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.