UserManual

Oracle R
VM
VirtualBox R
User Manual
Version 7.0.4
Copyright c 2004-2022 Oracle and/or its affiliates
http://www.virtualbox.org

Contents
Preface xiv
1 First Steps 1
1.1 Why is Virtualization Useful? ............................. 2
1.2 Some Terminology .................................. 2
1.3 Features Overview .................................. 3
1.4 Supported Host Operating Systems ......................... 5
1.4.1 Host CPU Requirements ........................... 6
1.5 Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox and Extension Packs ............... 6
1.6 Starting Oracle VM VirtualBox ............................ 7
1.7 VirtualBox Manager .................................. 7
1.7.1 The Machine List .............................. 8
1.7.2 The Details Pane ............................... 9
1.7.3 VirtualBox Manager Tools ......................... 10
1.7.4 Help Viewer ................................. 12
1.7.5 About VirtualBox Manager Wizards .................... 13
1.8 Creating Your First Virtual Machine ......................... 13
1.8.1 Create Virtual Machine Wizard: Name and Operating System ...... 14
1.8.2 (Optional) Create Virtual Machine Wizard: Unattended Guest OS Install 15
1.8.3 Create Virtual Machine Wizard: Hardware ................ 16
1.8.4 Create Virtual Machine Wizard: Virtual Hard Disk ............ 17
1.8.5 Create Virtual Machine Wizard: Summary ................ 18
1.8.6 Some Examples of Unattended Installation ................ 18
1.9 Running Your Virtual Machine ............................ 19
1.9.1 Starting a New VM for the First Time ................... 19
1.9.2 Capturing and Releasing Keyboard and Mouse .............. 19
1.9.3 Typing Special Characters .......................... 20
1.9.4 Changing Removable Media ........................ 21
1.9.5 Resizing the Machine’s Window ...................... 21
1.9.6 Saving the State of the Machine ...................... 22
1.10 Using VM Groups ................................... 23
1.11 Snapshots ....................................... 24
1.11.1 Taking, Restoring, and Deleting Snapshots ................ 25
1.11.2 Snapshot Contents ............................. 26
1.12 Virtual Machine Configuration ............................ 27
1.13 Removing and Moving Virtual Machines ...................... 27
1.14 Cloning Virtual Machines ............................... 28
1.15 Importing and Exporting Virtual Machines ..................... 30
1.15.1 About the OVF Format ........................... 30
1.15.2 Importing an Appliance in OVF Format .................. 31
1.15.3 Exporting an Appliance in OVF Format .................. 32
1.16 Integrating with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure .................... 32
1.16.1 Preparing for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Integration .......... 33
1.16.2 Creating an API Signing Key Pair ...................... 33
1.16.3 Uploading the Public Key to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure ......... 34
1.16.4 Creating a Cloud Profile ........................... 34
1.16.5 Using the Cloud Profile Manager ...................... 35
ii

Contents
1.16.6 Using Oracle VM VirtualBox With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure ..... 37
1.16.7 Using Cloud Virtual Machines ....................... 38
1.16.8 Exporting an Appliance to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure .......... 42
1.16.9 Importing an Instance from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure ......... 45
1.16.10 Using a Cloud Network ........................... 46
1.16.11 Using VBoxManage Commands With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure . . . . 46
1.17 Preferences ...................................... 47
1.18 Alternative Front-Ends ................................ 48
1.19 Soft Keyboard ..................................... 49
1.19.1 Using the Soft Keyboard .......................... 49
1.19.2 Creating a Custom Keyboard Layout .................... 50
1.20 Monitoring of Virtual Machines ........................... 50
1.20.1 VM Activity Overview ............................ 51
1.20.2 Session Information Dialog ......................... 51
1.21 The Log Viewer .................................... 52
2 Installation Details 55
2.1 Installing on Windows Hosts ............................. 55
2.1.1 Prerequisites ................................. 55
2.1.2 Performing the Installation ......................... 55
2.1.3 Uninstallation ................................ 57
2.1.4 Unattended Installation ........................... 57
2.1.5 Public Properties .............................. 57
2.2 Installing on macOS Hosts .............................. 57
2.2.1 Performing the Installation ......................... 57
2.2.2 Uninstallation ................................ 58
2.2.3 Unattended Installation ........................... 58
2.3 Installing on Linux Hosts ............................... 58
2.3.1 Prerequisites ................................. 58
2.3.2 The Oracle VM VirtualBox Kernel Modules ................ 58
2.3.3 Performing the Installation ......................... 59
2.3.4 The vboxusers Group ............................ 63
2.3.5 Starting Oracle VM VirtualBox on Linux .................. 63
2.4 Installing on Oracle Solaris Hosts .......................... 63
2.4.1 Performing the Installation ......................... 63
2.4.2 The vboxuser Group ............................. 64
2.4.3 Starting Oracle VM VirtualBox on Oracle Solaris ............. 64
2.4.4 Uninstallation ................................ 64
2.4.5 Unattended Installation ........................... 64
2.4.6 Configuring a Zone for Running Oracle VM VirtualBox .......... 65
2.5 Installing an Extension Pack ............................. 65
2.5.1 The Extension Pack Manager ........................ 65
3 Configuring Virtual Machines 67
3.1 Supported Guest Operating Systems ......................... 67
3.1.1 Mac OS X Guests .............................. 68
3.1.2 64-bit Guests ................................. 69
3.2 Unattended Guest Installation ............................ 69
3.2.1 Using VBoxManage Commands for Unattended Guest Installation . . . 70
3.3 Emulated Hardware .................................. 71
3.4 General Settings .................................... 72
3.4.1 Basic Tab ................................... 72
3.4.2 Advanced Tab ................................ 72
3.4.3 Description Tab ............................... 73
iii

Contents
3.4.4 Disk Encryption Tab ............................. 73
3.5 System Settings .................................... 73
3.5.1 Motherboard Tab .............................. 73
3.5.2 Processor Tab ................................ 75
3.5.3 Acceleration Tab ............................... 76
3.6 Display Settings .................................... 76
3.6.1 Screen Tab .................................. 76
3.6.2 Remote Display Tab ............................. 77
3.6.3 Recording Tab ................................ 77
3.7 Storage Settings .................................... 78
3.8 Audio Settings ..................................... 80
3.9 Network Settings ................................... 80
3.10 Serial Ports ...................................... 80
3.11 USB Support ...................................... 82
3.11.1 USB Settings ................................. 82
3.11.2 Implementation Notes for Windows and Linux Hosts ........... 83
3.12 Shared Folders ..................................... 84
3.13 User Interface ..................................... 84
3.14 Alternative Firmware (EFI) .............................. 84
3.14.1 Video Modes in EFI ............................. 85
3.14.2 Specifying Boot Arguments ......................... 87
4 Guest Additions 88
4.1 Introduction to Guest Additions ........................... 88
4.2 Installing and Maintaining Guest Additions ..................... 89
4.2.1 Guest Additions for Windows ........................ 89
4.2.2 Guest Additions for Linux .......................... 92
4.2.3 Guest Additions for Oracle Solaris ..................... 95
4.2.4 Guest Additions for OS/2 .......................... 96
4.3 Shared Folders ..................................... 96
4.3.1 Manual Mounting .............................. 97
4.3.2 Automatic Mounting ............................ 98
4.4 Drag and Drop ..................................... 99
4.4.1 Supported Formats ............................. 100
4.4.2 Known Limitations ............................. 101
4.5 Hardware-Accelerated Graphics ........................... 101
4.5.1 Hardware 3D Acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9) ......... 101
4.5.2 Hardware 2D Video Acceleration for Windows Guests .......... 102
4.6 Seamless Windows .................................. 102
4.7 Guest Properties .................................... 103
4.7.1 Using Guest Properties to Wait on VM Events ............... 105
4.8 Guest Control File Manager ............................. 105
4.8.1 Using the Guest Control File Manager ................... 106
4.9 Guest Control of Applications ............................ 107
4.10 Memory Overcommitment .............................. 107
4.10.1 Memory Ballooning ............................. 107
4.10.2 Page Fusion ................................. 108
4.11 Controlling Virtual Monitor Topology ........................ 109
4.11.1 X11/Wayland Desktop Environments ................... 109
5 Virtual Storage 110
5.1 Hard Disk Controllers ................................. 110
5.2 Disk Image Files (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD) ..................... 113
5.3 The Virtual Media Manager ............................. 114
iv

Contents
5.3.1 Creating a Virtual Hard Disk Image .................... 116
5.3.2 Creating a Virtual Optical Disk Image ................... 117
5.3.3 Creating a Virtual Floppy Disk Image ................... 117
5.4 Special Image Write Modes .............................. 118
5.5 Differencing Images .................................. 119
5.6 Cloning Disk Images ................................. 121
5.7 Host Input/Output Caching ............................. 122
5.8 Limiting Bandwidth for Disk Images ......................... 122
5.9 CD/DVD Support ................................... 123
5.10 iSCSI Servers ..................................... 124
5.11 vboximg-mount: A Utility for FUSE Mounting a Virtual Disk Image ........ 124
5.11.1 Viewing Detailed Information About a Virtual Disk Image ........ 125
5.11.2 Mounting a Virtual Disk Image ....................... 126
6 Virtual Networking 127
6.1 Virtual Networking Hardware ............................ 127
6.2 Introduction to Networking Modes ......................... 128
6.3 Network Address Translation (NAT) ......................... 129
6.3.1 Configuring Port Forwarding with NAT .................. 130
6.3.2 PXE Booting with NAT ........................... 130
6.3.3 NAT Limitations ............................... 131
6.4 Network Address Translation Service ........................ 131
6.5 Bridged Networking .................................. 133
6.6 Internal Networking ................................. 134
6.7 Host-Only Networking ................................ 135
6.8 UDP Tunnel Networking ............................... 136
6.9 VDE Networking ................................... 137
6.10 Cloud Networks .................................... 138
6.11 Network Manager ................................... 138
6.11.1 Host-Only Networks Tab .......................... 138
6.11.2 NAT Networks Tab .............................. 138
6.11.3 Cloud Networks Tab ............................. 139
6.12 Limiting Bandwidth for Network Input/Output ................... 139
6.13 Improving Network Performance .......................... 140
7 Remote Virtual Machines 142
7.1 Remote Display (VRDP Support) ........................... 142
7.1.1 Common Third-Party RDP Viewers ..................... 142
7.1.2 VBoxHeadless, the Remote Desktop Server ................ 143
7.1.3 Step by Step: Creating a Virtual Machine on a Headless Server . . . . . 144
7.1.4 Remote USB ................................. 146
7.1.5 RDP Authentication ............................. 146
7.1.6 RDP Encryption ............................... 147
7.1.7 Multiple Connections to the VRDP Server ................. 148
7.1.8 Multiple Remote Monitors ......................... 149
7.1.9 VRDP Video Redirection .......................... 149
7.1.10 VRDP Customization ............................ 149
7.2 Teleporting ...................................... 150
7.3 VBoxHeadless ..................................... 151
8 VBoxManage 153
8.1 Introduction ...................................... 153
8.2 Commands Overview ................................. 154
8.3 General Options .................................... 166
v