Oracle® VM VirtualBox®

Right-click on the virtual machine name, to display menu options.

Click on the Machine Tools menu, to the right of the virtual machine name. See the section called “Machine Tools”.

Click a button in the toolbar in the Details pane. See Section 1.7.2, “The Details Pane”.

Global Tools. These tools apply to all virtual machines. See the section called “Global Tools”.

Machine Tools. These tools apply to a specific virtual machine. See the section called “Machine Tools”.

In a VirtualBox Manager wizard or dialog, click Help to display the relevant help topic.

In VirtualBox Manager or from a guest VM, do either of the following:

Navigation tools. The left hand pane contains the following navigation tools:

Tabbed browsing. Help topics that you have visited are displayed in tabs in the main window pane.

Zoomable topics. Zoom controls enable you to enlarge help topic details.

Printing. Help topics can be printed to PDF file or to a local printer.

Guided mode. This is the default display mode. Wizards are shown in the conventional manner, using a series of pages with descriptions to guide the user through the steps for a task.

Expert mode. This display mode is designed for more advanced users of Oracle VM VirtualBox. All settings are displayed on a single page, enabling quicker completion of tasks.

Name. A name for the new VM. The name you enter is shown in the machine list of VirtualBox Manager and is also used for the virtual machine's files on disk.

Be sure to assign each VM an informative name that describes the OS and software running on the VM. For example, a name such as Windows 10 with Visio.

Folder. The location where VMs are stored on your computer, called the machine folder. The default folder location is shown.

Ensure that the folder location has enough free space, especially if you intend to use the snapshots feature. See also Section 10.1.1, “The Machine Folder”.

ISO Image. Select an ISO image file. The image file can be used to install an OS on the new virtual machine or it can be attached to a DVD drive on the new virtual machine.

Type and Version. These fields are used to select the OS that you want to install on the new virtual machine.

The supported OSes are grouped into types. If you want to install something very unusual that is not listed, select the Other type. Depending on your selection, Oracle VM VirtualBox will enable or disable certain VM settings that your guest OS may require. This is particularly important for 64-bit guests. See Section 3.1.2, “64-bit Guests”. It is therefore recommended to always set this field to the correct value.

If an ISO image is selected and Oracle VM VirtualBox detects the operating system for the ISO, the Type and Version fields are populated automatically and are disabled.

Skip Unattended Installation. Disables unattended guest OS installation, even if an ISO image is selected that supports unattended installation. In that case, the selected ISO image is mounted automatically on the DVD drive of the new virtual machine and user interaction is required to complete the OS installation.

The unattended installation step in the wizard is skipped.

Username and Password. Enter the credentials for a default user on the guest OS.

Guest Additions. Enables automatic installation of the Guest Additions, following installation of the guest OS. Use the drop-down list to select the location of the ISO image file for the Guest Additions.

Additional Options. The following options enable you to perform extra configuration of the guest OS:

Base Memory. Select the amount of RAM that Oracle VM VirtualBox should allocate every time the virtual machine is started. The amount of memory selected here will be taken away from your host machine and presented to the guest OS, which will report this size as the virtual machines installed RAM.

Always ensure that the host OS has enough RAM remaining. If insufficient RAM remains, the system might excessively swap memory to the hard disk, which effectively brings the host system to a standstill.

As with other Create Virtual Machine wizard settings, you can change this setting later, after you have created the VM.

Processor(s). Select the number of virtual processors to assign to the VM.

It is not advised to assign more than half of the total processor threads from the host machine.

Enable EFI. Enables Extensible Firware Interface (EFI) booting for the guest OS.

Create a Virtual Hard Disk Now. Creates a new empty virtual hard disk image, located in the VM's machine folder.

Enter the following settings:

Use an Existing Hard Disk File. Enables you to select an existing disk image file to use with the new VM.

The drop-down list presented in the window lists all disk images which are known by Oracle VM VirtualBox. These disk images are currently attached to a virtual machine, or have been attached to a virtual machine.

Alternatively, click on the small folder icon next to the drop-down list. In the Hard Disk Selector window that is displayed, click Add to select a disk image file on your host disk.

Do Not Add a Virtual Hard Disk. The new VM is created without a hard disk.

OS type is detected automatically. The following outcomes are possible:

OS type is not detected automatically. You must configure Type and Version settings in the wizard.

The ISO image is inserted automatically into the DVD drive of the new VM. The guest OS installation must then be completed manually.

Unattended Installation is disabled. Users can disable unattended installation, by selecting the Skip Unattended Installation check box on the initial wizard page.

The ISO image is inserted automatically into the DVD drive of the new VM. The guest OS installation must then be completed manually.

Your keyboard is owned by the VM if the VM window on your host desktop has the keyboard focus. If you have many windows open in your guest OS, the window that has the focus in your VM is used. This means that if you want to enter text within your VM, click on the title bar of your VM window first.

To release keyboard ownership, press the Host key. As explained above, this is typically the right Ctrl key.

Note that while the VM owns the keyboard, some key sequences, such as Alt+Tab, will no longer be seen by the host, but will go to the guest instead. After you press the Host key to reenable the host keyboard, all key presses will go through the host again, so that sequences such as Alt+Tab will no longer reach the guest. For technical reasons it may not be possible for the VM to get all keyboard input even when it does own the keyboard. Examples of this are the Ctrl+Alt+Del sequence on Windows hosts or single keys grabbed by other applications on X11 hosts such as the GNOME desktop Locate Pointer feature.

Your mouse is owned by the VM only after you have clicked in the VM window. The host mouse pointer will disappear, and your mouse will drive the guest's pointer instead of your normal mouse pointer.

Note that mouse ownership is independent of that of the keyboard. Even after you have clicked on a titlebar to be able to enter text into the VM window, your mouse is not necessarily owned by the VM yet.

To release ownership of your mouse by the VM, press the Host key.

Host OSes reserve certain key combinations for themselves. For example, you cannot use the Ctrl+Alt+Delete combination to reboot the guest OS in your VM, because this key combination is reserved by the host OS. Even though both Windows and Linux OSes can intercept this key combination, the host OS is rebooted automatically.

On Linux and Oracle Solaris hosts, which use the X Window System, the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Backspace normally resets the X server and restarts the entire graphical user interface. As the X server intercepts this combination, pressing it will usually restart your host graphical user interface and kill all running programs, including Oracle VM VirtualBox, in the process.

On Linux hosts supporting virtual terminals, the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Fx, where Fx is one of the function keys from F1 to F12, normally enables you to switch between virtual terminals. As with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, these combinations are intercepted by the host OS and therefore always switch terminals on the host.

If, instead, you want to send these key combinations to the guest OS in the virtual machine, you will need to use one of the following methods:

For some other keyboard combinations such as Alt+Tab to switch between open windows, Oracle VM VirtualBox enables you to configure whether these combinations will affect the host or the guest, if a virtual machine currently has the focus. This is a global setting for all virtual machines and can be found under File, Preferences, Input.

A soft keyboard can be used to input key combinations in the guest. See Section 1.19, “Soft Keyboard”.

If you have scaled mode enabled, then the virtual machine's screen will be scaled to the size of the window. This can be useful if you have many machines running and want to have a look at one of them while it is running in the background. Alternatively, it might be useful to enlarge a window if the VM's output screen is very small, for example because you are running an old OS in it.

To enable scaled mode, press Host key + C, or select Scaled Mode from the View menu in the VM window. To leave scaled mode, press Host key + C again.

The aspect ratio of the guest screen is preserved when resizing the window. To ignore the aspect ratio, press Shift during the resize operation.

See Chapter 14, Known Limitations for additional remarks.

If you have the Guest Additions installed and they support automatic resizing, the Guest Additions will automatically adjust the screen resolution of the guest OS. For example, if you are running a Windows guest with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels and you then resize the VM window to make it 100 pixels wider, the Guest Additions will change the Windows display resolution to 1124x768.

See Chapter 4, Guest Additions.

Otherwise, if the window is bigger than the VM's screen, the screen will be centered. If it is smaller, then scroll bars will be added to the machine window.

Save the machine state: With this option, Oracle VM VirtualBox freezes the virtual machine by completely saving its state to your local disk.

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

Send the shutdown signal. This will send an ACPI shutdown signal to the virtual machine, which has the same effect as if you had pressed the power button on a real computer. This should trigger a proper shutdown mechanism from within the VM.

Power off the machine: With this option, Oracle VM VirtualBox also stops running the virtual machine, but without saving its state.

As an exception, if your virtual machine has any snapshots, see Section 1.11, “Snapshots”, you can use this option to quickly restore the current snapshot of the virtual machine. In that case, powering off the machine will discard the current state and any changes made since the previous snapshot was taken will be lost.

The snapshot contains a complete copy of the VM settings, including the hardware configuration, so that when you restore a snapshot, the VM settings are restored as well. For example, if you changed the hard disk configuration or the VM's system settings, that change is undone when you restore the snapshot.

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

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

Strictly speaking, this is only true for virtual hard disks in "normal" mode. You can configure disks to behave differently with snapshots, see Section 5.4, “Special Image Write Modes”. In technical terms, it is not the virtual disk itself that is restored when a snapshot is restored. Instead, when a snapshot is taken, Oracle VM VirtualBox creates differencing images which contain only the changes since the snapshot were taken. When the snapshot is restored, Oracle VM VirtualBox throws away that differencing image, thus going back to the previous state. This is both faster and uses less disk space. For the details, which can be complex, see Section 5.5, “Differencing Images”.

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

If you took a snapshot while the machine was running, the memory state of the machine is also saved in the snapshot. This is in the same way that memory can be saved when you close a VM window. When you restore such a snapshot, execution resumes at exactly the point when the snapshot was taken.

The memory state file can be as large as the memory size of the VM and will therefore occupy considerable disk space.

They can come in several files, as one or several disk images, typically in the widely-used VMDK format. See Section 5.2, “Disk Image Files (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD)”. They also include a textual description file in an XML dialect with an .ovf extension. These files must then reside in the same directory for Oracle VM VirtualBox to be able to import them.

Alternatively, the above files can be packed together into a single archive file, typically with an .ova extension. Such archive files use a variant of the TAR archive format and can therefore be unpacked outside of Oracle VM VirtualBox with any utility that can unpack standard TAR files.

Fingerprint of the public key. To obtain the fingerprint, you can use the openssl command:

$ openssl rsa -pubout -outform DER -in ~/.oci/oci_api_key.pem | openssl md5 -c

Location of the private key on the client device. Specify the full path to the private key.

(Optional) Passphrase for the private key. This is only required if the key is encrypted.

Region. Shown on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console. Click Administration, Tenancy Details.

Tenancy OCID. Shown on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console. Click Administration, Tenancy Details.

A link enables you to copy the Tenancy OCID.

Compartment OCID. Shown on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console. Click Identity, Compartments.

A link enables you to copy the Compartment OCID.

User OCID. Shown on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console. Click Profile, User Settings.

A link enables you to copy the User OCID.

Automatically, by using the Cloud Profile Manager. See Section 1.16.5, “Using the Cloud Profile Manager”.

The Cloud Profile Manager is a VirtualBox Manager tool that enables you to create, edit, and manage cloud profiles for your cloud service accounts.

Automatically, by using the VBoxManage cloudprofile command. See Section 8.15, “VBoxManage cloudprofile”.

Manually, by creating an oci_config file in your Oracle VM VirtualBox global configuration directory. For example, this is $HOME/.config/VirtualBox/oci_config on a Linux host.

Manually, by creating a config file in your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure configuration directory. For example, this is $HOME/.oci/config on a Linux host.

This is the same file that is used by the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure command line interface.

Oracle VM VirtualBox automatically uses the config file if no cloud profile file is present in your global configuration directory. Alternatively, you can import this file manually into the Cloud Profile Manager.

To create a new cloud profile automatically

To create a cloud profile by importing settings from your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure configuration file.

Create, add, and manage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud instances using VirtualBox Manager. See Section 1.16.7, “Using Cloud Virtual Machines”.

Export an Oracle VM VirtualBox VM to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. See Section 1.16.8, “Exporting an Appliance to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure”.

Import a cloud instance into Oracle VM VirtualBox. See Section 1.16.9, “Importing an Instance from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure”.

Connect from a local VM to an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud subnet. See Section 1.16.10, “Using a Cloud Network”.

Use the VBoxManage commands to integrate with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and perform cloud operations. See Section 1.16.11, “Using VBoxManage Commands With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure”.

Create a new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance. See Section 1.16.7.2, “Creating a New Cloud VM”.

Use an existing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance. See Section 1.16.7.3, “Adding a Cloud VM”.

Configure an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance. You can change settings for the instance, such as display name and shape. See Section 1.16.7.4, “Changing Settings for a Cloud VM”.

Control an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance. Stop, start, and terminate the instance. See Section 1.16.7.5, “Controlling a Cloud VM”

Create a console connection to an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance. See Section 1.16.7.7, “Creating an Instance Console Connection for a Cloud VM”.

Configuration Details. Displays the system configuration of the virtual machine in a tabular format. The displayed information includes details such as storage configuration and audio settings.

Runtime Information. Displays runtime information for the guest session in a tabular format similar to the Configuration Details tab.

VM Activity. Includes several time series charts which monitor guest resource usage including CPU, RAM, Disk I/O, and Network. Note that the RAM chart requires the Guest Additions to be running on the guest system. The VM Activity tab can also be accessed directly from the VM Activity Overview tool. See Section 1.20.1, “VM Activity Overview”.

Guest Control. Details of processes used by the Guest Control File Manager. See Section 4.8, “Guest Control File Manager”.

By double-clicking on the executable file.

By entering the following command:

VirtualBox-<version>-<revision>-Win.exe -extract

This will extract the installer into a temporary directory, along with the .MSI file. Run the following command to perform the installation:

msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-<revision>-Win.msi

USB support. This package contains special drivers for your Windows host that Oracle VM VirtualBox requires to fully support USB devices inside your virtual machines.

Networking. This package contains extra networking drivers for your Windows host that Oracle VM VirtualBox needs to support Bridged Networking. This enables your VM's virtual network cards to be accessed from other machines on your physical network.

Python support. This package contains Python scripting support for the Oracle VM VirtualBox API, see Chapter 11, Oracle VM VirtualBox Programming Interfaces. For this to work, an already working Windows Python installation on the system is required.

See, for example: http://www.python.org/download/windows/.

VBOX_INSTALLDESKTOPSHORTCUT

Specifies whether or not an Oracle VM VirtualBox icon on the desktop should be created.

Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1.

VBOX_INSTALLQUICKLAUNCHSHORTCUT

Specifies whether or not an Oracle VM VirtualBox icon in the Quick Launch Bar should be created.

Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1.

VBOX_REGISTERFILEEXTENSIONS

Specifies whether or not the file extensions .vbox, .vbox-extpack, .ovf, .ova, .vdi, .vmdk, .vhd and .vdd should be associated with Oracle VM VirtualBox. Files of these types then will be opened with Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1.

VBOX_START

Specifies whether to start Oracle VM VirtualBox right after successful installation.

Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1.

Qt 5.3.2 or later. Qt 5.6.2 or later is recommended.

SDL 1.2.7 or later. This graphics library is typically called libsdl or similar.

GNU compiler (GCC)

GNU Make (make)

Kernel header files

With Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions, you must install the correct version of the linux-headers, usually whichever of linux-headers-generic, linux-headers-amd64, linux-headers-i686 or linux-headers-i686-pae best matches the kernel version name. Also, the linux-kbuild package if it exists. Basic Ubuntu releases should have the correct packages installed by default.

On Fedora, Red Hat, Oracle Linux and many other RPM-based systems, the kernel version sometimes has a code of letters or a word close to the end of the version name. For example "uek" for the Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel or "default" or "desktop" for the standard kernels. In this case, the package name is kernel-uek-devel or equivalent. If there is no such code, it is usually kernel-devel.

On some SUSE and openSUSE Linux versions, you may need to install the kernel-source and kernel-syms packages.

Mac OS X is commercial, licensed software and contains both license and technical restrictions that limit its use to certain hardware and usage scenarios. You must understand and comply with these restrictions.

In particular, Apple prohibits the installation of most versions of Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.

These license restrictions are also enforced on a technical level. Mac OS X verifies that it is running on Apple hardware. Most DVDs that accompany Apple hardware check for the exact model. These restrictions are not circumvented by Oracle VM VirtualBox and continue to apply.

Only CPUs that are known and tested by Apple are supported. As a result, if your Intel CPU is newer than the Mac OS X build, or if you have a non-Intel CPU, you will likely encounter a panic during bootup with an "Unsupported CPU" exception.

Ensure that you use the Mac OS X DVD that comes with your Apple hardware.

The Mac OS X installer expects the hard disk to be partitioned. So, the installer will not offer a partition selection to you. Before you can install the software successfully, start the Disk Utility from the Tools menu and partition the hard disk. Close the Disk Utility and proceed with the installation.

In addition, Mac OS X support in Oracle VM VirtualBox is an experimental feature. See Chapter 14, Known Limitations.

Name: The name of the the VM, as shown in the list of VMs in the main VirtualBox Manager window. Using this name, Oracle VM VirtualBox also saves the VM's configuration files. If you change the name, Oracle VM VirtualBox renames these files as well. As a result, you can only use characters which are allowed for file names on your host OS.

Note that internally, Oracle VM VirtualBox uses unique identifiers (UUIDs) to identify virtual machines. You can display these using the VBoxManage commands.

Type: The type of the guest OS for the VM. This is the same setting that is specified in the New Virtual Machine wizard. See Section 1.8, “Creating Your First Virtual Machine”.

Whereas the default settings of a newly created VM depend on the selected OS type, changing the type later has no effect on VM settings. This value is purely informational and decorative.

Version: The version of the guest OS for the VM. This is the same setting that is specified in the New Virtual Machine wizard. See Section 1.8, “Creating Your First Virtual Machine”.

Snapshot Folder: By default, Oracle VM VirtualBox saves snapshot data together with your other Oracle VM VirtualBox configuration data. See Section 10.1, “Where Oracle VM VirtualBox Stores its Files”. With this setting, you can specify any other folder for each VM.

Shared Clipboard: You can select here whether the clipboard of the guest OS should be shared with that of your host. If you select Bidirectional, then Oracle VM VirtualBox will always make sure that both clipboards contain the same data. If you select Host to Guest or Guest to Host, then Oracle VM VirtualBox will only ever copy clipboard data in one direction.

Clipboard sharing requires that the Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions be installed. In such a case, this setting has no effect. See Chapter 4, Guest Additions.

For security reasons, the shared clipboard is disabled by default. This setting can be changed at any time using the Shared Clipboard menu item in the Devices menu of the virtual machine.

Drag and Drop: This setting enables support for drag and drop. Select an object, such as a file, from the host or guest and directly copy or open it on the guest or host. Multiple drag and drop modes for a VM enable restricting of access in either direction.

For drag and drop to work the Guest Additions need to be installed on the guest.

See Section 4.4, “Drag and Drop”.

Base Memory: Sets the amount of RAM that is allocated and given to the VM when it is running. The specified amount of memory will be requested from the host OS, so it must be available or made available as free memory on the host when attempting to start the VM and will not be available to the host while the VM is running. This is the same setting that was specified in the New Virtual Machine wizard, as described in Section 1.8, “Creating Your First Virtual Machine”.

Generally, it is possible to change the memory size after installing the guest OS. But you must not reduce the memory to an amount where the OS would no longer boot.

Boot Order: Determines the order in which the guest OS will attempt to boot from the various virtual boot devices. Analogous to a real PC's BIOS setting, Oracle VM VirtualBox can tell a guest OS to start from the virtual floppy, the virtual CD/DVD drive, the virtual hard drive (each of these as defined by the other VM settings), the network, or none of these.

If you select Network, the VM will attempt to boot from a network using the PXE mechanism. This needs to be configured in detail on the command line. See Section 8.10, “VBoxManage modifyvm”.

Chipset: You can select which chipset will be presented to the virtual machine. PIIX3 is the default chipset for most guests. For some guest OSes such as Mac OS X, the PIIX3 chipset is not well supported. As a result, Oracle VM VirtualBox supports an emulation of the ICH9 chipset, which supports PCI express, three PCI buses, PCI-to-PCI bridges and Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI). This enables modern OSes to address more PCI devices and no longer requires IRQ sharing. Using the ICH9 chipset it is also possible to configure up to 36 network cards, compared to a maximum of eight network adapters with PIIX3. Note that ICH9 support is experimental and not recommended for guest OSes which do not require it.

TPM: Enables support for a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) security processor. Choose from the supported TPM versions.

Pointing Device: The default virtual pointing device for some guest OSes is the traditional PS/2 mouse. If set to USB Tablet, Oracle VM VirtualBox reports to the virtual machine that a USB tablet device is present and communicates mouse events to the virtual machine through this device. Another setting is USB Multi-Touch Tablet, which is suitable for guests running Windows 8 or later.

Using the virtual USB tablet has the advantage that movements are reported in absolute coordinates, instead of as relative position changes. This enables Oracle VM VirtualBox to translate mouse events over the VM window into tablet events without having to "capture" the mouse in the guest as described in Section 1.9.2, “Capturing and Releasing Keyboard and Mouse”. This makes using the VM less tedious even if Guest Additions are not installed.

Enable I/O APIC: Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers (APICs) are an x86 hardware feature that have replaced Programmable Interrupt Controllers (PICs). With an I/O APIC, OSes can use more than 16 interrupt requests (IRQs) and therefore avoid IRQ sharing for improved reliability.

However, software support for I/O APICs has been unreliable with some OSes other than Windows. Also, the use of an I/O APIC slightly increases the overhead of virtualization and therefore slows down the guest OS a little.

Hardware Clock in UTC Time: If selected, Oracle VM VirtualBox will report the system time in UTC format to the guest instead of the local (host) time. This affects how the virtual real-time clock (RTC) operates and may be useful for UNIX-like guest OSes, which typically expect the hardware clock to be set to UTC.

Enable EFI: Enables Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), which replaces the legacy BIOS and may be useful for certain advanced use cases. See Section 3.14, “Alternative Firmware (EFI)”.

Enable Secure Boot: Enables Secure Boot, to provide a secure environment for starting the guest OS.

Processor(s): Sets the number of virtual CPU cores the guest OSes can see. Oracle VM VirtualBox supports symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) and can present up to 32 virtual CPU cores to each virtual machine.

You should not configure virtual machines to use more CPU cores than are available physically. This includes real cores, with no hyperthreads.

Execution Cap: Configures the CPU execution cap. This limits the amount of time a host CPU spends to emulate a virtual CPU. The default setting is 100%, meaning that there is no limitation. A setting of 50% implies a single virtual CPU can use up to 50% of a single host CPU. Note that limiting the execution time of the virtual CPUs may cause guest timing problems.

A warning is displayed at the bottom of the Processor tab if an Execution Cap setting is made that may affect system performance.

Enable PAE/NX: Determines whether the PAE and NX capabilities of the host CPU will be exposed to the virtual machine.

PAE stands for Physical Address Extension. Normally, if enabled and supported by the OS, then even a 32-bit x86 CPU can access more than 4 GB of RAM. This is made possible by adding another 4 bits to memory addresses, so that with 36 bits, up to 64 GB can be addressed. Some OSes, such as Ubuntu Server, require PAE support from the CPU and cannot be run in a virtual machine without it.

Enable Nested VT-x/AMD-V: Enables nested virtualization, with passthrough of hardware virtualization functions to the guest VM.

Paravirtualization Interface: Oracle VM VirtualBox provides paravirtualization interfaces to improve time-keeping accuracy and performance of guest OSes. The options available are documented under the --paravirt-provider option in Section 8.10, “VBoxManage modifyvm”. For further details on the paravirtualization providers, see Section 10.5, “Paravirtualization Providers”.

Hardware Virtualization: You can configure hardware virtualization features for each virtual machine.

Advanced users may be interested in technical details about hardware virtualization. See Section 10.3, “Hardware Virtualization”.

Video Memory: Sets the size of the memory provided by the virtual graphics card available to the guest, in MB. As with the main memory, the specified amount will be allocated from the host's resident memory. Based on the amount of video memory, higher resolutions and color depths may be available.

VirtualBox Manager will show a warning if the amount of video memory is too small to be able to switch the VM into full screen mode. The minimum value depends on the number of virtual monitors, the screen resolution and the color depth of the host display as well as on the use of 3D acceleration and 2D video acceleration. A rough estimate is (color depth / 8) x vertical pixels x horizontal pixels x number of screens = number of bytes. Extra memory may be required if display acceleration is used.

Monitor Count: With this setting, Oracle VM VirtualBox can provide more than one virtual monitor to a virtual machine. If a guest OS supports multiple attached monitors, Oracle VM VirtualBox can pretend that multiple virtual monitors are present. Up to eight such virtual monitors are supported.

The output of the multiple monitors are displayed on the host in multiple VM windows which are running side by side. However, in full screen and seamless mode, they use the available physical monitors attached to the host. As a result, for full screen and seamless modes to work with multiple monitors, you will need at least as many physical monitors as you have virtual monitors configured, or Oracle VM VirtualBox will report an error.

You can configure the relationship between guest and host monitors using the View menu by pressing Host key + Home when you are in full screen or seamless mode.

See also Chapter 14, Known Limitations.

Scale Factor: Enables scaling of the display size. For multiple monitor displays, you can set the scale factor for individual monitors, or globally for all of the monitors. Use the slider to select a scaling factor up to 200%.

You can set a default scale factor for all VMs. Use the Display tab in the Preferences window.

Graphics Controller: Specifies the graphics adapter type used by the guest VM. Note that you must install the Guest Additions on the guest VM to specify the VBoxSVGA or VMSVGA graphics controller. The following options are available:

Enable 3D Acceleration: If a virtual machine has Guest Additions installed, you can select here whether the guest should support accelerated 3D graphics. See Section 4.5.1, “Hardware 3D Acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9)”.

Enable Server: Select this check box and configure settings for the remote display connection.

Enable Recording: Select this check box and select a Recording Mode option.

Recording Mode: You can choose to record video, audio, or both video and audio.

Some settings on the Recording tab may be grayed out, depending on the Recording Mode setting.

File Path: The file where the recording is saved.

Frame Size: The video resolution of the recorded video, in pixels. The drop-down list enables you to select from common frame sizes.

Frame Rate: Use the slider to set the maximum number of video frames per second (FPS) to record. Frames that have a higher frequency are skipped. Increasing this value reduces the number of skipped frames and increases the file size.

Video Quality: Use the slider to set the the bit rate of the video in kilobits per second. Increasing this value improves the appearance of the video at the cost of an increased file size.

Audio Quality: Use the slider to set the quality of the audio recording. Increasing this value improves the audio quality at the cost of an increased file size.

Screens: For a multiple monitor display, you can select which screens to record video from.

USB Controller: Selects a controller with the specified level of USB support, as follows:

USB Device Filters: When USB support is enabled for a VM, you can determine in detail which devices will be automatically attached to the guest. For this, you can create filters by specifying certain properties of the USB device. USB devices with a matching filter will be automatically passed to the guest once they are attached to the host. USB devices without a matching filter can be passed manually to the guest, for example by using the Devices, USB menu.

Clicking on the + button to the right of the USB Device Filters window creates a new filter. You can give the filter a name, for later reference, and specify the filter criteria. The more criteria you specify, the more precisely devices will be selected. For instance, if you specify only a vendor ID of 046d, all devices produced by Logitech will be available to the guest. If you fill in all fields, on the other hand, the filter will only apply to a particular device model from a particular vendor, and not even to other devices of the same type with a different revision and serial number.

In detail, the following criteria are available:

On a Windows host, you will need to unplug and reconnect a USB device to use it after creating a filter for it.

As an example, you could create a new USB filter and specify a vendor ID of 046d for Logitech, Inc, a manufacturer index of 1, and "not remote". Then any USB devices on the host system produced by Logitech, Inc with a manufacturer index of 1 will be visible to the guest system.

Several filters can select a single device. For example, a filter which selects all Logitech devices, and one which selects a particular webcam.

You can deactivate filters without deleting them by deselecting the check box next to the filter name.