, and indirectly otherwise. Note that the smart attachment procedure is never performed for differencing hard disks.
  • Immutable hard disks are always attached indirectly because they are designed to be non-writable. If an immutable hard disk is attached to a virtual machine with snapshots then a special procedure called smart attachment is performed (see below).
  • Writethrough hard disks are always attached directly, also as designed. This also means that writethrough hard disks cannot have other hard disks linked to them at all.
  • Shareable hard disks are always attached directly, also as designed. This also means that shareable hard disks cannot have other hard disks linked to them at all. They behave almost like writethrough hard disks, except that shareable hard disks can be attached to several virtual machines which are running, allowing concurrent accesses. You need special cluster software running in the virtual machines to make use of such disks.
Note that the same hard disk, regardless of its type, may be attached to more than one virtual machine at a time. In this case, the machine that is started first gains exclusive access to the hard disk and attempts to start other machines having this hard disk attached will fail until the first machine is powered down. Detaching hard disks is performed in a deferred fashion. This means that the given hard disk remains associated with the given machine after a successful call until is called to save all changes to machine settings to disk. This deferring is necessary to guarantee that the hard disk configuration may be restored at any time by a call to before the settings are saved (committed). Note that if is called after indirectly attaching some hard disks to the machine but before a call to is made, it will implicitly delete all differencing hard disks implicitly created by for these indirect attachments. Such implicitly created hard disks will also be immediately deleted when detached explicitly using the call if it is made before . This implicit deletion is safe because newly created differencing hard disks do not contain any user data. However, keep in mind that detaching differencing hard disks that were implicitly created by before the last call will not implicitly delete them as they may already contain some data (for example, as a result of virtual machine execution). If these hard disks are no more necessary, the caller can always delete them explicitly using after they are actually de-associated from this machine by the call.

Smart Attachment

When normal base or immutable hard disks are indirectly attached to a virtual machine then some additional steps are performed to make sure the virtual machine will have the most recent "view" of the hard disk being attached. These steps include walking through the machine's snapshots starting from the current one and going through ancestors up to the first snapshot. Hard disks attached to the virtual machine in all of the encountered snapshots are checked whether they are descendants of the given normal base or immutable hard disk. The first found child (which is the differencing hard disk) will be used instead of the normal base or immutable hard disk as a parent for creating a new differencing hard disk that will be actually attached to the machine. And only if no descendants are found or if the virtual machine does not have any snapshots then the normal base or immutable hard disk will be used itself as a parent for this differencing hard disk. It is easier to explain what smart attachment does using the following example:
BEFORE attaching B.vdi:       AFTER attaching B.vdi:

Snapshot 1 (B.vdi)            Snapshot 1 (B.vdi)
 Snapshot 2 (D1->B.vdi)        Snapshot 2 (D1->B.vdi)
  Snapshot 3 (D2->D1.vdi)       Snapshot 3 (D2->D1.vdi)
   Snapshot 4 (none)             Snapshot 4 (none)
    CurState   (none)             CurState   (D3->D2.vdi)

                              NOT
                                 ...
                                  CurState   (D3->B.vdi)
      
The first column is the virtual machine configuration before the base hard disk B.vdi is attached, the second column shows the machine after this hard disk is attached. Constructs like D1->B.vdi and similar mean that the hard disk that is actually attached to the machine is a differencing hard disk, D1.vdi, which is linked to (based on) another hard disk, B.vdi. As we can see from the example, the hard disk B.vdi was detached from the machine before taking Snapshot 4. Later, after Snapshot 4 was taken, the user decides to attach B.vdi again. B.vdi has dependent child hard disks (D1.vdi, D2.vdi), therefore it cannot be attached directly and needs an indirect attachment (i.e. implicit creation of a new differencing hard disk). Due to the smart attachment procedure, the new differencing hard disk (D3.vdi) will be based on D2.vdi, not on B.vdi itself, since D2.vdi is the most recent view of B.vdi existing for this snapshot branch of the given virtual machine. Note that if there is more than one descendant hard disk of the given base hard disk found in a snapshot, and there is an exact device, channel and bus match, then this exact match will be used. Otherwise, the youngest descendant will be picked up. There is one more important aspect of the smart attachment procedure which is not related to snapshots at all. Before walking through the snapshots as described above, the backup copy of the current list of hard disk attachment is searched for descendants. This backup copy is created when the hard disk configuration is changed for the first time after the last call and used by to undo the recent hard disk changes. When such a descendant is found in this backup copy, it will be simply re-attached back, without creating a new differencing hard disk for it. This optimization is necessary to make it possible to re-attach the base or immutable hard disk to a different bus, channel or device slot without losing the contents of the differencing hard disk actually attached to the machine in place of it.
Machine object for this medium attachment. Medium object associated with this attachment; it can be @c null for removable devices. Name of the storage controller of this attachment; this refers to one of the controllers in by name. Port number of this attachment. See for the meaning of this value for the different controller types. Device slot number of this attachment. See for the meaning of this value for the different controller types. Device type of this attachment. Pass I/O requests through to a device on the host. Whether guest-triggered eject results in unmounting the medium. Signals that the removable medium has been ejected. This is not necessarily equivalent to having a @c null medium association. Whether the associated medium is non-rotational. Whether the associated medium supports discarding unused blocks. Whether this attachment is hot pluggable or not. The bandwidth group this medium attachment is assigned to.
The IMedium interface represents virtual storage for a machine's hard disks, CD/DVD or floppy drives. It will typically represent a disk image on the host, for example a VDI or VMDK file representing a virtual hard disk, or an ISO or RAW file representing virtual removable media, but can also point to a network location (e.g. for iSCSI targets). Instances of IMedium are connected to virtual machines by way of medium attachments, which link the storage medium to a particular device slot of a storage controller of the virtual machine. In the VirtualBox API, virtual storage is therefore always represented by the following chain of object links:
  • contains an array of storage controllers (IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS or a floppy controller; these are instances of ).
  • contains an array of medium attachments (instances of created by ), each containing a storage controller from the above array, a port/device specification, and an instance of IMedium representing the medium storage (image file). For removable media, the storage medium is optional; a medium attachment with no medium represents a CD/DVD or floppy drive with no medium inserted. By contrast, hard disk attachments will always have an IMedium object attached.
  • Each IMedium in turn points to a storage unit (such as a file on the host computer or a network resource) that holds actual data. This location is represented by the attribute.
Existing media are opened using ; new hard disk media can be created with the VirtualBox API using the method. Differencing hard disks (see below) are usually implicitly created by VirtualBox as needed, but may also be created explicitly using . VirtualBox cannot create CD/DVD or floppy images (ISO and RAW files); these should be created with external tools and then opened from within VirtualBox. Only for CD/DVDs and floppies, an IMedium instance can also represent a host drive. In that case the attribute contains the UUID of one of the drives in or .

Media registries

When a medium has been opened or created using one of the aforementioned APIs, it becomes "known" to VirtualBox. Known media can be attached to virtual machines and re-found through . They also appear in the global , and arrays. Prior to VirtualBox 4.0, opening a medium added it to a global media registry in the VirtualBox.xml file, which was shared between all machines and made transporting machines and their media from one host to another difficult. Starting with VirtualBox 4.0, media are only added to a registry when they are attached to a machine using . For backwards compatibility, which registry a medium is added to depends on which VirtualBox version created a machine:
  • If the medium has first been attached to a machine which was created by VirtualBox 4.0 or later, it is added to that machine's media registry in the machine XML settings file. This way all information about a machine's media attachments is contained in a single file and can be transported easily.
  • For older media attachments (i.e. if the medium was first attached to a machine which was created with a VirtualBox version before 4.0), media continue to be registered in the global VirtualBox settings file, for backwards compatibility.
See for more information. Media are removed from media registries by the , and methods.

Accessibility checks

VirtualBox defers media accessibility checks until the method is called explicitly on a medium. This is done to make the VirtualBox object ready for serving requests as fast as possible and let the end-user application decide if it needs to check media accessibility right away or not. As a result, when VirtualBox starts up (e.g. the VirtualBox object gets created for the first time), all known media are in the "Inaccessible" state, but the value of the attribute is an empty string because no actual accessibility check has been made yet. After calling , a medium is considered accessible if its storage unit can be read. In that case, the attribute has a value of "Created". If the storage unit cannot be read (for example, because it is located on a disconnected network resource, or was accidentally deleted outside VirtualBox), the medium is considered inaccessible, which is indicated by the "Inaccessible" state. The exact reason why the medium is inaccessible can be obtained by reading the attribute.

Medium types

There are five types of medium behavior which are stored in the attribute (see ) and which define the medium's behavior with attachments and snapshots. All media can be also divided in two groups: base media and differencing media. A base medium contains all sectors of the medium data in its own storage and therefore can be used independently. In contrast, a differencing medium is a "delta" to some other medium and contains only those sectors which differ from that other medium, which is then called a parent. The differencing medium is said to be linked to that parent. The parent may be itself a differencing medium, thus forming a chain of linked media. The last element in that chain must always be a base medium. Note that several differencing media may be linked to the same parent medium. Differencing media can be distinguished from base media by querying the attribute: base media do not have parents they would depend on, so the value of this attribute is always @c null for them. Using this attribute, it is possible to walk up the medium tree (from the child medium to its parent). It is also possible to walk down the tree using the attribute. Note that the type of all differencing media is "normal"; all other values are meaningless for them. Base media may be of any type.

Automatic composition of the file name part

Another extension to the attribute is that there is a possibility to cause VirtualBox to compose a unique value for the file name part of the location using the UUID of the hard disk. This applies only to hard disks in state, e.g. before the storage unit is created, and works as follows. You set the value of the attribute to a location specification which only contains the path specification but not the file name part and ends with either a forward slash or a backslash character. In response, VirtualBox will generate a new UUID for the hard disk and compose the file name using the following pattern:
        <path>/{<uuid>}.<ext>
      
where <path> is the supplied path specification, <uuid> is the newly generated UUID and <ext> is the default extension for the storage format of this hard disk. After that, you may call any of the methods that create a new hard disk storage unit and they will use the generated UUID and file name.
UUID of the medium. For a newly created medium, this value is a randomly generated UUID. For media in one of MediumState_NotCreated, MediumState_Creating or MediumState_Deleting states, the value of this property is undefined and will most likely be an empty UUID. Optional description of the medium. For a newly created medium the value of this attribute is an empty string. Medium types that don't support this attribute will return E_NOTIMPL in attempt to get or set this attribute's value. For some storage types, reading this attribute may return an outdated (last known) value when is or because the value of this attribute is stored within the storage unit itself. Also note that changing the attribute value is not possible in such case, as well as when the medium is the state. Returns the current medium state, which is the last state set by the accessibility check performed by . If that method has not yet been called on the medium, the state is "Inaccessible"; as opposed to truly inaccessible media, the value of will be an empty string in that case. As of version 3.1, this no longer performs an accessibility check automatically; call for that. Returns the storage format variant information for this medium as an array of the flags described at . Before is called this method returns an undefined value. Location of the storage unit holding medium data. The format of the location string is medium type specific. For medium types using regular files in a host's file system, the location string is the full file name. Name of the storage unit holding medium data. The returned string is a short version of the attribute that is suitable for representing the medium in situations where the full location specification is too long (such as lists and comboboxes in GUI frontends). This string is also used by frontends to sort the media list alphabetically when needed. For example, for locations that are regular files in the host's file system, the value of this attribute is just the file name (+ extension), without the path specification. Note that as opposed to the attribute, the name attribute will not necessary be unique for a list of media of the given type and format. Kind of device (DVD/Floppy/HardDisk) which is applicable to this medium. True if this corresponds to a drive on the host. Physical size of the storage unit used to hold medium data (in bytes). For media whose is , the value of this property is the last known size. For media, the returned value is zero. Storage format of this medium. The value of this attribute is a string that specifies a backend used to store medium data. The storage format is defined when you create a new medium or automatically detected when you open an existing medium, and cannot be changed later. The list of all storage formats supported by this VirtualBox installation can be obtained using . Storage medium format object corresponding to this medium. The value of this attribute is a reference to the medium format object that specifies the backend properties used to store medium data. The storage format is defined when you create a new medium or automatically detected when you open an existing medium, and cannot be changed later. @c null is returned if there is no associated medium format object. This can e.g. happen for medium objects representing host drives and other special medium objects. Type (role) of this medium. The following constraints apply when changing the value of this attribute:
  • If a medium is attached to a virtual machine (either in the current state or in one of the snapshots), its type cannot be changed.
  • As long as the medium has children, its type cannot be set to .
  • The type of all differencing media is and cannot be changed.
The type of a newly created or opened medium is set to , except for DVD and floppy media, which have a type of .
Returns which medium types can selected for this medium. This attribute is not implemented at the moment. Parent of this medium (the medium this medium is directly based on). Only differencing media have parents. For base (non-differencing) media, @c null is returned. Children of this medium (all differencing media directly based on this medium). A @c null array is returned if this medium does not have any children. Base medium of this medium. If this is a differencing medium, its base medium is the medium the given medium branch starts from. For all other types of media, this property returns the medium object itself (i.e. the same object this property is read on). Returns @c true if this medium is read-only and @c false otherwise. A medium is considered to be read-only when its contents cannot be modified without breaking the integrity of other parties that depend on this medium such as its child media or snapshots of virtual machines where this medium is attached to these machines. If there are no children and no such snapshots then there is no dependency and the medium is not read-only. The value of this attribute can be used to determine the kind of the attachment that will take place when attaching this medium to a virtual machine. If the value is @c false then the medium will be attached directly. If the value is @c true then the medium will be attached indirectly by creating a new differencing child medium for that. See the interface description for more information. Note that all Immutable media are always read-only while all Writethrough media are always not. The read-only condition represented by this attribute is related to the medium type and usage, not to the current medium state and not to the read-only state of the storage unit. Logical size of this medium (in bytes), as reported to the guest OS running inside the virtual machine this medium is attached to. The logical size is defined when the medium is created and cannot be changed later. For media whose state is is , the value of this property is the last known logical size. For media, the returned value is zero. Whether this differencing medium will be automatically reset each time a virtual machine it is attached to is powered up. This attribute is automatically set to @c true for the last differencing image of an "immutable" medium (see ). See for more information about resetting differencing media. Reading this property on a base (non-differencing) medium will always @c false. Changing the value of this property in this case is not supported. This is not a differencing medium (when changing the attribute value). Text message that represents the result of the last accessibility check performed by . An empty string is returned if the last accessibility check was successful or has not yet been called. As a result, if is "Inaccessible" and this attribute is empty, then has yet to be called; this is the default value of media after VirtualBox initialization. A non-empty string indicates a failure and should normally describe a reason of the failure (for example, a file read error). Array of UUIDs of all machines this medium is attached to. A @c null array is returned if this medium is not attached to any machine or to any machine's snapshot. The returned array will include a machine even if this medium is not attached to that machine in the current state but attached to it in one of the machine's snapshots. See for details. Changes the UUID and parent UUID for a hard disk medium. Select whether a new image UUID is set or not. New UUID for the image. If an empty string is passed, then a new UUID is automatically created, provided that @a setImageId is @c true. Specifying a zero UUID is not allowed. Select whether a new parent UUID is set or not. New parent UUID for the image. If an empty string is passed, then a new UUID is automatically created, provided @a setParentId is @c true. A zero UUID is valid. Invalid parameter combination. Medium is not a hard disk medium. If the current medium state (see ) is one of "Created", "Inaccessible" or "LockedRead", then this performs an accessibility check on the medium and sets the value of the attribute accordingly; that value is also returned for convenience. For all other state values, this does not perform a refresh but returns the state only. The refresh, if performed, may take a long time (several seconds or even minutes, depending on the storage unit location and format) because it performs an accessibility check of the storage unit. This check may cause a significant delay if the storage unit of the given medium is, for example, a file located on a network share which is not currently accessible due to connectivity problems. In that case, the call will not return until a timeout interval defined by the host OS for this operation expires. For this reason, it is recommended to never read this attribute on the main UI thread to avoid making the UI unresponsive. If the last known state of the medium is "Created" and the accessibility check fails, then the state would be set to "Inaccessible", and may be used to get more details about the failure. If the state of the medium is "LockedRead", then it remains the same, and a non-empty value of will indicate a failed accessibility check in this case. Note that not all medium states are applicable to all medium types. New medium state. Returns an array of UUIDs of all snapshots of the given machine where this medium is attached to. If the medium is attached to the machine in the current state, then the first element in the array will always be the ID of the queried machine (i.e. the value equal to the @c machineId argument), followed by snapshot IDs (if any). If the medium is not attached to the machine in the current state, then the array will contain only snapshot IDs. The returned array may be @c null if this medium is not attached to the given machine at all, neither in the current state nor in one of the snapshots. UUID of the machine to query. Array of snapshot UUIDs of the given machine using this medium. Locks this medium for reading. A read lock is shared: many clients can simultaneously lock the same medium for reading unless it is already locked for writing (see ) in which case an error is returned. When the medium is locked for reading, it cannot be modified from within VirtualBox. This means that any method that changes the properties of this medium or contents of the storage unit will return an error (unless explicitly stated otherwise). That includes an attempt to start a virtual machine that wants to write to the medium. When the virtual machine is started up, it locks for reading all media it uses in read-only mode. If some medium cannot be locked for reading, the startup procedure will fail. A medium is typically locked for reading while it is used by a running virtual machine but has a depending differencing image that receives the actual write operations. This way one base medium can have multiple child differencing images which can be written to simultaneously. Read-only media such as DVD and floppy images are also locked for reading only (so they can be in use by multiple machines simultaneously). A medium is also locked for reading when it is the source of a write operation such as or . The medium locked for reading must be unlocked by abandoning the returned token object, see . Calls to can be nested and the lock is actually released when all callers have abandoned the token. This method sets the medium state (see ) to "LockedRead" on success. The medium's previous state must be one of "Created", "Inaccessible" or "LockedRead". Locking an inaccessible medium is not an error; this method performs a logical lock that prevents modifications of this medium through the VirtualBox API, not a physical file-system lock of the underlying storage unit. This method returns the current state of the medium before the operation. Invalid medium state (e.g. not created, locked, inaccessible, creating, deleting). Token object, when this is released (reference count reaches 0) then the lock count is decreased. The lock is released when the lock count reaches 0. Locks this medium for writing. A write lock, as opposed to , is exclusive: there may be only one client holding a write lock, and there may be no read locks while the write lock is held. As a result, read-locking fails if a write lock is held, and write-locking fails if either a read or another write lock is held. When a medium is locked for writing, it cannot be modified from within VirtualBox, and it is not guaranteed that the values of its properties are up-to-date. Any method that changes the properties of this medium or contents of the storage unit will return an error (unless explicitly stated otherwise). When a virtual machine is started up, it locks for writing all media it uses to write data to. If any medium could not be locked for writing, the startup procedure will fail. If a medium has differencing images, then while the machine is running, only the last ("leaf") differencing image is locked for writing, whereas its parents are locked for reading only. A medium is also locked for writing when it is the target of a write operation such as or . The medium locked for writing must be unlocked by abandoning the returned token object, see . Write locks cannot be nested. This method sets the medium state (see ) to "LockedWrite" on success. The medium's previous state must be either "Created" or "Inaccessible". Locking an inaccessible medium is not an error; this method performs a logical lock that prevents modifications of this medium through the VirtualBox API, not a physical file-system lock of the underlying storage unit. Invalid medium state (e.g. not created, locked, inaccessible, creating, deleting). Token object, when this is released (reference count reaches 0) then the lock is released. Closes this medium. The medium must not be attached to any known virtual machine and must not have any known child media, otherwise the operation will fail. When the medium is successfully closed, it is removed from the list of registered media, but its storage unit is not deleted. In particular, this means that this medium can later be opened again using the call. Note that after this method successfully returns, the given medium object becomes uninitialized. This means that any attempt to call any of its methods or attributes will fail with the "Object not ready" (E_ACCESSDENIED) error. Invalid medium state (other than not created, created or inaccessible). Medium attached to virtual machine. Settings file not accessible. Could not parse the settings file. Returns the value of the custom medium property with the given name. The list of all properties supported by the given medium format can be obtained with . If this method returns an empty string in @a value, the requested property is supported but currently not assigned any value. Requested property does not exist (not supported by the format). @a name is @c null or empty. Name of the property to get. Current property value. Sets the value of the custom medium property with the given name. The list of all properties supported by the given medium format can be obtained with . Setting the property value to @c null or an empty string is equivalent to deleting the existing value. A default value (if it is defined for this property) will be used by the format backend in this case. Requested property does not exist (not supported by the format). @a name is @c null or empty. Name of the property to set. Property value to set. Returns values for a group of properties in one call. The names of the properties to get are specified using the @a names argument which is a list of comma-separated property names or an empty string if all properties are to be returned. Currently the value of this argument is ignored and the method always returns all existing properties. The list of all properties supported by the given medium format can be obtained with . The method returns two arrays, the array of property names corresponding to the @a names argument and the current values of these properties. Both arrays have the same number of elements with each element at the given index in the first array corresponds to an element at the same index in the second array. For properties that do not have assigned values, an empty string is returned at the appropriate index in the @a returnValues array. Names of properties to get. Names of returned properties. Values of returned properties. Sets values for a group of properties in one call. The names of the properties to set are passed in the @a names array along with the new values for them in the @a values array. Both arrays have the same number of elements with each element at the given index in the first array corresponding to an element at the same index in the second array. If there is at least one property name in @a names that is not valid, the method will fail before changing the values of any other properties from the @a names array. Using this method over is preferred if you need to set several properties at once since it is more efficient. The list of all properties supported by the given medium format can be obtained with . Setting the property value to @c null or an empty string is equivalent to deleting the existing value. A default value (if it is defined for this property) will be used by the format backend in this case. Names of properties to set. Values of properties to set. Starts creating a hard disk storage unit (fixed/dynamic, according to the variant flags) in the background. The previous storage unit created for this object, if any, must first be deleted using , otherwise the operation will fail. Before the operation starts, the medium is placed in state. If the create operation fails, the medium will be placed back in state. After the returned progress object reports that the operation has successfully completed, the medium state will be set to , the medium will be remembered by this VirtualBox installation and may be attached to virtual machines. The variant of storage creation operation is not supported. See . Maximum logical size of the medium in bytes. Exact image variant which should be created (as a combination of flags). Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts deleting the storage unit of this medium. The medium must not be attached to any known virtual machine and must not have any known child media, otherwise the operation will fail. It will also fail if there is no storage unit to delete or if deletion is already in progress, or if the medium is being in use (locked for read or for write) or inaccessible. Therefore, the only valid state for this operation to succeed is . Before the operation starts, the medium is placed in state and gets removed from the list of remembered hard disks (media registry). If the delete operation fails, the medium will be remembered again and placed back to state. After the returned progress object reports that the operation is complete, the medium state will be set to and you will be able to use one of the storage creation methods to create it again. Medium is attached to a virtual machine. Storage deletion is not allowed because neither of storage creation operations are supported. See . If the deletion operation fails, it is not guaranteed that the storage unit still exists. You may check the value to answer this question. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts creating an empty differencing storage unit based on this medium in the format and at the location defined by the @a target argument. The target medium must be in state (i.e. must not have an existing storage unit). Upon successful completion, this operation will set the type of the target medium to and create a storage unit necessary to represent the differencing medium data in the given format (according to the storage format of the target object). After the returned progress object reports that the operation is successfully complete, the target medium gets remembered by this VirtualBox installation and may be attached to virtual machines. The medium will be set to state for the duration of this operation. Medium not in @c NotCreated state. Target medium. Exact image variant which should be created (as a combination of flags). Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts merging the contents of this medium and all intermediate differencing media in the chain to the given target medium. The target medium must be either a descendant of this medium or its ancestor (otherwise this method will immediately return a failure). It follows that there are two logical directions of the merge operation: from ancestor to descendant (forward merge) and from descendant to ancestor (backward merge). Let us consider the following medium chain:
Base <- Diff_1 <- Diff_2
Here, calling this method on the Base medium object with Diff_2 as an argument will be a forward merge; calling it on Diff_2 with Base as an argument will be a backward merge. Note that in both cases the contents of the resulting medium will be the same, the only difference is the medium object that takes the result of the merge operation. In case of the forward merge in the above example, the result will be written to Diff_2; in case of the backward merge, the result will be written to Base. In other words, the result of the operation is always stored in the target medium. Upon successful operation completion, the storage units of all media in the chain between this (source) medium and the target medium, including the source medium itself, will be automatically deleted and the relevant medium objects (including this medium) will become uninitialized. This means that any attempt to call any of their methods or attributes will fail with the "Object not ready" (E_ACCESSDENIED) error. Applied to the above example, the forward merge of Base to Diff_2 will delete and uninitialize both Base and Diff_1 media. Note that Diff_2 in this case will become a base medium itself since it will no longer be based on any other medium. Considering the above, all of the following conditions must be met in order for the merge operation to succeed:
  • Neither this (source) medium nor any intermediate differencing medium in the chain between it and the target medium is attached to any virtual machine.
  • Neither the source medium nor the target medium is an medium.
  • The part of the medium tree from the source medium to the target medium is a linear chain, i.e. all medium in this chain have exactly one child which is the next medium in this chain. The only exception from this rule is the target medium in the forward merge operation; it is allowed to have any number of child media because the merge operation will not change its logical contents (as it is seen by the guest OS or by children).
  • None of the involved media are in or state.
This (source) medium and all intermediates will be placed to state and the target medium will be placed to state and for the duration of this operation.
Target medium. Progress object to track the operation completion.
Starts creating a clone of this medium in the format and at the location defined by the @a target argument. The target medium must be either in state (i.e. must not have an existing storage unit) or in state (i.e. created and not locked, and big enough to hold the data or else the copy will be partial). Upon successful completion, the cloned medium will contain exactly the same sector data as the medium being cloned, except that in the first case a new UUID for the clone will be randomly generated, and in the second case the UUID will remain unchanged. The @a parent argument defines which medium will be the parent of the clone. Passing a @c null reference indicates that the clone will be a base image, i.e. completely independent. It is possible to specify an arbitrary medium for this parameter, including the parent of the medium which is being cloned. Even cloning to a child of the source medium is possible. Note that when cloning to an existing image, the @a parent argument is ignored. After the returned progress object reports that the operation is successfully complete, the target medium gets remembered by this VirtualBox installation and may be attached to virtual machines. This medium will be placed to state for the duration of this operation. The specified cloning variant is not supported at the moment. Target medium. Exact image variant which should be created (as a combination of flags). Parent of the cloned medium. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts creating a clone of this medium in the format and at the location defined by the @a target argument. The target medium must be either in state (i.e. must not have an existing storage unit) or in state (i.e. created and not locked, and big enough to hold the data or else the copy will be partial). Upon successful completion, the cloned medium will contain exactly the same sector data as the medium being cloned, except that in the first case a new UUID for the clone will be randomly generated, and in the second case the UUID will remain unchanged. The @a parent argument defines which medium will be the parent of the clone. In this case the clone will be a base image, i.e. completely independent. It is possible to specify an arbitrary medium for this parameter, including the parent of the medium which is being cloned. Even cloning to a child of the source medium is possible. Note that when cloning to an existing image, the @a parent argument is ignored. After the returned progress object reports that the operation is successfully complete, the target medium gets remembered by this VirtualBox installation and may be attached to virtual machines. This medium will be placed to state for the duration of this operation. The specified cloning variant is not supported at the moment. Target medium. flags). Progress object to track the operation completion. Changes the location of this medium. Some medium types may support changing the storage unit location by simply changing the value of the associated property. In this case the operation is performed immediately, and @a progress is returning a @c null reference. Otherwise on success there is a progress object returned, which signals progress and completion of the operation. This distinction is necessary because for some formats the operation is very fast, while for others it can be very slow (moving the image file by copying all data), and in the former case it'd be a waste of resources to create a progress object which will immediately signal completion. When setting a location for a medium which corresponds to a/several regular file(s) in the host's file system, the given file name may be either relative to the VirtualBox home folder or absolute. Note that if the given location specification does not contain the file extension part then a proper default extension will be automatically appended by the implementation depending on the medium type. The operation is not implemented yet. Medium format does not support changing the location. New location. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts compacting of this medium. This means that the medium is transformed into a possibly more compact storage representation. This potentially creates temporary images, which can require a substantial amount of additional disk space. This medium will be placed to state and all its parent media (if any) will be placed to state for the duration of this operation. Please note that the results can be either returned straight away, or later as the result of the background operation via the object returned via the @a progress parameter. Medium format does not support compacting (but potentially needs it). Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts resizing this medium. This means that the nominal size of the medium is set to the new value. Both increasing and decreasing the size is possible, and there are no safety checks, since VirtualBox does not make any assumptions about the medium contents. Resizing usually needs additional disk space, and possibly also some temporary disk space. Note that resize does not create a full temporary copy of the medium, so the additional disk space requirement is usually much lower than using the clone operation. This medium will be placed to state for the duration of this operation. Please note that the results can be either returned straight away, or later as the result of the background operation via the object returned via the @a progress parameter. Medium format does not support resizing. New nominal capacity of the medium in bytes. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts erasing the contents of this differencing medium. This operation will reset the differencing medium to its initial state when it does not contain any sector data and any read operation is redirected to its parent medium. This automatically gets called during VM power-up for every medium whose attribute is @c true. The medium will be write-locked for the duration of this operation (see ). This is not a differencing medium. Medium is not in or state. Progress object to track the operation completion. Starts encryption of this medium. This means that the stored data in the medium is encrypted. This medium will be placed to state. Please note that the results can be either returned straight away, or later as the result of the background operation via the object returned via the @a progress parameter. Encryption is not supported for this medium because it is attached to more than one VM or has children. The current password the medium is protected with. Use an empty string to indicate that the medium isn't encrypted. The cipher to use for encryption. An empty string indicates no encryption for the result. The new password the medium should be protected with. An empty password and password ID will result in the medium being encrypted with the current password. The ID of the new password when unlocking the medium. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the encryption settings for this medium. Encryption is not configured for this medium. The cipher used for encryption. The ID of the password when unlocking the medium. Checks whether the supplied password is correct for the medium. Encryption is not configured for this medium. The given password is incorrect. The password to check. Open the medium for I/O. Set this to open the medium for both reading and writing. When not set the medium is opened readonly. Password for accessing an encrypted medium. Must be empty if not encrypted. Medium I/O object. This is a helper function that combines the functionality of and . The target medium will take the contents of the calling medium. The specified cloning variant is not supported at the moment. Target medium. New nominal capacity of the medium in bytes. Exact image variant which should be created (as a combination of flags). Parent of the cloned medium. Progress object to track the operation completion.
Medium format capability flags. Supports UUIDs as expected by VirtualBox code. Supports creating fixed size images, allocating all space instantly. Supports creating dynamically growing images, allocating space on demand. Supports creating images split in chunks of a bit less than 2 GBytes. Supports being used as a format for differencing media (see ). Supports asynchronous I/O operations for at least some configurations. The format backend operates on files (the attribute of the medium specifies a file used to store medium data; for a list of supported file extensions see ). The format backend uses the property interface to configure the storage location and properties (the method is used to get access to properties supported by the given medium format). The format backend uses the TCP networking interface for network access. The format backend supports virtual filesystem functionality. The format backend supports discarding blocks. Indicates that this is a frequently used format backend. The IMediumFormat interface represents a medium format. Each medium format has an associated backend which is used to handle media stored in this format. This interface provides information about the properties of the associated backend. Each medium format is identified by a string represented by the attribute. This string is used in calls like to specify the desired format. The list of all supported medium formats can be obtained using . Identifier of this format. The format identifier is a non-@c null non-empty ASCII string. Note that this string is case-insensitive. This means that, for example, all of the following strings:
          "VDI"
          "vdi"
          "VdI"
refer to the same medium format. This string is used in methods of other interfaces where it is necessary to specify a medium format, such as .
Human readable description of this format. Mainly for use in file open dialogs. Capabilities of the format as an array of the flags. For the meaning of individual capability flags see . Returns two arrays describing the supported file extensions. The first array contains the supported extensions and the seconds one the type each extension supports. Both have the same size. Note that some backends do not work on files, so this array may be empty. The array of supported extensions. The array which indicates the device type for every given extension. Returns several arrays describing the properties supported by this format. An element with the given index in each array describes one property. Thus, the number of elements in each returned array is the same and corresponds to the number of supported properties. The returned arrays are filled in only if the flag is set. All arguments must be non-@c null. , Array of property names. Array of property descriptions. Array of property types. Array of property flags. Array of default property values.
The IDataStream interface is used to retrieve a data stream. It is returned by . Recommended size of a read. Requesting a larger read may be possible in certain situations, but it is not guaranteed. Read data from the stream. Waiting time has expired. How many bytes to try read. Timeout (in ms) for limiting the wait time for data to be available. Pass 0 for an infinite timeout. Array of data read. This may be shorter than the specified size. Returning a zero-sized array indicates the end of the stream, if the status is successful. Partition table types. The IMediumIO interface is used to access and modify the content of a medium. It is returned by . The open medium. Whether the medium can be written to. (It can always be read from.) Returns the virtual file system explorer for the medium. This will attempt to recognize the format of the medium content and present it as a virtual directory structure to the API user. A FAT floppy image will be represented will a single root subdir 'fat12' that gives access to the file system content. A ISO-9660 image will have one subdir in the root for each format present in the image, so the API user can select which data view to access (iso9660, rockridge, joliet, udf, hfs, ...). A partitioned harddisk image will have subdirs for each partition. The the filesystem content of each partition can be accessed thru the subdirs if we have a file system interpreter for it. There will also be raw files for each subdirectory, to provide a simple way of accessing raw partition data from an API client. Please note that the explorer may show inconsistent information if the API user modifies the raw image content after it was opened. Read data from the medium. The byte offset into the medium to start reading at. How many bytes to try read. Array of data read. This may be shorter than the specified size. Write data to the medium. The byte offset into the medium to start reading at. Array of data to write. How many bytes were actually written. Formats the medium as FAT. Generally only useful for floppy images as no partition table will be created. Quick format it when set. Writes an empty partition table to the disk. The partition table format. When @c true a partition table entry for the whole disk is created. Otherwise the partition table is empty. Converts the currently opened image into a stream of the specified image type/variant. It is sufficient to open the image in read-only mode. Only few types and variants are supported due to the inherent restrictions of the output style. The requested format/variant combination cannot handle stream output. An error occurred during the conversion. Identifier of the storage format to use for output. The partition table format. Requested buffer size (in bytes) for efficient conversion. Sizes which are too small or too large are silently truncated to suitable values. Tens to hundreds of Megabytes are a good choice. Data stream object for reading the target image. Progress object to track the operation completion. Explictly close the medium I/O rather than waiting for garbage collection and the destructor. This will wait for any pending reads and writes to complete and then close down the I/O access without regard for open explorer instances or anything like that. The IToken interface represents a token passed to an API client, which triggers cleanup actions when it is explicitly released by calling the method (preferred, as it is accurately defined when the release happens), or when the object reference count drops to 0. The latter way is implicitly used when an API client crashes, however the discovery that there was a crash can take rather long, depending on the platform (COM needs 6 minutes). So better don't rely on the crash behavior too much. Releases this token. Cannot be undone in any way, and makes the token object unusable (even the method will return an error), ready for releasing. It is a more defined way than just letting the reference count drop to 0, because the latter (depending on the platform) can trigger asynchronous cleanup activity. Purely a NOOP. Useful when using proxy type API bindings (e.g. the webservice) which manage objects on behalf of the actual client, using an object reference expiration time based garbage collector. Keyboard LED indicators. The IKeyboard interface represents the virtual machine's keyboard. Used in . Use this interface to send keystrokes or the Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence to the virtual machine. Current status of the guest keyboard LEDs. Sends a scancode to the keyboard. Could not send scan code to virtual keyboard. Sends an array of scancodes to the keyboard. Could not send all scan codes to virtual keyboard. Sends the Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence to the keyboard. This function is nothing special, it is just a convenience function calling with the proper scancodes. Could not send all scan codes to virtual keyboard. Causes the virtual keyboard to release any keys which are currently pressed. Useful when host and guest keyboard may be out of sync. Could not release some or all keys. Sends a USB HID usage code and page to the keyboard. The keyRelease flag is set when the key is being released. Could not send usage code to virtual keyboard. Event source for keyboard events. Mouse button state. Touch event contact state. The touch has finished. Whether the touch is really touching the device. Whether the touch is close enough to the device to be detected. The guest mouse pointer description. Flag whether the pointer is visible. Flag whether the pointer has an alpha channel. The pointer hot spot X coordinate. The pointer hot spot Y coordinate. Width of the pointer shape in pixels. Height of the pointer shape in pixels. Shape bitmaps. The @a shape buffer contains a 1bpp (bits per pixel) AND mask followed by a 32bpp XOR (color) mask. For pointers without alpha channel the XOR mask pixels are 32 bit values: (lsb)BGR0(msb). For pointers with alpha channel the XOR mask consists of (lsb)BGRA(msb) 32 bit values. An AND mask is provided for pointers with alpha channel, so if the client does not support alpha, the pointer could be displayed as a normal color pointer. The AND mask is a 1bpp bitmap with byte aligned scanlines. The size of the AND mask therefore is cbAnd = (width + 7) / 8 * height. The padding bits at the end of each scanline are undefined. The XOR mask follows the AND mask on the next 4-byte aligned offset: uint8_t *pu8Xor = pu8And + (cbAnd + 3) & ~3. Bytes in the gap between the AND and the XOR mask are undefined. The XOR mask scanlines have no gap between them and the size of the XOR mask is: cbXor = width * 4 * height. If @a shape size is 0, then the shape is not known or did not change. This can happen if only the pointer visibility is changed. The IMouse interface represents the virtual machine's mouse. Used in . Through this interface, the virtual machine's virtual mouse can be controlled. Whether the guest OS supports absolute mouse pointer positioning or not. You can use the event to be instantly informed about changes of this attribute during virtual machine execution. Whether the guest OS supports relative mouse pointer positioning or not. You can use the event to be instantly informed about changes of this attribute during virtual machine execution. Whether the guest OS has enabled the multi-touch reporting device, touchscreen variant. You can use the event to be instantly informed about changes of this attribute during virtual machine execution. Whether the guest OS has enabled the multi-touch reporting device, touchpad variant. You can use the event to be instantly informed about changes of this attribute during virtual machine execution. Whether the guest OS can currently switch to drawing it's own mouse cursor on demand. You can use the event to be instantly informed about changes of this attribute during virtual machine execution. The current mouse pointer used by the guest. Initiates a mouse event using relative pointer movements along x and y axis. Console not powered up. Could not send mouse event to virtual mouse. Amount of pixels the mouse should move to the right. Negative values move the mouse to the left. Amount of pixels the mouse should move downwards. Negative values move the mouse upwards. Amount of mouse wheel moves. Positive values describe clockwise wheel rotations, negative values describe counterclockwise rotations. Amount of horizontal mouse wheel moves. Positive values describe a movement to the left, negative values describe a movement to the right. The current state of mouse buttons. Every bit represents a mouse button as follows:
Bit 0 (0x01)
left mouse button
Bit 1 (0x02)
right mouse button
Bit 2 (0x04)
middle mouse button
A value of @c 1 means the corresponding button is pressed. otherwise it is released.
Positions the mouse pointer using absolute x and y coordinates. These coordinates are expressed in pixels and start from [1,1] which corresponds to the top left corner of the virtual display. The values [-1,-1] and [0x7fffffff,0x7fffffff] have special meanings as respectively "no data" (to signal that the host wishes to report absolute pointer data in future) and "out of range" (the host pointer is outside of all guest windows). Console not powered up. Could not send mouse event to virtual mouse. This method will have effect only if absolute mouse positioning is supported by the guest OS. X coordinate of the pointer in pixels, starting from @c 1. Y coordinate of the pointer in pixels, starting from @c 1. Amount of mouse wheel moves. Positive values describe clockwise wheel rotations, negative values describe counterclockwise rotations. Amount of horizontal mouse wheel moves. Positive values describe a movement to the left, negative values describe a movement to the right. The current state of mouse buttons. Every bit represents a mouse button as follows:
Bit 0 (0x01)
left mouse button
Bit 1 (0x02)
right mouse button
Bit 2 (0x04)
middle mouse button
A value of @c 1 means the corresponding button is pressed. otherwise it is released.
Sends a multi-touch pointer event. For touchscreen events the coordinates are expressed in pixels and start from [1,1] which corresponds to the top left corner of the virtual display, for touchpad events the coordinates are normalized to the range 0..0xffff. Console not powered up. Could not send event to virtual device. The guest may not understand or may choose to ignore this event. and Number of contacts in the event. Each array element contains packed information about one contact. Bits 0..15: X coordinate in pixels or normalized X position. Bits 16..31: Y coordinate in pixels or normalized Y position. Bits 32..39: contact identifier. Bit 40: "in contact" flag, which indicates that there is a contact with the touch surface. Bit 41: "in range" flag, the contact is close enough to the touch surface. All other bits are reserved for future use and must be set to 0. Distinguishes between touchscreen and touchpad events. Timestamp of the event in milliseconds. Only relative time between events is important. Contains information about all contacts: "id1,x1,y1,inContact1,inRange1;...;idN,xN,yN,inContactN,inRangeN". For example for two contacts: "0,10,20,1,1;1,30,40,1,1" Distinguishes between touchscreen and touchpad events. Event source for mouse events.
Information about the screen bitmap. Framebuffer capability flags. Requires NotifyUpdateImage. NotifyUpdate must not be called. Supports VHWA interface. If set, then IFramebuffer::processVHWACommand can be called. Supports visible region. If set, then IFramebuffer::setVisibleRegion can be called. This framebuffer implementation can render a pointer cursor itself. Unless the MoveCursor capability is also set the cursor will always be rendered at the location of (and usually using) the host pointer. Supports rendering a pointer cursor anywhere within the guest screen. Implies RenderCursor. Frame buffer width, in pixels. Frame buffer height, in pixels. Color depth, in bits per pixel. Scan line size, in bytes. Frame buffer pixel format. It's one of the values defined by . This attribute must never (and will never) return -- the format of the frame buffer must be always known. Hint from the frame buffer about how much of the standard screen height it wants to use for itself. This information is exposed to the guest through the VESA BIOS and VMMDev interface so that it can use it for determining its video mode table. It is not guaranteed that the guest respects the value. An alpha-blended overlay which is superposed over the frame buffer. The initial purpose is to allow the display of icons providing information about the VM state, including disk activity, in front ends which do not have other means of doing that. The overlay is designed to controlled exclusively by IDisplay. It has no locking of its own, and any changes made to it are not guaranteed to be visible until the affected portion of IFramebuffer is updated. The overlay can be created lazily the first time it is requested. This attribute can also return @c null to signal that the overlay is not implemented. Platform-dependent identifier of the window where context of this frame buffer is drawn, or zero if there's no such window. Capabilities of the framebuffer instance. For the meaning of individual capability flags see . Informs about an update. Gets called by the display object where this buffer is registered. X position of update. Y position of update. Width of update. Height of update. Informs about an update and provides 32bpp bitmap. X position of update. Y position of update. Width of update. Height of update. Array with 32BPP image data. Requests a size change. Logical guest screen number. Location of the screen in the guest. Location of the screen in the guest. Width of the guest display, in pixels. Height of the guest display, in pixels. Returns whether the frame buffer implementation is willing to support a given video mode. In case it is not able to render the video mode (or for some reason not willing), it should return @c false. Usually this method is called when the guest asks the VMM device whether a given video mode is supported so the information returned is directly exposed to the guest. It is important that this method returns very quickly. Returns the visible region of this frame buffer. If the @a rectangles parameter is @c null then the value of the @a count parameter is ignored and the number of elements necessary to describe the current visible region is returned in @a countCopied. If @a rectangles is not @c null but @a count is less than the required number of elements to store region data, the method will report a failure. If @a count is equal or greater than the required number of elements, then the actual number of elements copied to the provided array will be returned in @a countCopied. The address of the provided array must be in the process space of this IFramebuffer object. Method not yet implemented. Pointer to the @c RTRECT array to receive region data. Number of @c RTRECT elements in the @a rectangles array. Number of elements copied to the @a rectangles array. Suggests a new visible region to this frame buffer. This region represents the area of the VM display which is a union of regions of all top-level windows of the guest operating system running inside the VM (if the Guest Additions for this system support this functionality). This information may be used by the frontends to implement the seamless desktop integration feature. The address of the provided array must be in the process space of this IFramebuffer object. The IFramebuffer implementation must make a copy of the provided array of rectangles. Method not yet implemented. Pointer to the @c RTRECT array. Number of @c RTRECT elements in the @a rectangles array. Posts a Video HW Acceleration Command to the frame buffer for processing. The commands used for 2D video acceleration (DDraw surface creation/destroying, blitting, scaling, color conversion, overlaying, etc.) are posted from quest to the host to be processed by the host hardware. The address of the provided command must be in the process space of this IFramebuffer object. Pointer to VBOXVHWACMD containing the command to execute. The validated VBOXVHWACMD::enmCmd value from the command. Set when the command origins from the guest, clear if host. Notifies framebuffer about 3D backend event. event type. VBOX3D_NOTIFY_TYPE_* in VBoxVideo3D.h event-specific data, depends on the supplied event type The IFramebufferOverlay interface represents an alpha blended overlay for displaying status icons above an IFramebuffer. It is always created not visible, so that it must be explicitly shown. It only covers a portion of the IFramebuffer, determined by its width, height and co-ordinates. It is always in packed pixel little-endian 32bit ARGB (in that order) format, and may be written to directly. Do re-read the width though, after setting it, as it may be adjusted (increased) to make it more suitable for the front end. X position of the overlay, relative to the frame buffer. Y position of the overlay, relative to the frame buffer. Whether the overlay is currently visible. The global alpha value for the overlay. This may or may not be supported by a given front end. Changes the overlay's position relative to the IFramebuffer. The current status of the guest display. The guest monitor is disabled in the guest. The guest monitor is enabled in the guest. The guest monitor is enabled in the guest but should display nothing. How method should work. If the guest is already at desired mode then the API might avoid setting the mode. Always set the new mode even if the guest is already at desired mode. Attach new screens and always set the new mode for existing screens. Do not notify the guest of the change. Normally this is wished, but it might not be when re-setting monitor information from the last session (no hotplug happened, as it is still the same virtual monitor). The IDisplay interface represents the virtual machine's display. The object implementing this interface is contained in each attribute and represents the visual output of the virtual machine. The virtual display supports pluggable output targets represented by the IFramebuffer interface. Examples of the output target are a window on the host computer or an RDP session's display on a remote computer. Layout of the guest screens. Queries certain attributes such as display width, height, color depth and the X and Y origin for a given guest screen. The parameters @a xOrigin and @a yOrigin return the X and Y coordinates of the framebuffer's origin. All return parameters are optional. Sets the graphics update target for a screen. Removes the graphics updates target for a screen. Queries the graphics updates targets for a screen. Changes the monitor information reported by a given output of the guest graphics device. This information can be read by the guest if suitable drivers and driver tools are available, including but not limited to those in the Guest Additions. The guest will receive monitor hotplug notification when the monitor information is changed, and the information itself will be available to the guest until the next change. The information should not be resent if the guest does not resize in response. The guest might have chosen to ignore the change, or the resize might happen later when a suitable driver is started. Specifying @c 0 for either @a width, @a height or @a bitsPerPixel parameters means that the corresponding values should be taken from the current video mode (i.e. left unchanged). @todo Rename this to @a setMonitorInfo for 7.0. The @a display value is higher then the number of outputs. The number of the guest output to change. @c True if a monitor is connected, @c False otherwise. For historical reasons the Windows drivers can and do override this setting. Call this a virtual hardware quirk. @c True, if the position of the guest screen is specified, @c False otherwise. The X origin of the guest screen. The Y origin of the guest screen. The width of the guest screen. The height of the guest screen. The number of bits per pixel of the guest screen. Whether the guest should be notified of the change. Normally this is wished, but it might not be when re-setting monitor information from the last session (no hotplug happened, as it is still the same virtual monitor). Might also be useful if several monitors are to be changed at once, but this would not reflect physical hardware well, and we also have @a setScreenLayout for that. Queries the monitor information for a given guest output. See @a setVideoModeHint. If no monitor information has been set yet by a front-end the preferred mode values returned will be zero. @todo Rename this to @a getMonitorInfo for 7.0. The @a display value is higher than the number of outputs. The number of the guest output to query. @c True if a monitor is connected, @c False otherwise. For historical reasons the Windows drivers can and do override the setting requested by the host. @c True, if the position of the guest screen was specified, @c False otherwise. The X origin of the guest screen. The Y origin of the guest screen. The width of the monitor preferred mode. The height of the monitor preferred mode. The number of bits per pixel of the monitor preferred mode. Enables or disables seamless guest display rendering (seamless desktop integration) mode. Calling this method has no effect if with facility @c Seamless does not return @c Active. Takes a screen shot of the requested size and format and copies it to the buffer allocated by the caller and pointed to by @a address. The buffer size must be enough for a 32 bits per pixel bitmap, i.e. width * height * 4 bytes. This API can be used only locally by a VM process through the COM/XPCOM C++ API as it requires pointer support. It is not available for scripting languages, Java or any webservice clients. Unless you are writing a new VM frontend use . Takes a guest screen shot of the requested size and format and returns it as an array of bytes. The guest monitor to take screenshot from. Desired image width. Desired image height. The requested format. Array with resulting screen data. Draws a 32-bpp image of the specified size from the given buffer to the given point on the VM display. Feature not implemented. Could not draw to screen. Monitor to take the screenshot from. Address to store the screenshot to Relative to the screen top left corner. Relative to the screen top left corner. Desired image width. Desired image height. Does a full invalidation of the VM display and instructs the VM to update it. Could not invalidate and update screen. Redraw the specified VM screen. The guest screen to redraw. Signals that the Video HW Acceleration command has completed. Pointer to VBOXVHWACMD containing the completed command. Signals that framebuffer window viewport has changed. The specified viewport data is invalid. Monitor to take the screenshot from. Framebuffer x offset. Framebuffer y offset. Viewport width. Viewport height. Obtains the guest screen bitmap parameters. Notify OpenGL HGCM host service about graphics content scaling factor change. Notify OpenGL HGCM host service about HiDPI monitor scaling policy change. Set video modes for the guest screens. Unplugs monitors from the virtual graphics card. Make a IGuestScreenInfo object with the provided parameters. The number of the guest display. @c True, if this guest screen is enabled, @c False otherwise. Whether this guest monitor must be primary. @c True, if the origin of the guest screen should be changed, @c False otherwise. The X origin of the guest screen. The Y origin of the guest screen. The width of the guest screen. The height of the guest screen. The number of bits per pixel of the guest screen. The created object. Network attachment type. Null value, also means "not attached". Network adapter type. Null value (never used by the API). AMD PCNet-PCI II network card (Am79C970A). AMD PCNet-FAST III network card (Am79C973). Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop network card (82540EM). Intel PRO/1000 T Server network card (82543GC). Intel PRO/1000 MT Server network card (82545EM). Virtio network device. AMD PCnet-ISA/NE2100 network card (Am79C960). Novell NE2000 network card (NE2000). Novell NE1000 network card (NE1000). WD/SMC EtherCard Plus 16 network card (WD8013EBT). WD/SMC EtherCard Plus network card (WD8003E). 3Com EtherLink II network card (3C503). 3Com EtherLink network card (3C501/3C500). The promiscuous mode policy of an interface. Deny promiscuous mode requests. Allow promiscuous mode, but restrict the scope it to the internal network so that it only applies to other VMs. Allow promiscuous mode, include unrelated traffic going over the wire and internally on the host. Represents a virtual network adapter that is attached to a virtual machine. Each virtual machine has a fixed number of network adapter slots with one instance of this attached to each of them. Call to get the network adapter that is attached to a given slot in a given machine. Each network adapter can be in one of five attachment modes, which are represented by the enumeration; see the attribute. Type of the virtual network adapter. Depending on this value, VirtualBox will provide a different virtual network hardware to the guest. Slot number this adapter is plugged into. Corresponds to the value you pass to to obtain this instance. Flag whether the network adapter is present in the guest system. If disabled, the virtual guest hardware will not contain this network adapter. Can only be changed when the VM is not running. Ethernet MAC address of the adapter, 12 hexadecimal characters. When setting it to @c null or an empty string for an enabled adapter, VirtualBox will generate a unique MAC address. Disabled adapters can have an empty MAC address. Sets/Gets network attachment type of this network adapter. Name of the network interface the VM should be bridged to. Name of the host only network interface the VM is attached to. Name of the host only network the VM is attached to. Name of the internal network the VM is attached to. Name of the NAT network the VM is attached to. Name of the driver to use for the "Generic" network attachment type. Name of the cloud network the VM is attached to. Flag whether the adapter reports the cable as connected or not. It can be used to report offline situations to a VM. Line speed reported by custom drivers, in units of 1 kbps. The promiscuous mode policy of the network adapter when attached to an internal network, host only network or a bridge. Flag whether network traffic from/to the network card should be traced. Can only be toggled when the VM is turned off. Filename where a network trace will be stored. If not set, VBox-pid.pcap will be used. Points to the NAT engine which handles the network address translation for this interface. This is active only when the interface actually uses NAT. Network boot priority of the adapter. Priority 1 is highest. If not set, the priority is considered to be at the lowest possible setting. The bandwidth group this network adapter is assigned to. Returns the value of the network attachment property with the given name. If the requested data @a key does not exist, this function will succeed and return an empty string in the @a value argument. @a name is @c null or empty. Name of the property to get. Current property value. Sets the value of the network attachment property with the given name. Setting the property value to @c null or an empty string is equivalent to deleting the existing value. @a name is @c null or empty. Name of the property to set. Property value to set. Returns values for a group of properties in one call. The names of the properties to get are specified using the @a names argument which is a list of comma-separated property names or an empty string if all properties are to be returned. Currently the value of this argument is ignored and the method always returns all existing properties. The method returns two arrays, the array of property names corresponding to the @a names argument and the current values of these properties. Both arrays have the same number of elements with each element at the given index in the first array corresponds to an element at the same index in the second array. Names of properties to get. Names of returned properties. Values of returned properties. The PortMode enumeration represents possible communication modes for the virtual serial port device. Virtual device is not attached to any real host device. Virtual device is attached to a host pipe. Virtual device is attached to a host device. Virtual device is attached to a raw file. Virtual device is attached to a TCP socket. The UART type represents the emulated UART chip for the serial port device. The most basic emulated UART which doesn't support FIFO operation. The successor of the 16450 UART introducing a 16 byte FIFO to reduce operational overhead. This UART developed by Texas Instruments introduced a 64 byte FIFO and hardware flow control. The ISerialPort interface represents the virtual serial port device. The virtual serial port device acts like an ordinary serial port inside the virtual machine. This device communicates to the real serial port hardware in one of two modes: host pipe or host device. In host pipe mode, the #path attribute specifies the path to the pipe on the host computer that represents a serial port. The #server attribute determines if this pipe is created by the virtual machine process at machine startup or it must already exist before starting machine execution. In host device mode, the #path attribute specifies the name of the serial port device on the host computer. There is also a third communication mode: the disconnected mode. In this mode, the guest OS running inside the virtual machine will be able to detect the serial port, but all port write operations will be discarded and all port read operations will return no data. Slot number this serial port is plugged into. Corresponds to the value you pass to to obtain this instance. Flag whether the serial port is enabled. If disabled, the serial port will not be reported to the guest OS. Base I/O address of the serial port. IRQ number of the serial port. How is this port connected to the host. Changing this attribute may fail if the conditions for are not met. Flag whether this serial port acts as a server (creates a new pipe on the host) or as a client (uses the existing pipe). This attribute is used only when is PortMode_HostPipe or PortMode_TCP. Path to the serial port's pipe on the host when is PortMode_HostPipe, the host serial device name when is PortMode_HostDevice or the TCP port (server) or hostname:port (client) when is PortMode_TCP. For those cases, setting a @c null or empty string as the attribute's value is an error. Otherwise, the value of this property is ignored. Selects the emulated UART implementation. The IParallelPort interface represents the virtual parallel port device. The virtual parallel port device acts like an ordinary parallel port inside the virtual machine. This device communicates to the real parallel port hardware using the name of the parallel device on the host computer specified in the #path attribute. Each virtual parallel port device is assigned a base I/O address and an IRQ number that will be reported to the guest operating system and used to operate the given parallel port from within the virtual machine. Slot number this parallel port is plugged into. Corresponds to the value you pass to to obtain this instance. Flag whether the parallel port is enabled. If disabled, the parallel port will not be reported to the guest OS. Base I/O address of the parallel port. IRQ number of the parallel port. Host parallel device name. If this parallel port is enabled, setting a @c null or an empty string as this attribute's value will result in the parallel port behaving as if not connected to any device. The main execution engine of a VM. Has not yet been set (try again later). Emulated thru IEM. Hardware assisted virtualization thru HM. Hardware assisted virtualization thru native API (NEM). Takes a core dump of the guest. See include/VBox/dbgfcorefmt.h for details on the file format. The name of the output file. The file must not exist. Reserved for future compression method indicator. Takes a core dump of the VM process on the host. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but it may show up in a dot release. The name of the output file. The file must not exist. Reserved for future compression method indicator. Interfaces with the info dumpers (DBGFInfo). This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but it may show up in a dot release. The name of the info item. Arguments to the info dumper. The into string. Inject an NMI into a running VT-x/AMD-V VM. Modifies the group settings of the debug or release logger. The group settings string. See iprt/log.h for details. To target the release logger, prefix the string with "release:". Modifies the debug or release logger flags. The flags settings string. See iprt/log.h for details. To target the release logger, prefix the string with "release:". Modifies the debug or release logger destinations. The destination settings string. See iprt/log.h for details. To target the release logger, prefix the string with "release:". Reads guest physical memory, no side effects (MMIO++). This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The guest physical address. The number of bytes to read. The bytes read. Writes guest physical memory, access handles (MMIO++) are ignored. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The guest physical address. The number of bytes to read. The bytes to write. Reads guest virtual memory, no side effects (MMIO++). This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The identifier of the Virtual CPU. The guest virtual address. The number of bytes to read. The bytes read. Writes guest virtual memory, access handles (MMIO++) are ignored. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The identifier of the Virtual CPU. The guest virtual address. The number of bytes to read. The bytes to write. Loads a DBGF plug-in. The plug-in name or DLL. Special name 'all' loads all installed plug-ins. The name of the loaded plug-in. Unloads a DBGF plug-in. The plug-in name or DLL. Special name 'all' unloads all plug-ins. Tries to (re-)detect the guest OS kernel. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The detected OS kernel on success. Tries to get the kernel log (dmesg) of the guest OS. Max number of messages to return, counting from the end of the log. If 0, there is no limit. The kernel log. Gets one register. The identifier of the Virtual CPU. The register name, case is ignored. The register value. This is usually a hex value (always 0x prefixed) but other format may be used for floating point registers (TBD). Gets all the registers for the given CPU. The identifier of the Virtual CPU. Array containing the lowercase register names. Array parallel to the names holding the register values as if the register was returned by . Gets one register. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The identifier of the Virtual CPU. The register name, case is ignored. The new register value. Hexadecimal, decimal and octal formattings are supported in addition to any special formattings returned by the getters. Sets zero or more registers atomically. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The identifier of the Virtual CPU. Array containing the register names, case ignored. Array paralell to the names holding the register values. See for formatting guidelines. Produce a simple stack dump using the current guest state. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. The identifier of the Virtual CPU. String containing the formatted stack dump. Reset VM statistics. The selection pattern. A bit similar to filename globbing. Wildchars are '*' and '?', where the asterisk matches zero or more characters and question mark matches exactly one character. Multiple pattern can be joined by putting '|' between them. Dumps VM statistics. The selection pattern. A bit similar to filename globbing. Wildchars are '*' and '?', where the asterisk matches zero or more characters and question mark matches exactly one character. Multiple pattern can be joined by putting '|' between them. Get the VM statistics in a XMLish format. The selection pattern. A bit similar to filename globbing. Wildchars are '*' and '?', where the asterisk matches zero or more characters and question mark matches exactly one character. Multiple pattern can be joined by putting '|' between them. Whether to include the descriptions. The XML document containing the statistics. Get the load percentages (as observed by the VMM) for all virtual CPUs or a specific one. The ID of the virtual CPU to retrieve stats for, pass 0x7fffffff or higher for the average accross all CPUs. Percentage of the interval that the CPU(s) spend executing guest code. Percentage of the interval that the CPU(s) spend halted. Percentage of the interval that the CPU(s) preempted by the host scheduler, on virtualization overhead and on other tasks. The interval the percentage was calculated over in milliseconds Creates a sample report of the guest and emulated device activity. The file to dump the report to. The sample interval. The number of microseconds to sample. The progress object on return. Gets the user-mode VM handle, with a reference, and the VMM function table. The VM handle must be passed to VMR3ReleaseUVM when done. This can only be called from within the VM process, remote calls will always fail. The VMMR3VTABLE_MAGIC_VERSION value of the caller. The method will fail if this is not compatible with the VMM function table. The VMM function table address. The user-mode VM handle. Switch for enabling single-stepping. Whether to execute all the code in the instruction interpreter. This is mainly for testing the interpreter and not an execution mode intended for general consumption. Switch for enabling and disabling the debug logger. The debug logger flags. The debug logger's group settings. The debug logger's destination settings. The release logger flags. The release logger's group settings. The relase logger's destination settings. Gets the main execution engine of the VM. Flag indicating whether the VM is currently making use of the nested paging CPU hardware virtualization extension. Flag indicating whether the VM is currently making use of the VPID VT-x extension. Flag indicating whether the VM is currently making use of the unrestricted execution feature of VT-x. Query the guest OS kernel name as detected by the DBGF. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. Query the guest OS kernel version string as detected by the DBGF. This feature is not implemented in the 4.0.0 release but may show up in a dot release. Flag indicating whether the VM is currently making use of the Physical Address Extension CPU feature. The rate at which the virtual time runs expressed as a percentage. The accepted range is 2% to 20000%. VM uptime in milliseconds, i.e. time in which it could have been executing guest code. Excludes the time when the VM was paused. List of USB device filters associated with the machine. If the machine is currently running, these filters are activated every time a new (supported) USB device is attached to the host computer that was not ignored by global filters (). These filters are also activated when the machine is powered up. They are run against a list of all currently available USB devices (in states , , ) that were not previously ignored by global filters. If at least one filter matches the USB device in question, this device is automatically captured (attached to) the virtual USB controller of this machine. , Creates a new USB device filter. All attributes except the filter name are set to empty (any match), active is @c false (the filter is not active). The created filter can then be added to the list of filters using . The virtual machine is not mutable. Filter name. See for more info. Created filter object. Inserts the given USB device to the specified position in the list of filters. Positions are numbered starting from 0. If the specified position is equal to or greater than the number of elements in the list, the filter is added to the end of the collection. Duplicates are not allowed, so an attempt to insert a filter that is already in the collection, will return an error. Virtual machine is not mutable. USB device filter not created within this VirtualBox instance. USB device filter already in list. Position to insert the filter to. USB device filter to insert. Removes a USB device filter from the specified position in the list of filters. Positions are numbered starting from 0. Specifying a position equal to or greater than the number of elements in the list will produce an error. Virtual machine is not mutable. USB device filter list empty or invalid @a position. Position to remove the filter from. Removed USB device filter. The USB controller type. . @c null value. Never used by the API. Last element (invalid). Used for parameter checks. The USB Controller name. The USB Controller type. USB standard version which the controller implements. This is a BCD which means that the major version is in the high byte and minor version is in the low byte. USB device/port speed state. This enumeration represents speeds at which a USB device can communicate with the host. The speed is a function of both the device itself and the port which it is attached to, including hubs and cables in the path. Due to differences in USB stack implementations on various hosts, the reported speed may not exactly match the actual speed. @c null value. Never returned by the API. Low speed, 1.5 Mbps. Full speed, 12 Mbps. High speed, 480 Mbps. SuperSpeed, 5 Gbps. SuperSpeedPlus, 10 Gbps. The IUSBDevice interface represents a virtual USB device attached to the virtual machine. A collection of objects implementing this interface is stored in the attribute which lists all USB devices attached to a running virtual machine's USB controller. Unique USB device ID. This ID is built from #vendorId, #productId, #revision and #serialNumber. Vendor ID. Product ID. Product revision number. This is a packed BCD represented as unsigned short. The high byte is the integer part and the low byte is the decimal. Manufacturer string. Product string. Serial number string. Host-specific address of the device, uniquely identifying a physically connected device in the system. Note that the address of a USB device may change across device re-plugs and host suspend/resume cycles or reboots. Host USB port number on the hub the device is physically connected to. Host-specific identifier of the port (including hub) the USB device is physically connected to. Note that hubs may be dynamically added and removed, and that hub enumeration may not be consistent across host reboots. The major USB version of the device - 1, 2 or 3. The speed at which the device is currently communicating. Whether the device is physically connected to a remote VRDE client or to a local host machine. Array of device attributes as single strings. So far the following are used: 0: The manufacturer string, if the device doesn't expose the ID one is taken from an internal database or an empty string if none is found. 1: The product string, if the device doesn't expose the ID one is taken from an internal database or an empty string if none is found. The backend which will be used to communicate with this device. The IUSBDeviceFilter interface represents an USB device filter used to perform actions on a group of USB devices. This type of filters is used by running virtual machines to automatically capture selected USB devices once they are physically attached to the host computer. A USB device is matched to the given device filter if and only if all attributes of the device match the corresponding attributes of the filter (that is, attributes are joined together using the logical AND operation). On the other hand, all together, filters in the list of filters carry the semantics of the logical OR operation. So if it is desirable to create a match like "this vendor id OR this product id", one needs to create two filters and specify "any match" (see below) for unused attributes. All filter attributes used for matching are strings. Each string is an expression representing a set of values of the corresponding device attribute, that will match the given filter. Currently, the following filtering expressions are supported:
  • Interval filters. Used to specify valid intervals for integer device attributes (Vendor ID, Product ID and Revision). The format of the string is: int:((m)|([m]-[n]))(,(m)|([m]-[n]))* where m and n are integer numbers, either in octal (starting from 0), hexadecimal (starting from 0x) or decimal (otherwise) form, so that m < n. If m is omitted before a dash (-), the minimum possible integer is assumed; if n is omitted after a dash, the maximum possible integer is assumed.
  • Boolean filters. Used to specify acceptable values for boolean device attributes. The format of the string is: true|false|yes|no|0|1
  • Exact match. Used to specify a single value for the given device attribute. Any string that doesn't start with int: represents the exact match. String device attributes are compared to this string including case of symbols. Integer attributes are first converted to a string (see individual filter attributes) and then compared ignoring case.
  • Any match. Any value of the corresponding device attribute will match the given filter. An empty or @c null string is used to construct this type of filtering expressions.
On the Windows host platform, interval filters are not currently available. Also all string filter attributes (, , ) are ignored, so they behave as any match no matter what string expression is specified. ,
Visible name for this filter. This name is used to visually distinguish one filter from another, so it can neither be @c null nor an empty string. Whether this filter active or has been temporarily disabled. Vendor ID filter. The string representation for the exact matching has the form XXXX, where X is the hex digit (including leading zeroes). Product ID filter. The string representation for the exact matching has the form XXXX, where X is the hex digit (including leading zeroes). Product revision number filter. The string representation for the exact matching has the form IIFF, where I is the decimal digit of the integer part of the revision, and F is the decimal digit of its fractional part (including leading and trailing zeros). Note that for interval filters, it's best to use the hexadecimal form, because the revision is stored as a 16 bit packed BCD value; so the expression int:0x0100-0x0199 will match any revision from 1.0 to 1.99. Manufacturer filter. Product filter. Serial number filter. Host USB port filter. Remote state filter. This filter makes sense only for machine USB filters, i.e. it is ignored by IHostUSBDeviceFilter objects. This is an advanced option for hiding one or more USB interfaces from the guest. The value is a bit mask where the bits that are set means the corresponding USB interface should be hidden, masked off if you like. This feature only works on Linux hosts.
USB device state. This enumeration represents all possible states of the USB device physically attached to the host computer regarding its state on the host computer and availability to guest computers (all currently running virtual machines). Once a supported USB device is attached to the host, global USB filters () are activated. They can either ignore the device, or put it to USBDeviceState_Held state, or do nothing. Unless the device is ignored by global filters, filters of all currently running guests () are activated that can put it to USBDeviceState_Captured state. If the device was ignored by global filters, or didn't match any filters at all (including guest ones), it is handled by the host in a normal way. In this case, the device state is determined by the host and can be one of USBDeviceState_Unavailable, USBDeviceState_Busy or USBDeviceState_Available, depending on the current device usage. Besides auto-capturing based on filters, the device can be manually captured by guests () if its state is USBDeviceState_Busy, USBDeviceState_Available or USBDeviceState_Held. Due to differences in USB stack implementations in Linux and Win32, states USBDeviceState_Busy and USBDeviceState_Unavailable are applicable only to the Linux version of the product. This also means that () can only succeed on Win32 if the device state is USBDeviceState_Held. , Not supported by the VirtualBox server, not available to guests. Being used by the host computer exclusively, not available to guests. Being used by the host computer, potentially available to guests. Not used by the host computer, available to guests (the host computer can also start using the device at any time). Held by the VirtualBox server (ignored by the host computer), available to guests. Captured by one of the guest computers, not available to anybody else. The IHostUSBDevice interface represents a physical USB device attached to the host computer. Besides properties inherited from IUSBDevice, this interface adds the property that holds the current state of the USB device. , Current state of the device. Actions for host USB device filters. , Null value (never used by the API). Ignore the matched USB device. Hold the matched USB device. The IHostUSBDeviceFilter interface represents a global filter for a physical USB device used by the host computer. Used indirectly in . Using filters of this type, the host computer determines the initial state of the USB device after it is physically attached to the host's USB controller. The attribute is ignored by this type of filters, because it makes sense only for machine USB filters. Action performed by the host when an attached USB device matches this filter. The USBProxyBackend interface represents a source for USB devices available to the host for attaching to the VM. The unique name of the proxy backend. The type of the backend. Host audio driver type. Use the default audio driver automatically determined for the host that this VirtualBox instance is running on. Useful for VMs which need to run on different host OSes. Null value, also means "dummy audio driver". Open Sound System (Linux / Unix hosts only). Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (Linux hosts only). PulseAudio (Linux hosts only). Windows multimedia (Windows hosts only, not supported at the moment). DirectSound (Windows hosts only). Windows Audio Session (Windows hosts only). CoreAudio (Mac hosts only). Reserved for historical reasons. Reserved for historical reasons. Virtual audio controller type. The exact variant of audio codec hardware presented to the guest; see . @c null value. Never used by the API. SB16; this is the only option for the SB16 device. A STAC9700 AC'97 codec. An AD1980 AC'97 codec. Recommended for Linux guests. A STAC9221 HDA codec. The IAudioAdapter interface represents the virtual audio adapter of the virtual machine. Used in . Flag whether the audio adapter is present in the guest system. If disabled, the virtual guest hardware will not contain any audio adapter. Can only be changed when the VM is not running. Flag whether the audio adapter is enabled for audio input. Only relevant if the adapter is enabled. Flag whether the audio adapter is enabled for audio output. Only relevant if the adapter is enabled. The emulated audio controller. The exact variant of audio codec hardware presented to the guest. For HDA and SB16, only one variant is available, but for AC'97, there are several. Audio driver the adapter is connected to. This setting can only be changed when the VM is not running. Array of names of tunable properties, which can be supported by audio driver. Sets an audio specific property string. If you pass @c null or empty string as a key @a value, the given @a key will be deleted. Name of the key to set. Value to assign to the key. Returns an audio specific property string. If the requested data @a key does not exist, this function will succeed and return an empty string in the @a value argument. Name of the key to get. Value of the requested key. Audio direction enumeration. Direction cannot be determined. Input (Recording). Output (Playback). Duplex (Recording + Playback). Audio device type enumeration. Device type is unknown / cannot be determined Built-in device (cannot be removed). External device, connected via USB. External device, connected via some other method. Audio device state enumeration. Device state is unknown / cannot be determined Device is active and can be used. Device is in a disabled state. Device is marked as not being present. Device has been unplugged. Represents an audio device provided by the host OS. Unique device ID. Friendly name of the device. Device type. Usage type of the device. Whether this device is being marked as the default input device by the host OS. Whether this device is being marked as the default output device by the host OS. Whether this device is being marked as a hotplug device, i.e. can be removed from the system. Current device state. Returns an audio specific property string. If the requested data @a key does not exist, this function will succeed and return an empty string in the @a value argument. Name of the key to get. Value of the requested key. The IAudioSettings interface represents the audio settings for a virtual machine. Returns the machine's current host audio device for the specified usage. This method is not implemented yet. Usage to retrieve audio device for. Host audio device for the specified direction. Sets the machine's current host audio device for the specified usage. This method is not implemented yet. Sets the host audio device for the specified usage. Usage to set audio device for. Associated audio adapter, always present. VirtualBox authentication type. Null value, also means "no authentication". Flag if VRDE server is enabled. VRDE authentication method. Timeout for guest authentication. Milliseconds. Flag whether multiple simultaneous connections to the VM are permitted. Note that this will be replaced by a more powerful mechanism in the future. Flag whether the existing connection must be dropped and a new connection must be established by the VRDE server, when a new client connects in single connection mode. The name of Extension Pack providing VRDE for this VM. Overrides . Library used for authentication of RDP clients by this VM. Overrides . Array of names of properties, which are supported by this VRDE server. Sets a VRDE specific property string. If you pass @c null or empty string as a key @a value, the given @a key will be deleted. Name of the key to set. Value to assign to the key. Returns a VRDE specific property string. If the requested data @a key does not exist, this function will succeed and return an empty string in the @a value argument. Name of the key to get. Value of the requested key. The ISharedFolder interface represents a folder in the host computer's file system accessible from the guest OS running inside a virtual machine using an associated logical name. There are three types of shared folders:
  • Global (), shared folders available to all virtual machines.
  • Permanent (), VM-specific shared folders available to the given virtual machine at startup.
  • Transient (), VM-specific shared folders created in the session context (for example, when the virtual machine is running) and automatically discarded when the session is closed (the VM is powered off).
Logical names of shared folders must be unique within the given scope (global, permanent or transient). However, they do not need to be unique across scopes. In this case, the definition of the shared folder in a more specific scope takes precedence over definitions in all other scopes. The order of precedence is (more specific to more general):
  1. Transient definitions
  2. Permanent definitions
  3. Global definitions
For example, if MyMachine has a shared folder named C_DRIVE (that points to C:\\), then creating a transient shared folder named C_DRIVE (that points to C:\\\\WINDOWS) will change the definition of C_DRIVE in the guest OS so that \\\\VBOXSVR\\C_DRIVE will give access to C:\\WINDOWS instead of C:\\ on the host PC. Removing the transient shared folder C_DRIVE will restore the previous (permanent) definition of C_DRIVE that points to C:\\ if it still exists. Note that permanent and transient shared folders of different machines are in different name spaces, so they don't overlap and don't need to have unique logical names. Global shared folders are not implemented in the current version of the product.
Logical name of the shared folder. Full path to the shared folder in the host file system. Whether the folder defined by the host path is currently accessible or not. For example, the folder can be inaccessible if it is placed on the network share that is not available by the time this property is read. Whether the folder defined by the host path is writable or not. Whether the folder gets automatically mounted by the guest or not. Desired mount point in the guest for automatically mounting the folder when is set. For Windows and OS/2 guests this should be a drive letter, while other guests it should be a absolute directory. It is possible to combine the two, e.g. "T:/mnt/testrsrc" will be attached to "T:" by windows and OS/2 while the unixy guests will mount it at "/mnt/testrsrc". When empty the guest will choose a mount point. The guest may do so too should the specified mount point be in use or otherwise unusable. Text message that represents the result of the last accessibility check. Accessibility checks are performed each time the attribute is read. An empty string is returned if the last accessibility check was successful. A non-empty string indicates a failure and should normally describe a reason of the failure (for example, a file read error).
Internal event reason type. Null value, means "no known reason". Host is being suspended (power management event). Host is being resumed (power management event). Host is running low on battery (power management event). A snapshot of the VM is being taken. PID of the process that has created this Session object. Returns the console object suitable for remote control. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Returns suitable machine state for the VM execution state. Useful for choosing a sensible machine state after a complex operation which failed or otherwise resulted in an unclear situation. Assigns the machine object associated with this direct-type session or informs the session that it will be a remote one (if @a machine == @c null). Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Assigns the machine object associated with this direct-type session or informs the session that it will be a remote one (if @a machine == @c null). Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Assigns the machine and the (remote) console object associated with this remote-type session. Session state prevents operation. Updates the machine state in the VM process. Must be called only in certain cases (see the method implementation). Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Uninitializes (closes) this session. Used by VirtualBox to close the corresponding remote session when the direct session dies or gets closed. Session state prevents operation. Triggered when settings of a network adapter of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggerd when settings of the audio adapter of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggerd when the state of a host audio device has changed. Device the state has been changed for. Whether this is a newly detected device or not. The new device state. Error information. Triggered when settings of a serial port of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggered when settings of a parallel port of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggered when settings of a storage controller of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. The id of the machine containing the storage controller. The name of the storage controller. Triggered when attached media of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. The medium attachment which changed. If the medium change was forced. Triggered when attached storage devices of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. The medium attachment which changed. TRUE if the device is removed, FALSE if it was added. TRUE if the device is is silently reconfigured without notifying the guest about it. Triggered when process priority of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Error from underlying level. See additional error info. The priority which set. Notification when the shared clipboard mode changes. The new shared clipboard mode. Notification when the shared clipboard file transfers mode changes. Flag whether clipboard file transfers are allowed or not. Notification when the drag'n drop mode changes. The new mode for drag'n drop. Notification when a CPU changes. The CPU which changed Flag whether the CPU was added or removed Notification when the CPU execution cap changes. The new CPU execution cap value. (1-100) Triggered when settings of the VRDE server object of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Flag whether the server must be restarted Triggered when recording settings have changed. TODO Triggered when settings of the USB controller object of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggered when a permanent (global or machine) shared folder has been created or removed. We don't pass shared folder parameters in this notification because the order in which parallel notifications are delivered is not defined, therefore it could happen that these parameters were outdated by the time of processing this notification. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggered when settings of the guest debug settings of the associated virtual machine have changed. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggered when a request to capture a USB device (as a result of matched USB filters or direct call to ) has completed. A @c null @a error object means success, otherwise it describes a failure. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Triggered when a request to release the USB device (as a result of machine termination or direct call to ) has completed. A @c null @a error object means success, otherwise it describes a failure. Session state prevents operation. Session type prevents operation. Called by and by in order to notify console listeners and . Session type prevents operation. Notification when one of the bandwidth groups change. The bandwidth group which changed. Called by and by in order to read and modify guest properties. Machine session is not open. Session type is not direct. Name of guest property. Value of guest property. Flags of guest property. 0 = get, 1 = set, 2 = delete. When getting: Value of guest property. When getting: Timestamp of guest property. When getting: Flags of guest property. Return a list of the guest properties matching a set of patterns along with their values, timestamps and flags. Machine session is not open. Session type is not direct. The patterns to match the properties against as a comma-separated string. If this is empty, all properties currently set will be returned. The key names of the properties returned. The values of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a key array. The timestamps of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a key array. The flags of the properties returned. The array entries match the corresponding entries in the @a key array. Triggers online merging of a hard disk. Used internally when deleting a snapshot while a VM referring to the same hard disk chain is running. Machine session is not open. Session type is not direct. The medium attachment to identify the medium chain. The index of the source image in the chain. Redundant, but drastically reduces IPC. The index of the target image in the chain. Redundant, but drastically reduces IPC. Progress object for this operation. Reconfigure all specified medium attachments in one go, making sure the current state corresponds to the specified medium. Machine session is not open. Session type is not direct. Array containing the medium attachments which need to be reconfigured. Enables or disables collection of VMM RAM statistics. Machine session is not open. Session type is not direct. True enables statistics collection. Internal method for triggering a VM pause with a specified reason code. The reason code can be interpreted by device/drivers and thus it might behave slightly differently than a normal VM pause. Virtual machine not in Running state. Virtual machine error in suspend operation. Specify the best matching reason code please. Internal method for triggering a VM resume with a specified reason code. The reason code can be interpreted by device/drivers and thus it might behave slightly differently than a normal VM resume. Virtual machine not in Paused state. Virtual machine error in resume operation. Specify the best matching reason code please. Internal method for triggering a VM save state with a specified reason code. The reason code can be interpreted by device/drivers and thus it might behave slightly differently than a normal VM save state. This call is fully synchronous, and the caller is expected to have set the machine state appropriately (and has to set the follow-up machine state if this call failed). Virtual machine state is not one of the expected values. Failed to create directory for saved state file. Specify the best matching reason code please. Progress object to track the operation completion. Snapshot object for which this save state operation is executed. File path the VM process must save the execution state to. The VM should be paused before saving state. It is automatically unpaused on error in the "vanilla save state" case. Returns if the VM was left in paused state, which is necessary in many situations (snapshots, teleportation). Internal method for cancelling a VM save state. The ISession interface represents a client process and allows for locking virtual machines (represented by IMachine objects) to prevent conflicting changes to the machine. Any caller wishing to manipulate a virtual machine needs to create a session object first, which lives in its own process space. Such session objects are then associated with objects living in the VirtualBox server process to coordinate such changes. There are two typical scenarios in which sessions are used:
  • To alter machine settings or control a running virtual machine, one needs to lock a machine for a given session (client process) by calling . Whereas multiple sessions may control a running virtual machine, only one process can obtain a write lock on the machine to prevent conflicting changes. A write lock is also needed if a process wants to actually run a virtual machine in its own context, such as the VirtualBox GUI or VBoxHeadless front-ends. They must also lock a machine for their own sessions before they are allowed to power up the virtual machine. As a result, no machine settings can be altered while another process is already using it, either because that process is modifying machine settings or because the machine is running.
  • To start a VM using one of the existing VirtualBox front-ends (e.g. the VirtualBox GUI or VBoxHeadless), one would use , which also takes a session object as its first parameter. This session then identifies the caller and lets the caller control the started machine (for example, pause machine execution or power it down) as well as be notified about machine execution state changes.
How sessions objects are created in a client process depends on whether you use the Main API via COM or via the webservice:
  • When using the COM API directly, an object of the Session class from the VirtualBox type library needs to be created. In regular COM C++ client code, this can be done by calling createLocalObject(), a standard COM API. This object will then act as a local session object in further calls to open a session.
  • In the webservice, the session manager (IWebsessionManager) instead creates a session object automatically whenever is called. A managed object reference to that session object can be retrieved by calling .
Current state of this session. Type of this session. The value of this attribute is valid only if the session currently has a machine locked (i.e. its is Locked), otherwise an error will be returned. Name of this session. Important only for VM sessions, otherwise it it will be remembered, but not used for anything significant (and can be left at the empty string which is the default). The value can only be changed when the session state is SessionState_Unlocked. Make sure that you use a descriptive name which does not conflict with the VM process session names: "GUI/Qt", "GUI/SDL" and "headless". Machine object associated with this session. Console object associated with this session. Only sessions which locked the machine for a VM process have a non-null console. Unlocks a machine that was previously locked for the current session. Calling this method is required every time a machine has been locked for a particular session using the or calls. Otherwise the state of the machine will be set to on the server, and changes made to the machine settings will be lost. Generally, it is recommended to unlock all machines explicitly before terminating the application (regardless of the reason for the termination). Do not expect the session state ( to return to "Unlocked" immediately after you invoke this method, particularly if you have started a new VM process. The session state will automatically return to "Unlocked" once the VM is no longer executing, which can of course take a very long time. Session is not locked.
The bus type of the storage controller (IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS or Floppy); see . @c null value. Never used by the API. The exact variant of storage controller hardware presented to the guest; see . @c null value. Never used by the API. A SCSI controller of the LsiLogic variant. A SCSI controller of the BusLogic variant. An Intel AHCI SATA controller; this is the only variant for SATA. An IDE controller of the PIIX3 variant. An IDE controller of the PIIX4 variant. An IDE controller of the ICH6 variant. A floppy disk controller; this is the only variant for floppy drives. A variant of the LsiLogic controller using SAS. Special USB based storage controller. An NVMe storage controller. Virtio SCSI storage controller. Type of emulated chipset (mostly southbridge). @c null value. Never used by the API. A PIIX3 (PCI IDE ISA Xcelerator) chipset. A ICH9 (I/O Controller Hub) chipset. Represents a storage controller that is attached to a virtual machine (). Just as drives (hard disks, DVDs, FDs) are attached to storage controllers in a real computer, virtual drives (represented by ) are attached to virtual storage controllers, represented by this interface. As opposed to physical hardware, VirtualBox has a very generic concept of a storage controller, and for purposes of the Main API, all virtual storage is attached to virtual machines via instances of this interface. There are five types of such virtual storage controllers: IDE, SCSI, SATA, SAS and Floppy (see ). Depending on which of these four is used, certain sub-types may be available and can be selected in . Depending on these settings, the guest operating system might see significantly different virtual hardware. Name of the storage controller, as originally specified with . This then uniquely identifies this controller with other method calls such as and . Maximum number of devices which can be attached to one port. Minimum number of ports that can be set to. Maximum number of ports that can be set to. The instance number of the device in the running VM. The number of currently usable ports on the controller. The minimum and maximum number of ports for one controller are stored in and . The bus type of the storage controller (IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS or Floppy). The exact variant of storage controller hardware presented to the guest. Depending on this value, VirtualBox will provide a different virtual storage controller hardware to the guest. For SATA, SAS and floppy controllers, only one variant is available, but for IDE and SCSI, there are several. For SCSI controllers, the default type is LsiLogic. If true, the storage controller emulation will use a dedicated I/O thread, enable the host I/O caches and use synchronous file APIs on the host. This was the only option in the API before VirtualBox 3.2 and is still the default for IDE controllers. If false, the host I/O cache will be disabled for image files attached to this storage controller. Instead, the storage controller emulation will use asynchronous I/O APIs on the host. This makes it possible to turn off the host I/O caches because the emulation can handle unaligned access to the file. This should be used on OS X and Linux hosts if a high I/O load is expected or many virtual machines are running at the same time to prevent I/O cache related hangs. This option new with the API of VirtualBox 3.2 and is now the default for non-IDE storage controllers. Returns whether it is possible to boot from disks attached to this controller. Managed object reference. Only within the webservice, a managed object reference (which is really an opaque number) allows a webservice client to address an object that lives in the address space of the webservice server. Behind each managed object reference, there is a COM object that lives in the webservice server's address space. The COM object is not freed until the managed object reference is released, either by an explicit call to or by logging off from the webservice (), which releases all objects created during the webservice session. Whenever a method call of the VirtualBox API returns a COM object, the webservice representation of that method will instead return a managed object reference, which can then be used to invoke methods on that object. Returns the name of the interface that this managed object represents, for example, "IMachine", as a string. Releases this managed object reference and frees the resources that were allocated for it in the webservice server process. After calling this method, the identifier of the reference can no longer be used. Websession manager. This provides essential services to webservice clients. Logs a new client onto the webservice and returns a managed object reference to the IVirtualBox instance, which the client can then use as a basis to further queries, since all calls to the VirtualBox API are based on the IVirtualBox interface, in one way or the other. Returns a managed object reference to a new ISession object for every call to this method. Logs off the client who has previously logged on with and destroys all resources associated with the websession (most importantly, all managed objects created in the server while the websession was active). The IPerformanceMetric interface represents parameters of the given performance metric. Name of the metric. Object this metric belongs to. Textual description of the metric. Time interval between samples, measured in seconds. Number of recent samples retained by the performance collector for this metric. When the collected sample count exceeds this number, older samples are discarded. Unit of measurement. Minimum possible value of this metric. Maximum possible value of this metric. The IPerformanceCollector interface represents a service that collects and stores performance metrics data. Performance metrics are associated with objects of interfaces like IHost and IMachine. Each object has a distinct set of performance metrics. The set can be obtained with . Metric data is collected at the specified intervals and is retained internally. The interval and the number of retained samples can be set with . Both metric data and collection settings are not persistent, they are discarded as soon as VBoxSVC process terminates. Moreover, metric settings and data associated with a particular VM only exist while VM is running. They disappear as soon as VM shuts down. It is not possible to set up metrics for machines that are powered off. One needs to start VM first, then set up metric collection parameters. Metrics are organized hierarchically, with each level separated by a slash (/) character. Generally, the scheme for metric names is like this: Category/Metric[/SubMetric][:aggregation] "Category/Metric" together form the base metric name. A base metric is the smallest unit for which a sampling interval and the number of retained samples can be set. Only base metrics can be enabled and disabled. All sub-metrics are collected when their base metric is collected. Collected values for any set of sub-metrics can be queried with . For example "CPU/Load/User:avg" metric name stands for the "CPU" category, "Load" metric, "User" submetric, "average" aggregate. An aggregate function is computed over all retained data. Valid aggregate functions are:
  • avg -- average
  • min -- minimum
  • max -- maximum
When setting up metric parameters, querying metric data, enabling or disabling metrics wildcards can be used in metric names to specify a subset of metrics. For example, to select all CPU-related metrics use CPU/*, all averages can be queried using *:avg and so on. To query metric values without aggregates *: can be used. The valid names for base metrics are:
  • CPU/Load
  • CPU/MHz
  • RAM/Usage
  • RAM/VMM
The general sequence for collecting and retrieving the metrics is:
  • Obtain an instance of IPerformanceCollector with
  • Allocate and populate an array with references to objects the metrics will be collected for. Use references to IHost and IMachine objects.
  • Allocate and populate an array with base metric names the data will be collected for.
  • Call . From now on the metric data will be collected and stored.
  • Wait for the data to get collected.
  • Allocate and populate an array with references to objects the metric values will be queried for. You can re-use the object array used for setting base metrics.
  • Allocate and populate an array with metric names the data will be collected for. Note that metric names differ from base metric names.
  • Call . The data that have been collected so far are returned. Note that the values are still retained internally and data collection continues.
For an example of usage refer to the following files in VirtualBox SDK:
  • Java: bindings/webservice/java/jax-ws/samples/metrictest.java
  • Python: bindings/xpcom/python/sample/shellcommon.py
Array of unique names of metrics. This array represents all metrics supported by the performance collector. Individual objects do not necessarily support all of them. can be used to get the list of supported metrics for a particular object. Returns parameters of specified metrics for a set of objects. @c Null metrics array means all metrics. @c Null object array means all existing objects. Metric name filter. Currently, only a comma-separated list of metrics is supported. Set of objects to return metric parameters for. Array of returned metric parameters. Sets parameters of specified base metrics for a set of objects. Returns an array of describing the metrics have been affected. @c Null or empty metric name array means all metrics. @c Null or empty object array means all existing objects. If metric name array contains a single element and object array contains many, the single metric name array element is applied to each object array element to form metric/object pairs. Metric name filter. Comma-separated list of metrics with wildcard support. Set of objects to setup metric parameters for. Time interval in seconds between two consecutive samples of performance data. Number of samples to retain in performance data history. Older samples get discarded. Array of metrics that have been modified by the call to this method. Turns on collecting specified base metrics. Returns an array of describing the metrics have been affected. @c Null or empty metric name array means all metrics. @c Null or empty object array means all existing objects. If metric name array contains a single element and object array contains many, the single metric name array element is applied to each object array element to form metric/object pairs. Metric name filter. Comma-separated list of metrics with wildcard support. Set of objects to enable metrics for. Array of metrics that have been modified by the call to this method. Turns off collecting specified base metrics. Returns an array of describing the metrics have been affected. @c Null or empty metric name array means all metrics. @c Null or empty object array means all existing objects. If metric name array contains a single element and object array contains many, the single metric name array element is applied to each object array element to form metric/object pairs. Metric name filter. Comma-separated list of metrics with wildcard support. Set of objects to disable metrics for. Array of metrics that have been modified by the call to this method. Queries collected metrics data for a set of objects. The data itself and related metric information are returned in seven parallel and one flattened array of arrays. Elements of returnMetricNames, returnObjects, returnUnits, returnScales, returnSequenceNumbers, returnDataIndices and returnDataLengths with the same index describe one set of values corresponding to a single metric. The returnData parameter is a flattened array of arrays. Each start and length of a sub-array is indicated by returnDataIndices and returnDataLengths. The first value for metric metricNames[i] is at returnData[returnIndices[i]]. @c Null or empty metric name array means all metrics. @c Null or empty object array means all existing objects. If metric name array contains a single element and object array contains many, the single metric name array element is applied to each object array element to form metric/object pairs. Data collection continues behind the scenes after call to @c queryMetricsData. The return data can be seen as the snapshot of the current state at the time of @c queryMetricsData call. The internally kept metric values are not cleared by the call. This allows querying different subsets of metrics or aggregates with subsequent calls. If periodic querying is needed it is highly suggested to query the values with @c interval*count period to avoid confusion. This way a completely new set of data values will be provided by each query. Metric name filter. Comma-separated list of metrics with wildcard support. Set of objects to query metrics for. Names of metrics returned in @c returnData. Objects associated with metrics returned in @c returnData. Units of measurement for each returned metric. Divisor that should be applied to return values in order to get floating point values. For example: (double)returnData[returnDataIndices[0]+i] / returnScales[0] will retrieve the floating point value of i-th sample of the first metric. Sequence numbers of the first elements of value sequences of particular metrics returned in @c returnData. For aggregate metrics it is the sequence number of the sample the aggregate started calculation from. Indices of the first elements of value sequences of particular metrics returned in @c returnData. Lengths of value sequences of particular metrics. Flattened array of all metric data containing sequences of values for each metric.
Protocol definitions used with NAT port-forwarding rules. Port-forwarding uses UDP protocol. Port-forwarding uses TCP protocol. Interface for managing a NAT engine which is used with a virtual machine. This allows for changing NAT behavior such as port-forwarding rules. This interface is used in the attribute. The network attribute of the NAT engine (the same value is used with built-in DHCP server to fill corresponding fields of DHCP leases). IP of host interface to bind all opened sockets to. Changing this does not change binding of port forwarding. TFTP prefix attribute which is used with the built-in DHCP server to fill the corresponding fields of DHCP leases. TFTP boot file attribute which is used with the built-in DHCP server to fill the corresponding fields of DHCP leases. TFTP server attribute which is used with the built-in DHCP server to fill the corresponding fields of DHCP leases. The preferred form is IPv4 addresses. Whether the DHCP server should pass the DNS domain used by the host. Whether the DHCP server (and the DNS traffic by NAT) should pass the address of the DNS proxy and process traffic using DNS servers registered on the host. Whether the DHCP server (and the DNS traffic by NAT) should pass the address of the DNS proxy and process traffic using the host resolver mechanism. Array of NAT port-forwarding rules in string representation, in the following format: "name,protocol id,host ip,host port,guest ip,guest port". Whether traffic from the guest directed to 10.0.2.2 will reach the host's loopback interface, i.e. localhost or 127.0.0.1. Sets network configuration of the NAT engine. MTU (maximum transmission unit) of the NAT engine in bytes. Capacity of the socket send buffer in bytes when creating a new socket. Capacity of the socket receive buffer in bytes when creating a new socket. Initial size of the NAT engine's sending TCP window in bytes when establishing a new TCP connection. Initial size of the NAT engine's receiving TCP window in bytes when establishing a new TCP connection. Returns network configuration of NAT engine. See for parameter descriptions. Adds a new NAT port-forwarding rule. The name of the rule. An empty name is acceptable, in which case the NAT engine auto-generates one using the other parameters. Protocol handled with the rule. IP of the host interface to which the rule should apply. An empty ip address is acceptable, in which case the NAT engine binds the handling socket to any interface. The port number to listen on. The IP address of the guest which the NAT engine will forward matching packets to. An empty IP address is acceptable, in which case the NAT engine will forward packets to the first DHCP lease (x.x.x.15). The port number to forward. Removes a port-forwarding rule that was previously registered. The name of the rule to delete. Interface for keeping information about a plug-in that ships with an extension pack. The plug-in name. The plug-in description. The name of the frontend or component name this plug-in plugs into. The module path. Interface for querying information about an extension pack as well as accessing COM objects within it. The extension pack name. This is unique. The extension pack description. The extension pack version string. This is restricted to the dotted version number and optionally a build indicator. No tree revision or tag will be included in the string as those things are available as separate properties. An optional publisher tag may be present like for . Examples: "1.2.3", "1.2.3_BETA1" and "1.2.3_RC2". The extension pack internal revision number. Edition indicator. This is usually empty. Can for instance be used to help distinguishing between two editions of the same extension pack where only the license, service contract or something differs. The name of the VRDE module if the extension pack sports one. The name of the crypto module if the extension pack sports one. This module is required for full VM encryption. Plug-ins provided by this extension pack. Indicates whether the extension pack is usable or not. There are a number of reasons why an extension pack might be unusable, typical examples would be broken installation/file or that it is incompatible with the current VirtualBox version. String indicating why the extension pack is not usable. This is an empty string if usable and always a non-empty string if not usable. Whether to show the license before installation The default HTML license text for the extension pack. Same as calling queryLicense with preferredLocale and preferredLanguage as empty strings and format set to html. Full feature version of the license attribute. The preferred license locale. Pass an empty string to get the default license. The preferred license language. Pass an empty string to get the default language for the locale. The license format: html, rtf or txt. If a license is present there will always be an HTML of it, the rich text format (RTF) and plain text (txt) versions are optional. If The license text. Interface for querying information about an extension pack as well as accessing COM objects within it. Queries the IUnknown interface to an object in the extension pack main module. This allows plug-ins and others to talk directly to an extension pack. The object ID. What exactly this is The queried interface. Extension pack file (aka tarball, .vbox-extpack) representation returned by . This provides the base extension pack information with the addition of the file name. The path to the extension pack file. Install the extension pack. Set this to automatically uninstall any existing extension pack with the same name as the one being installed. Platform specific display information. Reserved for future hacks. Progress object for the operation. Interface for managing VirtualBox Extension Packs. @todo Describe extension packs, how they are managed and how to create one. List of the installed extension packs. Returns the extension pack with the specified name if found. No extension pack matching @a name was found. The name of the extension pack to locate. The extension pack if found. Attempts to open an extension pack file in preparation for installation. The path of the extension pack tarball. This can optionally be followed by a "::SHA-256=hex-digit" of the tarball. The interface of the extension pack file object. Uninstalls an extension pack, removing all related files. The name of the extension pack to uninstall. Forced removal of the extension pack. This means that the uninstall hook will not be called. Platform specific display information. Reserved for future hacks. Progress object for the operation. Cleans up failed installs and uninstalls Gets the path to all the plug-in modules for a given frontend. This is a convenience method that is intended to simplify the plug-in loading process for a frontend. The name of the frontend or component. Array containing the plug-in modules (full paths). Check if the given extension pack is loaded and usable. The name of the extension pack to check for. Is the given extension pack loaded and usable. Type of a bandwidth control group. Null type, must be first. The bandwidth group controls disk I/O. The bandwidth group controls network I/O. Represents one bandwidth group. Name of the group. Type of the group. How many devices/medium attachments use this group. The maximum number of bytes which can be transfered by all entities attached to this group during one second. Controls the bandwidth groups of one machine used to cap I/O done by a VM. This includes network and disk I/O. The current number of existing bandwidth groups managed. Creates a new bandwidth group. Name of the bandwidth group. The type of the bandwidth group (network or disk). The maximum number of bytes which can be transfered by all entities attached to this group during one second. Deletes a new bandwidth group. Name of the bandwidth group to delete. Get a bandwidth group by name. Name of the bandwidth group to get. Where to store the bandwidth group on success. Get all managed bandwidth groups. The array of managed bandwidth groups. The enabled guest debug provider. This enumeration represents possible values for the attribute. Guest debugging is disabled. The native debugger console is enabled. The GDB remote stub is enabled. The WinDbg/KD remote stub is enabled. The enabled guest debug I/O provider. This enumeration represents possible values for the attribute. No connection available (only useful with ). The remote stub is available through a TCP connection. The remote stub is available through a UDP connection. The remote stub is available through a IPC connection, namely a named pipe on Windows or a unix socket on other hosts. Controls the guest debug settings of one virtual machine. The currently active debug provider. The I/O backend for the selected debug provider. The address to connect to or listen on, depending on the type. The port to listen on or connect to, depending on the selected I/O provider. Might be ignored by some providers. Convenience interface for client applications. Treat this as a singleton, i.e. never create more than one instance of this interface. At the moment only available for clients of the local API (not usable via the webservice). Once the session logic is redesigned this might change. Error information handling is a bit special with IVirtualBoxClient: creating an instance will always succeed. The return of the actual error code/information is postponed to any attribute or method call. The reason for this is that COM likes to mutilate the error code and lose the detailed error information returned by instance creation. Reference to the server-side API root object. Create a new session object and return the reference to it. Event source for VirtualBoxClient events. Perform error checking before using an object. Generally useful before starting a VM and all other uses. If anything is not as it should be then this method will return an appropriate error. The machine object to check. Type of an event. See for an introduction to VirtualBox event handling. Invalid event, must be first. Wildcard for all events. Events of this type are never delivered, and only used in call to simplify registration. Wildcard for all vetoable events. Events of this type are never delivered, and only used in call to simplify registration. Wildcard for all machine events. Events of this type are never delivered, and only used in call to simplify registration. Wildcard for all snapshot events. Events of this type are never delivered, and only used in call to simplify registration. Wildcard for all input device (keyboard, mouse) events. Events of this type are never delivered, and only used in call to simplify registration. Last wildcard. See IMachineStateChangedEvent. See IMachineDataChangedEvent. See IExtraDataChangedEvent. See IExtraDataCanChangeEvent. See IMediumRegisteredEvent. See IMachineRegisteredEvent. See ISessionStateChangedEvent. See ISnapshotTakenEvent. See ISnapshotDeletedEvent. See ISnapshotChangedEvent. See IGuestPropertyChangedEvent. See IMousePointerShapeChangedEvent. See IMouseCapabilityChangedEvent. See IKeyboardLedsChangedEvent. See IStateChangedEvent. See IAdditionsStateChangedEvent. See INetworkAdapterChangedEvent. See ISerialPortChangedEvent. See IParallelPortChangedEvent. See IStorageControllerChangedEvent. See IMediumChangedEvent. See IVRDEServerChangedEvent. See IUSBControllerChangedEvent. See IUSBDeviceStateChangedEvent. See ISharedFolderChangedEvent. See IRuntimeErrorEvent. See ICanShowWindowEvent. See IShowWindowEvent. See ICPUChangedEvent. See IVRDEServerInfoChangedEvent. See IEventSourceChangedEvent. See ICPUExecutionCapChangedEvent. See IGuestKeyboardEvent. See IGuestMouseEvent. See INATRedirectEvent. See IHostPCIDevicePlugEvent. See IVBoxSVCAvailablityChangedEvent. See IBandwidthGroupChangedEvent. See IGuestMonitorChangedEvent. See IStorageDeviceChangedEvent. See IClipboardModeChangedEvent. See IDnDModeChangedEvent. See INATNetworkChangedEvent. See INATNetworkStartStopEvent. See INATNetworkAlterEvent. See INATNetworkCreationDeletionEvent. See INATNetworkSettingEvent. See INATNetworkPortForwardEvent. See IGuestSessionStateChangedEvent. See IGuestSessionRegisteredEvent. See IGuestProcessRegisteredEvent. See IGuestProcessStateChangedEvent. See IGuestProcessInputNotifyEvent. See IGuestProcessOutputEvent. See IGuestFileRegisteredEvent. See IGuestFileStateChangedEvent. See IGuestFileOffsetChangedEvent. See IGuestFileReadEvent. For performance reasons this is a separate event to not unnecessarily overflow the event queue. See IGuestFileWriteEvent. For performance reasons this is a separate event to not unnecessarily overflow the event queue. See IRecordingChangeEvent. See IGuestUserStateChangedEvent. See IGuestMultiTouchEvent. See IHostNameResolutionConfigurationChangeEvent. See ISnapshotRestoredEvent. See IMediumConfigChangedEvent. See IAudioAdapterChangedEvent. See IProgressPercentageChangedEvent. See IProgressTaskCompletedEvent. See ICursorPositionChangedEvent. See IGuestAdditionsStatusChangedEvent. See IGuestMonitorInfoChangedEvent. See IGuestFileSizeChangedEvent. See IClipboardFileTransferModeChangedEvent. See . See . See . See . See . See . See . See IUpdateAgentAvailableEvent. See IUpdateAgentErrorEvent. See IUpdateAgentSettingsChangedEvent. See IUpdateAgentStateChangedEvent. See IHostAudioDeviceChangedEvent. See IGuestDebugControlChangedEvent. See IMachineGroupsChangedEvent. See IGuestDirectoryRegisteredEvent. See IGuestDirectoryStateChangedEvent. See IGuestDirectoryReadEvent. For performance reasons this is a separate event to not unnecessarily overflow the event queue. Must be last event, used for iterations and structures relying on numerical event values. Event source. Generally, any object which could generate events can be an event source, or aggregate one. To simplify using one-way protocols such as webservices running on top of HTTP(S), an event source can work with listeners in either active or passive mode. In active mode it is up to the IEventSource implementation to call , in passive mode the event source keeps track of pending events for each listener and returns available events on demand. See for an introduction to VirtualBox event handling. Creates a new listener object, useful for passive mode. Creates an aggregator event source, collecting events from multiple sources. This way a single listener can listen for events coming from multiple sources, using a single blocking on the returned aggregator. Subordinate event source this one aggregates. Event source aggregating passed sources. Register an event listener. To avoid system overload, the VirtualBox server process checks if passive event listeners call frequently enough. In the current implementation, if more than 500 pending events are detected for a passive event listener, it is forcefully unregistered by the system, and further calls will return @c VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND. Listener to register. Event types listener is interested in. One can use wildcards like - to specify wildcards, matching more than one event. Which mode this listener is operating in. In active mode, is called directly. In passive mode, an internal event queue is created for this this IEventListener. For each event coming in, it is added to queues for all interested registered passive listeners. It is then up to the external code to call the listener's method. When done with an event, the external code must call . Unregister an event listener. If listener is passive, and some waitable events are still in queue they are marked as processed automatically. Listener to unregister. Fire an event for this source. Event to deliver. Maximum time to wait for event processing (if event is waitable), in ms; 0 = no wait, -1 = indefinite wait. true if an event was delivered to all targets, or is non-waitable. Get events from this peer's event queue (for passive mode). Calling this method regularly is required for passive event listeners to avoid system overload; see for details. Listener is not registered, or autounregistered. Which listener to get data for. Maximum time to wait for events, in ms; 0 = no wait, -1 = indefinite wait. Event retrieved, or null if none available. Must be called for waitable events after a particular listener finished its event processing. When all listeners of a particular event have called this method, the system will then call . Which listener processed event. Which event. Event listener. An event listener can work in either active or passive mode, depending on the way it was registered. See for an introduction to VirtualBox event handling. Handle event callback for active listeners. It is not called for passive listeners. After calling on all active listeners and having received acknowledgement from all passive listeners via , the event is marked as processed and will return immediately. Event available. Abstract parent interface for VirtualBox events. Actual events will typically implement a more specific interface which derives from this (see below). Introduction to VirtualBox events Generally speaking, an event (represented by this interface) signals that something happened, while an event listener (see ) represents an entity that is interested in certain events. In order for this to work with unidirectional protocols (i.e. web services), the concepts of passive and active listener are used. Event consumers can register themselves as listeners, providing an array of events they are interested in (see ). When an event triggers, the listener is notified about the event. The exact mechanism of the notification depends on whether the listener was registered as an active or passive listener:
  • An active listener is very similar to a callback: it is a function invoked by the API. As opposed to the callbacks that were used in the API before VirtualBox 4.0 however, events are now objects with an interface hierarchy.
  • Passive listeners are somewhat trickier to implement, but do not require a client function to be callable, which is not an option with scripting languages or web service clients. Internally the implementation maintains an event queue for each passive listener, and newly arrived events are put in this queue. When the listener calls , first element from its internal event queue is returned. When the client completes processing of an event, the function must be called, acknowledging that the event was processed. It supports implementing waitable events. On passive listener unregistration, all events from its queue are auto-acknowledged.
Waitable events are useful in situations where the event generator wants to track delivery or a party wants to wait until all listeners have completed the event. A typical example would be a vetoable event (see ) where a listeners might veto a certain action, and thus the event producer has to make sure that all listeners have processed the event and not vetoed before taking the action. A given event may have both passive and active listeners at the same time. Using events Any VirtualBox object capable of producing externally visible events provides an @c eventSource read-only attribute, which is of the type . This event source object is notified by VirtualBox once something has happened, so consumers may register event listeners with this event source. To register a listener, an object implementing the interface must be provided. For active listeners, such an object is typically created by the consumer, while for passive listeners should be used. Please note that a listener created with must not be used as an active listener. Once created, the listener must be registered to listen for the desired events (see ), providing an array of enums. Those elements can either be the individual event IDs or wildcards matching multiple event IDs. After registration, the callback's method is called automatically when the event is triggered, while passive listeners have to call and in an event processing loop. The IEvent interface is an abstract parent interface for all such VirtualBox events coming in. As a result, the standard use pattern inside or the event processing loop is to check the attribute of the event and then cast to the appropriate specific interface using @c QueryInterface().
Event type. Source of this event. If we can wait for this event being processed. If false, returns immediately, and doesn't make sense. Non-waitable events are generally better performing, as no additional overhead associated with waitability imposed. Waitable events are needed when one need to be able to wait for particular event processed, for example for vetoable changes, or if event refers to some resource which need to be kept immutable until all consumers confirmed events. Internal method called by the system when all listeners of a particular event have called . This should not be called by client code. Wait until time outs, or this event is processed. Event must be waitable for this operation to have described semantics, for non-waitable returns true immediately. Maximum time to wait for event processing, in ms; 0 = no wait, -1 = indefinite wait. If this event was processed before timeout.
Base abstract interface for all reusable events. Current generation of event, incremented on reuse. Marks an event as reused, increments 'generation', fields shall no longer be considered valid. Base abstract interface for all machine events. ID of the machine this event relates to. Machine state change event. New execution state. Any of the settings of the given machine has changed. @c true if the settings change is temporary. All permanent settings changes will trigger an event, and only temporary settings changes for running VMs will trigger an event. Note: sending events for temporary changes is NOT IMPLEMENTED. The given medium was registered or unregistered within this VirtualBox installation. ID of the medium this event relates to. Type of the medium this event relates to. If @c true, the medium was registered, otherwise it was unregistered. The configuration of the given medium was changed (location, properties, child/parent or anything else). ID of the medium this event relates to. The given machine was registered or unregistered within this VirtualBox installation. If @c true, the machine was registered, otherwise it was unregistered. The state of the session for the given machine was changed. New session state. Notification when a guest property has changed. The name of the property that has changed. The new property value. The new property flags. A flag which indicates that property was deleted. Base interface for all snapshot events. ID of the snapshot this event relates to. A new snapshot of the machine has been taken. Snapshot of the given machine has been deleted. This notification is delivered after the snapshot object has been uninitialized on the server (so that any attempt to call its methods will return an error). Snapshot of the given machine has been restored. Snapshot properties (name and/or description) have been changed. Notification when the guest mouse pointer shape has changed. The new shape data is given. Flag whether the pointer is visible. Flag whether the pointer has an alpha channel. The pointer hot spot X coordinate. The pointer hot spot Y coordinate. Width of the pointer shape in pixels. Height of the pointer shape in pixels. Shape buffer arrays. The @a shape buffer contains a 1-bpp (bits per pixel) AND mask followed by a 32-bpp XOR (color) mask. For pointers without alpha channel the XOR mask pixels are 32-bit values: (lsb)BGR0(msb). For pointers with alpha channel the XOR mask consists of (lsb)BGRA(msb) 32-bit values. An AND mask is used for pointers with alpha channel, so if the callback does not support alpha, the pointer could be displayed as a normal color pointer. The AND mask is a 1-bpp bitmap with byte aligned scanlines. The size of the AND mask therefore is cbAnd = (width + 7) / 8 * height. The padding bits at the end of each scanline are undefined. The XOR mask follows the AND mask on the next 4-byte aligned offset: uint8_t *pXor = pAnd + (cbAnd + 3) & ~3. Bytes in the gap between the AND and the XOR mask are undefined. The XOR mask scanlines have no gap between them and the size of the XOR mask is: cXor = width * 4 * height. If @a shape is 0, only the pointer visibility is changed. Notification when the mouse capabilities reported by the guest have changed. The new capabilities are passed. Supports absolute coordinates. Supports relative coordinates. Supports multi-touch events, touchscreen variant. Supports multi-touch events, touchpad variant. If host cursor is needed. Notification when the guest OS executes the KBD_CMD_SET_LEDS command to alter the state of the keyboard LEDs. NumLock status. CapsLock status. ScrollLock status. Notification when the execution state of the machine has changed. The new state is given. New machine state. Notification when a Guest Additions property changes. Interested callees should query IGuest attributes to find out what has changed. Notification when a property of one of the virtual network adapters changes. Interested callees should use INetworkAdapter methods and attributes to find out what has changed. Network adapter that is subject to change. Notification when a property of the audio adapter changes. Interested callees should use IAudioAdapter methods and attributes to find out what has changed. Audio adapter that is subject to change. Notification when a property of one of the virtual serial ports changes. Interested callees should use ISerialPort methods and attributes to find out what has changed. Serial port that is subject to change. Notification when a property of one of the virtual parallel ports changes. Interested callees should use ISerialPort methods and attributes to find out what has changed. Parallel port that is subject to change. Notification when a storage controllers changes. The id of the machine containing the storage controller. The name of the storage controller. Notification when a medium attachment changes. Medium attachment that is subject to change. Notification when the shared clipboard mode changes. The new clipboard mode. Notification when the shared clipboard file transfer mode changes. Whether file transfers are allowed or not. Notification when the drag'n drop mode changes. The new drag'n drop mode. Notification when a CPU changes. The CPU which changed. Flag whether the CPU was added or removed. Notification when the CPU execution cap changes. The new CPU execution cap value. (1-100) Notification when guest keyboard event happens. Array of scancodes. The mode (relative, absolute, multi-touch) of a pointer event. @todo A clear pattern seems to be emerging that we should usually have multiple input devices active for different types of reporting, so we should really have different event types for relative (including wheel), absolute (not including wheel) and multi-touch events. Relative event. Absolute event. Notification when guest mouse event happens. If this event is relative, absolute or multi-touch. New X position, or X delta. New Y position, or Y delta. Z delta. W delta. Button state bitmask. Notification when guest touch screen event happens. Number of contacts in the event. X positions. Y positions. Contact identifiers. Contact state. Bit 0: in contact. Bit 1: in range. Distinguishes between touchscreen and touchpad events. Timestamp of the event in milliseconds. Only relative time between events is important. Base abstract interface for all guest session events. Guest session that is subject to change. Notification when a guest session changed its state. Session ID of guest session which was changed. New session status. Error information in case of new session status is indicating an error. The attribute will contain the runtime (IPRT) error code from the guest. See include/iprt/err.h and include/VBox/err.h for details. Notification when a guest session was registered or unregistered. If @c true, the guest session was registered, otherwise it was unregistered. Base abstract interface for all guest process events. Guest process object which is related to this event. Guest process ID (PID). Notification when a guest process was registered or unregistered. If @c true, the guest process was registered, otherwise it was unregistered. Notification when a guest process changed its state. New guest process status. Error information in case of new session status is indicating an error. The attribute will contain the runtime (IPRT) error code from the guest. See include/iprt/err.h and include/VBox/err.h for details. Base abstract interface for all guest process input/output (IO) events. Input/output (IO) handle involved in this event. Usually 0 is stdin, 1 is stdout and 2 is stderr. Processed input or output (in bytes). Notification when a guest process' stdin became available. This event is right now not implemented! Current process input status. Notification when there is guest process output available for reading. Actual output data. Base abstract interface for all guest directory events. Guest directory object which is related to this event. Notification when a guest directory was registered or unregistered. If @c true, the guest directory was registered, otherwise it was unregistered. Notification when a guest directory changed its state. New guest directory status. Error information in case of new session status is indicating an error. The attribute will contain the runtime (IPRT) error code from the guest. See include/iprt/err.h and include/VBox/err.h for details. Notification when a directory entry has been read. Path of the directory entry. Object information of the directory entry. Also see . Resolved owner name of the directory entry. Resolved user groups of the directory entry. Base abstract interface for all guest file events. Guest file object which is related to this event. Notification when a guest file was registered or unregistered. If @c true, the guest file was registered, otherwise it was unregistered. Notification when a guest file changed its state. New guest file status. Error information in case of new session status is indicating an error. The attribute will contain the runtime (IPRT) error code from the guest. See include/iprt/err.h and include/VBox/err.h for details. Base abstract interface for all guest file input/output (IO) events. Current offset (in bytes). Processed input or output (in bytes). Notification when a guest file changed its current offset via . Notification when a guest file changed its size via . Notification when data has been read from a guest file. Actual data read. Notification when data has been written to a guest file. Notification when a property of the VRDE server changes. Interested callees should use IVRDEServer methods and attributes to find out what has changed. Notification when the status of the VRDE server changes. Interested callees should use IVRDEServerInfo attributes to find out what is the current status. Notification when recording settings have changed. Notification when a property of the virtual USB controllers changes. Interested callees should use IUSBController methods and attributes to find out what has changed. Notification when a USB device is attached to or detached from the virtual USB controller. This notification is sent as a result of the indirect request to attach the device because it matches one of the machine USB filters, or as a result of the direct request issued by or . This notification is sent in case of both a succeeded and a failed request completion. When the request succeeds, the @a error parameter is @c null, and the given device has been already added to (when @a attached is @c true) or removed from (when @a attached is @c false) the collection represented by . On failure, the collection doesn't change and the @a error parameter represents the error message describing the failure. Device that is subject to state change. @c true if the device was attached and @c false otherwise. @c null on success or an error message object on failure. Notification when a shared folder is added or removed. The @a scope argument defines one of three scopes: global shared folders (Global), permanent shared folders of the machine (Machine) or transient shared folders of the machine (Session). Interested callees should use query the corresponding collections to find out what has changed. Scope of the notification. Notification when an error happens during the virtual machine execution. There are three kinds of runtime errors:
  • fatal
  • non-fatal with retry
  • non-fatal warnings
Fatal errors are indicated by the @a fatal parameter set to @c true. In case of fatal errors, the virtual machine execution is always paused before calling this notification, and the notification handler is supposed either to immediately save the virtual machine state using or power it off using . Resuming the execution can lead to unpredictable results. Non-fatal errors and warnings are indicated by the @a fatal parameter set to @c false. If the virtual machine is in the Paused state by the time the error notification is received, it means that the user can try to resume the machine execution after attempting to solve the problem that caused the error. In this case, the notification handler is supposed to show an appropriate message to the user (depending on the value of the @a id parameter) that offers several actions such as Retry, Save or Power Off. If the user wants to retry, the notification handler should continue the machine execution using the call. If the machine execution is not Paused during this notification, then it means this notification is a warning (for example, about a fatal condition that can happen very soon); no immediate action is required from the user, the machine continues its normal execution. Note that in either case the notification handler must not perform any action directly on a thread where this notification is called. Everything it is allowed to do is to post a message to another thread that will then talk to the user and take the corresponding action. Currently, the following error identifiers are known:
  • "HostMemoryLow"
  • "HostAudioNotResponding"
  • "VDIStorageFull"
  • "3DSupportIncompatibleAdditions"
Whether the error is fatal or not. Error identifier. Optional error message.
Notification when an event source state changes (listener added or removed). Event listener which has changed. Flag whether listener was added or removed. Notification when machine specific or global extra data has changed. ID of the machine this event relates to. Null for global extra data changes. Extra data key that has changed. Extra data value for the given key. Base abstract interface for veto events. Adds a veto on this event. Reason for veto, could be null or empty string. If this event was vetoed. Reason for veto. Current veto reason list, if size is 0 - no veto. Array of reasons for veto provided by different event handlers. Adds an approval on this event. Reason for approval, could be null or empty string. If this event was approved. Current approval reason list, if size is 0 - no approvals. Array of reasons for approval provided by different event handlers. Notification when someone tries to change extra data for either the given machine or (if @c null) global extra data. This gives the chance to veto against changes. ID of the machine this event relates to. Null for global extra data changes. Extra data key that has changed. Extra data value for the given key. Notification when a call to is made by a front-end to check if a subsequent call to can succeed. The callee should give an answer appropriate to the current machine state using event veto. This answer must remain valid at least until the next machine state change. Notification when a call to requests the console window to be activated and brought to foreground on the desktop of the host PC. This notification should cause the VM console process to perform the requested action as described above. If it is impossible to do it at a time of this notification, this method should return a failure. Note that many modern window managers on many platforms implement some sort of focus stealing prevention logic, so that it may be impossible to activate a window without the help of the currently active application (which is supposedly an initiator of this notification). In this case, this method must return a non-zero identifier that represents the top-level window of the VM console process. The caller, if it represents a currently active process, is responsible to use this identifier (in a platform-dependent manner) to perform actual window activation. This method must set @a winId to zero if it has performed all actions necessary to complete the request and the console window is now active and in foreground, to indicate that no further action is required on the caller's side. Platform-dependent identifier of the top-level VM console window, or zero if this method has performed all actions necessary to implement the show window semantics for the given platform and/or this VirtualBox front-end. Notification when NAT redirect rule added or removed. Adapter which NAT attached to. Whether rule remove or add. Name of the rule. Protocol (TCP or UDP) of the redirect rule. Host ip address to bind socket on. Host port to bind socket on. Guest ip address to redirect to. Guest port to redirect to. Notification when a host audio device state has changed. Host audio device that has changed. @c true if the host device is a newly detected device, @c false if not. New audio device state. @c null on success or an error message object on failure. Notification when host PCI device is plugged/unplugged. Plugging usually takes place on VM startup, unplug - when is called. If device successfully plugged or unplugged. If operation was successful, if false - 'message' attribute may be of interest. Attachment info for this device. Optional error message. Notification when VBoxSVC becomes unavailable (due to a crash or similar unexpected circumstances) or available again. Whether VBoxSVC is available now. Notification when one of the bandwidth groups changed The changed bandwidth group. How the guest monitor has been changed. The guest monitor has been enabled by the guest. The guest monitor has been disabled by the guest. The guest monitor origin has changed in the guest. Notification when the guest enables one of its monitors. What was changed for this guest monitor. The monitor which was changed. Physical X origin relative to the primary screen. Valid for Enabled and NewOrigin. Physical Y origin relative to the primary screen. Valid for Enabled and NewOrigin. Width of the screen. Valid for Enabled. Height of the screen. Valid for Enabled. Notification when a guest user changed its state. Name of the guest user whose state changed. Name of the FQDN (fully qualified domain name) this user is bound to. Optional. What was changed for this guest user. See for more information. Optional state details, depending on the attribute. Notification when a storage device is attached or removed. Storage device that is subject to change. Flag whether the device was removed or added to the VM. Flag whether the guest should be notified about the change. IsStartEvent is true when NAT network is started and false on stopping. Base abstract interface for all progress events. GUID of the progress this event relates to. Notification of a new progress object creation/deletion. Covers purely projess objects in VBoxSVC. This event is signaled on the event source of IVirtualBox, unlike the other progress events. If @c true, the progress object was created, otherwise it was deleted. Progress state change event. New percent Progress task completion event. The guest reports cursor position data. Event contains valid data. If not set, switch back to using the host cursor. Reported X position Reported Y position The guest addition status changed. Facility this event relates to. The new facility status. The new run level. The millisecond timestamp associated with the event. The guest reports cursor position data. The virtual display output on which the monitor has changed. Abstract base interface for update agent events. Update agent this event belongs to. Notification when update agent settings have been changed. Notification when an update agent error occurred. Error message in human readable format. IPRT-style error code. Notification when an update is available. Version of the update. Channel containing the update. Severity of the update. Download URL of the update. Web URL of the update. Release notes of the update. Notification when an update agent state has been changed. New update agent state. Notification when a property of the guest debug settings changes. Interested callees should use IGuestDebugControl methods and attributes to find out what has changed. Guest debug control object that is subject to change. The groups of the machine have changed. Dummy state because you can't have an event without attributes apparently. When you need to return an array of strings asynchronously (under a progress) you cannot use by-value out parameter type="wstring" safearray="yes" dir="out", hence this wrapper. Counterpart of the attribute. May be null or empty. Usually used for units. Counterpart of the attribute. May be null or empty. Usually used for units. Intnded for cases when a read-only string value is used to display information and different string is to be used when copying to the clipboard. Cloud instance execution state Invalid state The machine is in the process of provisioning The machine runs The machine is in the process of starting The machine is in the process of stopping The machine was stopped The machine is in the process of creating image The machine is in the process of terminating The machine was terminated Cloud image state Invalid state The image is in the process of provisioning The image is in the process of importing The image is avalable The image is in the process of exporting The image is disabled The image was deleted Virtual virtual machine (sic) in the cloud. Reading object attributes returns cached values, use to refresh them. UUID of the cloud machine. Whether this virtual machine is currently accessible or not. TBD... Error information describing the reason of machine inaccessibility. Reading this property is only valid after the last call to returned @c false (i.e. the machine is currently inaccessible). Otherwise, a @c null IVirtualBoxErrorInfo object will be returned. Convenience shortcut to retrieve the name of the cloud machine. The name is part of the machine settings that are hidden behind the settings form (see ). Convenience shortcut to retrieve the OS Type id of the cloud machine. It is part of the machine settings that are hidden behind the settings form (see ). Machine state. Refresh information by reading it from the cloud. Progress object to track the operation completion. Obtain a form with the current settings for this cloud machine. The form is not editable. A form with the cloud machine settings. Obtain a form with settings for this cloud machine. The form is editable. A form with the cloud machine settings. Progress object to track the operation completion. Start cloud virtual machine execution. Progress object to track the operation completion. Reboot cloud virtual machine. Progress object to track the operation completion. Forcing reset or hard reset of a cloud virtual machine. Progress object to track the operation completion. Shutdown cloud virtual machine. Progress object to track the operation completion. Initiates the power down procedure to stop the virtual machine execution. The completion of the power down procedure is tracked using the returned IProgress object. After the operation is complete, the machine will go to the PoweredOff state. Virtual machine must be Running, to be powered down. Progress object to track the operation completion. Terminate cloud virtual machine. Progress object to track the operation completion. Unregister this cloud machine, but leave the cloud artifacts intact. Progress object to track the operation completion. Unregister this cloud machine and delete all its cloud artifacts. Progress object to track the operation completion. Get the backlog of the machine's console. If you have ever seen console teletypes, this is like looking at the last few meters of the paper it spewed. Data stream object for reading the console history. For now we are abusing/repurposing this interface from the media convertion API to avoid marshalling a huge string through xpcom. Progress object to track the operation completion. SSH public key authorized to connect to the console. Progress object to track the operation completion. Progress object to track the operation completion. The fingerprint of the ssh key that is authorized to access the machine's console connection. The shell command to establish ssh connection to the cloud machine serial console. The PowerShell command to establish ssh connection to the cloud machine serial console using PuTTY's plink. The shell command to establish ssh port forwarding for the VNC connection to the cloud machine console. The PowerShell command to establish ssh port forwarding for the VNC connection to the cloud machine console using PuTTY's plink. Returns a form for editing the virtual system description for exporting a local VM into a cloud custom image. Virtual system description to be edited. An IForm instance for editing the virtual system description. Progress object to track the operation completion. Export local VM into the cloud, creating a custom image. Virtual system description object which describes the machine and all required parameters. Progress object to track the operation completion. Virtual system description to be edited. An IForm instance for editing the virtual system description. Progress object to track the operation completion. Virtual system description object which describes the machine and all required parameters. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns a form for editing the virtual system description for import from cloud. Virtual system description to be edited. An IForm instance for editing the virtual system description. Progress object to track the operation completion. Import an existing cloud instance to the local host. All needed parameters are passed in the description (VSD). VirtualSystemDescription object which is describing a machine and all required parameters. Progress object to track the operation completion. Create an object that represents a cloud machine with the specified UUID. Note that the operation is synchronous. The returned machine is initiatally in inaccessible state and requires a refresh to get its data from the cloud. UUID of a cloud machine. Object that represents the cloud machine with the specified UUID. Make the list of cloud machines available via attribute. Progress object to track the operation completion. See . Make the list of cloud machine stubs available via attribute. Like with , the returned machines are initiatally inaccessible and require a refresh to get their data from the cloud. Progress object to track the operation completion. See . Adopt a running instance and register it as cloud machine. This is kinda like adding a local .vbox file as a local VM. ID of an instance to be added as a cloud machine. Object that represents the newly registered cloud machine. Progress object to track the operation completion. This is transitional method that combines and . Virtual system description object which describes the machine and all required parameters. Object that represents the newly created cloud machine. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the list of the instances in the Cloud. State of each VM. VM names. VM ids. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the list of instances in the cloud that can be added/adopted as VirtualBox cloud machines. Instance names. Instance idss. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the list of the images in the Cloud. State of each image. Images names. Images ids. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the list of boot volumes in the Cloud. Boot volume names. Boot volume ids. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the list of boot volumes in the cloud that can be added/adopted as VirtualBox cloud machines. Boot volume names. Boot volume ids. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the list of the Vnic attachements in the Cloud. Each parameter in the array must be in the form "name=value". VM ids. VM ids. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the information about an instance in the Cloud. The id of instance in the Cloud. VirtualSystemDescription object which is describing a machine Progress object to track the operation completion. Start an existing instance with passed id. The id of instance in the Cloud. Progress object to track the operation completion. Pause an existing instance with passed id. The id of instance in the Cloud. Progress object to track the operation completion. Terminate an existing instance with passed id. the id of instance in the Cloud. Progress object to track the operation completion. Reset an existing instance with passed id. The id of instance in the Cloud. Progress object to track the operation completion. Create an image in the Cloud. Each parameter in the array must be in the form "name=value". Progress object to track the operation completion. Export an existing VBox image in the Cloud. Reference to the existing VBox image. Each parameter in the array must be in the form "name=value". Progress object to track the operation completion. Import an existing image in the Cloud to the local host. the id of image in the Cloud. Each parameter in the array must be in the form "name=value". Progress object to track the operation completion. Delete an existing image with passed id from the Cloud. The id of image in the Cloud. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the information about an image in the Cloud. The id of image in the Cloud. An array where the image settings or properties is returned. Each parameter in the array must be in the form "name=value". Progress object to track the operation completion. The id of image in the Cloud. The id of image in the Cloud. Information about the started gateway. Progress object to track the operation completion. The name of tunnelling network to be created in the Cloud. If this parameter is empty the default value "VirtualBox Tunneling Network" is assumed. The IP address range of tunnelling network to be created in the Cloud. If this parameter is empty the default value "10.0.0.0/16" is assumed. The name of the operating system to be used for cloud gateway instances. The default value is "Oracle Linux". The version of the operating system to be used for cloud gateway instances. The default value is "7.8". The shape of cloud gateway instance. The default value is "VM.Standard2.1". Information about the created network environment. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the information about Vnic in the Cloud. The id of vnic in the Cloud. An array where the Vnic settings/properties is returned. Each parameter in the array must be in the form "name=value". Progress object to track the operation completion. Virtual system description to be edited. An IForm instance for editing the virtual system description. Progress object to track the operation completion. Returns the profile name. Returns provider identifier tied with this profile. Returns the value of the cloud profile property with the given name. If the requested data @a name does not exist, this function will succeed and return an empty string in the @a value argument. @a name is @c null or empty. Name of the property to get. Current property value. Sets the value of the cloud profile property with the given name. Setting the property value to @c null or an empty string is equivalent to deleting the existing value. @a name is @c null or empty. Name of the property to set. Property value to set. Returns values for a group of properties in one call. The names of the properties to get are specified using the @a names argument which is a list of comma-separated property names or an empty string if all properties are to be returned. Currently the value of this argument is ignored and the method always returns all existing properties. The method returns two arrays, the array of property names corresponding to the @a names argument and the current values of these properties. Both arrays have the same number of elements with each element at the given index in the first array corresponds to an element at the same index in the second array. Names of properties to get. Names of returned properties. Values of returned properties. Updates profile, changing/adding/removing properties. The names of the properties to set are passed in the @a names array along with the new values for them in the @a values array. Both arrays have the same number of elements with each element at the given index in the first array corresponding to an element at the same index in the second array. If there is at least one property name in @a names that is not valid, the method will fail before changing the values of any other properties from the @a names array. Using this method over is preferred if you need to set several properties at once since it is more efficient. Setting the property value to @c null or an empty string is equivalent to deleting the existing value. Names of properties. Values of set properties. Deletes a profile. Creates a cloud client for this cloud profile. The cloud client object reference. Returns the long name of the provider. Includes vendor and precise product name spelled out in the preferred way. Returns the short name of the provider. Less than 8 ASCII chars, using acronyms. No vendor name, but can contain a hint if it's a 3rd party implementation for this cloud provider, to keep it unique. Returns the UUID of this cloud provider. Returns all profiles for this cloud provider. Returns all profile names for this cloud provider. Returns the supported property names. Property name. Property description. Creates a new profile. The profile name. Must not exist, otherwise an error is raised. Names of properties. Values of set properties. Import the profiles from the original source Restores the old local profiles if they exist Saves the local profiles The caller requests the cloud provider to cease operation. Should return an error if this is currently not possible (due to ongoing cloud activity, possibly by a different API client). However, this must not wait for the completion for a larger amount of time (ideally stays below a second of execution time). If this succeeds it should leave the cloud provider in a state which does not allow starting new operations. Returns all supported cloud providers. Each individual provider that is installed or uninstalled is reported as an . When the batch is done this event is sent and listerns can get the new list. A cloud provider was installed or uninstalled. See also . A cloud provider is about to be uninstalled. Unlike this one is waitable and is sent before an attempt is made to uninstall a provider. Listerns should release references to the provider and related objects if they have any, or the uninstallation of the provider is going to fail because it's still in use.
Implemented by the VirtualBox class factory and registered with VBoxSDS so it can retrieve IVirtualBox on behalf of other VBoxSVCs. Gets an IUnknown interface to the VirtualBox object in the VBoxSVC process. Where to return the IUnknown interface. The IVirtualBoxSDS interface represents the system-wide directory service helper. It exists only on Windows host, and its purpose is to work around design flaws in Microsoft's (D)COM, in particular the local server instantiation behavior. Registers a VBoxSVC instance with VBoxSDS. If the caller is not running in a Windows 0 session, the method attempts to run VBoxSVC in that session. The caller is not running in a Windows session 0 and no VBoxSVC is registered. VBoxSVC registration begins in Windows session 0. You should call this method again later. Interface implemented by the VirtualBox class factory. The process ID of the VBoxSVC instance. If there is already an VBoxSVC for this user, the an IUnknown interface to its VirtualBox object is returned here, otherwise it is set to NULL. Registers a VBoxSVC instance with the SDS. Same as specified during registration. The process ID of the VBoxSVC instance (same as during registration). Spawns a new process that will execute the virtual machine in the interactive windows session of calling user. Any additional checks are performed by created process itself If launching the VM succeeds, the new VM process will create its own session and write-lock the machine for it, preventing conflicting changes from other processes. If the machine is already locked (because it is already running or because another session has a write lock), launching the VM process will therefore fail. Reversely, future attempts to obtain a write lock will also fail while the machine is running. Launching a VM process can take some time (a new VM is started in a new process, for which memory and other resources need to be set up) but the method does not wait for completion and just returns the PID of created process. Some of the parameters are invalid. Launching process for machine failed. The name or id of the machine the VM will start for. The comment for VM. Front-end to use for the new VM process. The following are currently supported:
  • "gui": VirtualBox Qt GUI front-end
  • "headless": VBoxHeadless (VRDE Server) front-end
  • "sdl": VirtualBox SDL front-end
  • "": use the per-VM default frontend if set, otherwise the global default defined in the system properties. If neither are set, the API will launch a "gui" session, which may fail if there is no windowing environment available. See and .
The list of putenv-style changes to the VM process environment. See for details. Additional command line options to pass to the VM process. Windows session where the VM process should be launched. The PID of created process.