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<chapter id="BasicConcepts">

<title>Configuring virtual machines</title>

<para>Whereas <xref linkend="Introduction" /> gave you a quick introduction

to VirtualBox and how to get your first virtual machine running, the

following chapter describes in detail how to configure virtual

machines.</para>

<para>You have considerable latitude in deciding what virtual hardware will

be provided to the guest. The virtual hardware can be used for communicating

with the host system or with other guests. For instance, if you provide

VirtualBox with the image of a CD-ROM in an ISO file, VirtualBox can present

this image to a guest system as if it were a physical CD-ROM. Similarly, you

can give a guest system access to the real network via its virtual network

card, and, if you so choose, give the host system, other guests, or

computers on the Internet access to the guest system.</para>

<sect1>

<title id="guestossupport">Supported guest operating systems</title>

<para>Since VirtualBox is designed to provide a generic virtualization

environment for x86 systems, it may run operating systems of any kind,

even those not listed here. However, the focus is to optimize VirtualBox

for the following guest systems:</para>

<para><glosslist>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Windows NT 4.0</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>All versions, editions and service packs are fully

supported; however, there are some issues with older service

packs. We recommend to install service pack 6a. Guest Additions

are available with a limited feature set.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Windows 2000 / XP / Server 2003 / Vista / Server 2008 /

Windows 7</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>All versions, editions and service packs are fully supported

(including 64-bit versions, under the preconditions listed below).

Guest Additions are available.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>DOS / Windows 3.x / 95 / 98 / ME</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Limited testing has been performed. Use beyond legacy

installation mechanisms not recommended. No Guest Additions

available.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Linux 2.4</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Limited support.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Linux 2.6</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>All versions/editions are fully supported (32 bits and 64

bits). Guest Additions are available.</para>

<para>We strongly recommend using a Linux kernel version 2.6.13 or

higher for better performance.<note>

<para>Certain Linux kernel releases have bugs that prevent

them from executing in a virtual environment; please see <xref

linkend="trouble-linux-buggy" /> for details.</para>

</note></para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Solaris 10, OpenSolaris</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Fully supported (32 bits and 64 bits). Guest Additions are

available.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>FreeBSD</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Requires hardware virtualization to be enabled. Limited

support. Guest Additions are not available yet.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>OpenBSD</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Requires hardware virtualization to be enabled. Versions 3.7

and later are supported. Guest Additions are not available

yet.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>OS/2 Warp 4.5</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Requires hardware virtualization to be enabled. We

officially support MCP2 only; other OS/2 versions may or may not

work. Guest Additions are available with a limited feature

set.<footnote>

<para>See <xref linkend="KnownIssues" />.</para>

</footnote></para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Mac OS X Server</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>VirtualBox 3.2 added experimental support for Mac OS X

Server guests, but this comes with restrictions. Please see the

following section as well as <xref

linkend="KnownIssues" />.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

</glosslist></para>

<sect2 id="intro-macosxguests">

<title>Mac OS X Server guests</title>

<para>Starting with version 3.2, VirtualBox has experimental support for

Mac OS X Server guests. This allows you to install and execute

unmodified versions of Mac OS X Server on supported host

hardware.</para>

<para>Whereas competing solutions perform modifications to the Mac OS X

Server install DVDs (e.g. different boot loader and replaced files),

VirtualBox is the first product to provide the modern PC architecture

expected by OS X without requiring any "hacks".</para>

<para>You should be aware of a number of <emphasis role="bold">important

issues</emphasis> before attempting to install a Mac OS X Server

guest:<orderedlist>

<listitem>

<para>Mac OS X is commercial, licensed software and contains

<emphasis role="bold">both license and technical

restrictions</emphasis> that limit its use to certain hardware and

usage scenarios. It is important that you understand and obey

these restrictions.</para>

<para>In particular, for most versions of Mac OS X Server, Apple

prohibits installing them on non-Apple hardware. Also, only the

server versions of Mac OS X are designed to be used in a virtual

environment; as a result, VirtualBox does not support client

versions of Mac OS X as a guest.</para>

<para>These license restrictions are also enforced on a technical

level. Mac OS X Server verifies whether it is running on Apple

hardware, and most DVDs that that come with Apple hardware even

check for an exact model. These restrictions are

<emphasis>not</emphasis> circumvented by VirtualBox and continue

to apply.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>Only <emphasis role="bold">CPUs</emphasis> known and tested

by Apple are supported. As a result, if your Intel CPU is newer

than the build of Mac OS X Server, or if you have a non-Intel CPU,

it will most likely panic during bootup with an "Unsupported CPU"

exception. It is generally best to use the Mac OS X Server DVD

that came with your Apple hardware.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>The Mac OS X Server installer expects the harddisk to be

<emphasis role="bold">partitioned</emphasis> so when it does not

offer a selection, you have to launch the Disk Utility from the

"Tools" menu and partition the hard disk. Then close the Disk

Utility and proceed with the installation.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>In addition, as Mac OS X Server support in VirtualBox is

currently still experimental, please refer also to <xref

linkend="KnownIssues" />.</para>

</listitem>

</orderedlist></para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="intro-64bitguests">

<title>64-bit guests</title>

<para>VirtualBox supports 64-bit guest operating systems, even on 32-bit

host operating systems,<footnote>

<para>64-bit guest support was added with VirtualBox 2.0; support

for 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts was added with VirtualBox

2.1.</para>

</footnote> provided that the following conditions are

met:<orderedlist>

<listitem>

<para>You need a 64-bit processor with hardware virtualization

support (see <xref linkend="hwvirt" />).</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>You must enable hardware virtualization for the particular

VM for which you want 64-bit support; software virtualization is

not supported for 64-bit VMs.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>If you want to use 64-bit guest support on a 32-bit host

operating system, you must also select a 64-bit operating system

for the particular VM. Since supporting 64 bits on 32-bit hosts

incurs additional overhead, VirtualBox only enables this support

upon explicit request.</para>

<para>On 64-bit hosts (which typically come with hardware

virtualization support), 64-bit guest operating systems are always

supported regardless of settings, so you can simply install a

64-bit operating system in the guest.</para>

</listitem>

</orderedlist></para>

<para><warning>

<para>On any host, you should enable the <emphasis role="bold">I/O

APIC</emphasis> for virtual machines that you intend to use in

64-bit mode. This is especially true for 64-bit Windows VMs. See

<xref linkend="settings-general-advanced" />. In addition, for

64-bit Windows guests, you should make sure that the VM uses the

<emphasis role="bold">Intel networking device</emphasis>, since

there is no 64-bit driver support for the AMD PCNet card; see <xref

linkend="nichardware" />.</para>

</warning></para>

<para>If you use the "Create VM" wizard of the VirtualBox graphical user

interface (see <xref linkend="gui-createvm" />), VirtualBox will

automatically use the correct settings for each selected 64-bit

operating system type.</para>

</sect2>

</sect1>

<sect1>

<title>Emulated hardware</title>

<para>VirtualBox virtualizes nearly all hardware of the host. Depending on

a VM's configuration, the guest will see the following virtual

hardware:<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Input devices.</emphasis> By default,

VirtualBox emulates a standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse. These

devices are supported by almost all past and present operating

systems.</para>

<para>In addition, VirtualBox can provide virtual USB input devices

to avoid having to capture mouse and keyboard, as described in <xref

linkend="keyb_mouse_normal" />.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Graphics.</emphasis> The VirtualBox

graphics device (sometimes referred to as VGA device) is, unlike

nearly all other emulated devices, not based on any physical

counterpart. It is a simple, synthetic device which provides

compatibility with standard VGA and several extended registers used

by the VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE).</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Storage.</emphasis> VirtualBox currently

emulates the standard ATA interface found on Intel PIIX3/PIIX4

chips, the SATA (AHCI) interface, and two SCSI adapters (LSI Logic

and BusLogic); see <xref linkend="harddiskcontrollers" /> for

details. Whereas providing one of these would be enough for

VirtualBox by itself, this multitude of storage adapters is required

for compatibility with other hypervisors. Windows is particularly

picky about its boot devices, and migrating VMs between hypervisors

is very difficult or impossible if the storage controllers are

different.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Networking.</emphasis> See <xref

linkend="nichardware" />.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">USB.</emphasis> VirtualBox emulates two

USB host controllers, EHCI and OHCI. There is a need for two host

controllers because OHCI only handles USB low- and full-speed

devices (both USB 1.x and 2.0), while EHCI only handles high-speed

devices (USB 2.0 only). The emulated USB controllers do not

communicate directly with devices on the host but rather with a

virtual USB layer which abstracts the USB protocol and allows the

use of remote USB devices.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Audio.</emphasis> See <xref

linkend="settings-audio" />.</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist></para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="generalsettings">

<title>General settings</title>

<para>In the Settings window, under "General", you can configure the most

fundamental aspects of the virtual machine such as memory and essential

hardware. There are three tabs, "Basic", "Advanced" and

"Description".</para>

<sect2>

<title>"Basic" tab</title>

<para>Under the "Basic" tab of the "General" settings category, you can

find these settings:</para>

<glosslist>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Name</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>The name under which the VM is shown in the list of VMs in

the main window. Under this name, VirtualBox also saves the VM's

configuration files. By changing the name, VirtualBox renames

these files as well. As a result, you can only use characters

which are allowed in your host operating system's file

names.</para>

<para>Note that internally, VirtualBox uses unique identifiers

(UUIDs) to identify virtual machines. You can display these with

<computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput>.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Operating system / version</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>The type of the guest operating system that is (or will be)

installed in the VM. This is the same setting that was specified

in the "New Virtual Machine" wizard, as described in <xref

linkend="gui-createvm" />.</para>

<para>Whereas the default settings of a newly created VM depend on

the selected operating system type, changing the type later has no

effect on VM settings; this value is then purely informational and

decorative.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

</glosslist>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="settings-general-advanced">

<title>"Advanced" tab</title>

<para><glosslist>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Snapshot folder</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>By default, VirtualBox saves snapshot data together with

your other VirtualBox configuration data; see <xref

linkend="vboxconfigdata" />. With this setting, you can specify

any other folder for each VM.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Shared clipboard</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>You can select here whether the clipboard of the guest

operating system should be shared with that of your host. If you

select "Bidirectional", then VirtualBox will always make sure

that both clipboards contain the same data. If you select "Host

to guest" or "Guest to host", then VirtualBox will only ever

copy clipboard data in one direction.</para>

<para>Clipboard sharing requires that the VirtualBox Guest

Additions be installed. As a result, this setting has no effect

otherwise; see <xref linkend="guestadditions" /> for

details.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Removable media: remember runtime changes</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>If this is checked, VirtualBox will save the state of what

media has been mounted between several runs of a virtual

machine.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Mini toolbar</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>In full screen or seamless mode, VirtualBox can display a

small toolbar that contains some of the items that are normally

available from the virtual machine's menu bar. This toolbar

reduces itself to a small gray line unless you move the mouse

over it. With the toolbar, you can return from full screen or

seamless mode, control machine execution or enable certain

devices. If you don't want to see the toolbar, disable this

setting.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

</glosslist></para>

</sect2>

<sect2>

<title>"Description" tab</title>

<para>Here you can enter any description for your virtual machine, if

you want. This has no effect on the functionality of the machine, but

you may find this space useful to note down things like the

configuration of a virtual machine and the software that has been

installed into it.</para>

</sect2>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="settings-system">

<title>System settings</title>

<para>The "System" category groups various settings that are related to

the basic hardware that is presented to the virtual machine.<note>

<para>As the activation mechanism of Microsoft Windows is sensitive to

hardware changes, if you are changing hardware settings for a Windows

guest, some of these changes may trigger a request for another

activation with Microsoft.</para>

</note></para>

<sect2 id="settings-motherboard">

<title>"Motherboard" tab</title>

<para>On the "Motherboard" tab, you can influence virtual hardware that

would normally be on the motherboard of a real computer.<glosslist>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Base memory</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>This 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 operating system, 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 with

guidelines under <xref linkend="gui-createvm" /> above.</para>

<para>Generally, it is possible to change the memory size after

installing the guest operating system (provided you do not

reduce the memory to an amount where the operating system would

no longer boot).</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Boot order</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>This setting determines the order in which the guest

operating system will attempt to boot from the various virtual

boot devices. Analogous to a real PC's BIOS setting, 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.</para>

<para>If you select "Network", the VM will attempt to boot from

a network via the PXE mechanism. This needs to be configured in

detail on the command line; please see <xref

linkend="vboxmanage-modifyvm" />.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Chipset</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Here you can select which chipset will be presented to the

virtual machine. Before VirtualBox 4.0, PIIX3 was the only

available option here. For modern guest operating systems such

as Mac OS X server, that old chipset is no longer well

supported. As a result, VirtualBox 4.0 introduced an emulation

of the more modern ICH9 chipset, which supports PCI express,

three PCI buses, PCI-to-PCI bridges and Message Signalled

Interrupts (MSI). This allows modern operating systems to

address more PCI devices and no longer requires IRQ

sharing.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Enable I/O APIC</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers (APICs) are a

newer x86 hardware feature that have replaced old-style

Programmable Interrupt Controllers (PICs) in recent years. With

an I/O APIC, operating systems can use more than 16 interrupt

requests (IRQs) and therefore avoid IRQ sharing for improved

reliability.<note>

<para>Enabling the I/O APIC is <emphasis>required</emphasis>

for 64-bit guest operating systems, especially Windows

Vista; it is also required if you want to use more than one

virtual CPU in a virtual machine.</para>

</note></para>

<para>However, software support for I/O APICs has been

unreliable with some operating systems 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.<warning>

<para>All Windows operating systems starting with Windows

2000 install different kernels depending on whether an I/O

APIC is available. As with ACPI, the I/O APIC therefore

<emphasis>must not be turned off after

installation</emphasis> of a Windows guest OS. Turning it on

after installation will have no effect however.</para>

</warning></para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Enable EFI</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>This enables Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), which

replaces the legacy BIOS, which may be useful for certain

advanced use cases. Please refer to <xref linkend="efi" /> for

details.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Hardware clock in UTC time</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>If checked, VirtualBox will report the system time in UTC

format to the guest instead of local (host) time. This affects

how the virtual real-time clock (RTC) operates and may be useful

for Unix-like guest operating systems, which typically expect

the hardware clock to be set to UTC.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Enable absolute pointing device</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>If enabled, VirtualBox reports to the virtual machine that

a USB tablet device is present and communicates mouse events to

the virtual machine through this device. If disabled, mouse

events are communicated through a traditional PS/2 virtual mouse

device.</para>

<para>Using the virtual USB tablet has the advantage that

movements are reported in absolute coordinates (instead of as

relative position changes), which allows VirtualBox to translate

mouse events over the VM window into tablet events without

having to "capture" the mouse in the guest as described in <xref

linkend="keyb_mouse_normal" />. This makes using the VM less

tedious even if Guest Additions are not installed.<footnote>

<para>The virtual USB tablet was added with VirtualBox 3.2.

Depending on the guest operating system selected, this is

now enabled by default for new virtual machines.</para>

</footnote></para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

</glosslist></para>

<para>In addition, you can turn off the <emphasis role="bold">Advanced

Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)</emphasis> which VirtualBox

presents to the guest operating system by default. ACPI is the current

industry standard to allow operating systems to recognize hardware,

configure motherboards and other devices and manage power. As all modern

PCs contain this feature and Windows and Linux have been supporting it

for years, it is also enabled by default in VirtualBox. It can only be

turned off on the command line; see <xref

linkend="vboxmanage-modifyvm" />.<warning>

<para>All Windows operating systems starting with Windows 2000

install different kernels depending on whether ACPI is available, so

ACPI <emphasis>must not be turned off</emphasis> after installation

of a Windows guest OS. Turning it on after installation will have no

effect however.</para>

</warning></para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="settings-processor">

<title>"Processor" tab</title>

<para>On the "Processor" tab, you can set how many virtual <emphasis

role="bold">CPU cores</emphasis> the guest operating systems should see.

Starting with version 3.0, VirtualBox supports symmetrical

multiprocessing (SMP) and can present up to 32 virtual CPU cores to each

virtual machine.</para>

<para>You should not, however, configure virtual machines to use more

CPU cores than you have available physically.</para>

<para>In addition, the <emphasis role="bold">"Enable PAE/NX"</emphasis>

setting 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 operating system,

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 operating systems (such as

Ubuntu Server) require PAE support from the CPU and cannot be run in a

virtual machine without it.</para>

<para>With virtual machines running modern server operating systems,

VirtualBox also supports CPU hot-plugging. For details about this,

please refer to <xref linkend="cpuhotplug" />.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2>

<title>"Acceleration" tab</title>

<para>On this page, you can determine whether and how VirtualBox should

use hardware virtualization extensions that your host CPU may support.

This is the case with most CPUs built after 2006.</para>

<para>You can select for each virtual machine individually whether

VirtualBox should use software or hardware virtualization.<footnote>

<para>Prior to VirtualBox version 2.2, software virtualization was

the default; starting with version 2.2, VirtualBox will enable

hardware virtualization by default for new virtual machines that you

create. (Existing virtual machines are not automatically changed for

compatibility reasons, and the default can of course be changed for

each virtual machine.)</para>

</footnote></para>

<para>In most cases, the default settings will be fine; VirtualBox will

have picked sensible defaults depending on the operating system that you

selected when you created the virtual machine. In certain situations,

however, you may want to change these preconfigured defaults.</para>

<para>Advanced users may be interested in technical details about

software vs. hardware virtualization; please see <xref

linkend="hwvirt" />.</para>

<para>If your host's CPU supports the <emphasis role="bold">nested

paging</emphasis> (AMD-V) or <emphasis role="bold">EPT</emphasis> (Intel

VT-x) features, then you can expect a significant performance increase

by enabling nested paging in addition to hardware virtualization. For

technical details, see <xref linkend="nestedpaging" />.</para>

</sect2>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="settings-display">

<title>Display settings</title>

<glosslist>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Video memory size</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>This 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.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Monitor count</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>With this setting VirtualBox can provide more than one virtual

monitor to a virtual machine. If a guest operating system (such as

Windows) supports multiple attached monitors, VirtualBox can pretend

that multiple virtual monitors are present.<footnote>

<para>Multiple monitor support was added with VirtualBox

3.2.</para>

</footnote> Up to 8 such virtual monitors are supported.</para>

<para>The output of the multiple monitors will be displayed on the

host in multiple VM windows which are running side by side.</para>

<para>However, in fullscreen and seamless mode, they will use the

available physical monitors attached to the host. As a result, for

fullscreen and seamless modes to work with multiple monitors, you

will need at least as many physical monitors as you have virtual

monitors configured, or 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 fullscreen or

seamless mode.</para>

<para>Please see <xref linkend="KnownIssues" /> also.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Enable 3D acceleration</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>If a virtual machine has Guest Additions installed, you can

select here whether the guest should support accelerated 3D

graphics. Please refer to <xref linkend="guestadd-3d" /> for

details.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Enable 2D video acceleration</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>If a virtual machine with Microsoft Windows has Guest

Additions installed, you can select here whether the guest should

support accelerated 2D video graphics. Please refer to <xref

linkend="guestadd-2d" /> for details.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

<glossentry>

<glossterm>Remote display</glossterm>

<glossdef>

<para>Under the "Remote display" tab, if the VirtualBox Remote

Display Extension (VRDE) is installed, you can enable the RDP server

that is built into VirtualBox. This allows you to connect to the

virtual machine remotely with any standard RDP viewer, such as

<computeroutput>mstsc.exe</computeroutput> that comes with Microsoft

Windows or, on Linux systems, the standard open-source

<computeroutput>rdesktop</computeroutput> program. These features

are described in detail in <xref linkend="vrdp" />.</para>

</glossdef>

</glossentry>

</glosslist>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="settings-storage">

<title>Storage settings</title>

<para>The "Storage" category in the VM settings allows you to connect

virtual hard disk, CD/DVD and floppy images and drives to your virtual

machine.</para>

<para>In a real PC, so-called "storage controllers" connect physical disk

drives to the rest of the computer. Similarly, VirtualBox presents virtual

storage controllers to a virtual machine. Under each controller, the

virtual devices (hard disks, CD/DVD or floppy drives) attached to the

controller are shown.<note>

<para>This section can only give you a quick introduction to the

VirtualBox storage settings. Since VirtualBox gives you an enormous

wealth of options in this area, we have dedicated an entire chapter of

this User Manual to explaining all the details: please see <xref

linkend="storage" />.</para>

</note></para>

<para>If you have used the "Create VM" wizard to create a machine, you

will normally see something like the following:</para>

<para><mediaobject>

<imageobject>

<imagedata align="center" fileref="images/vm-settings-harddisk.png"

width="10cm" />

</imageobject>

</mediaobject></para>

<para>Depending on the guest operating system type that you selected when

you created the VM, the typical layout of storage devices in a new VM is

as follows:<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>You will see an <emphasis role="bold">IDE

controller,</emphasis> to which a virtual CD/DVD drive has been

attached (to the "secondary master" port of the IDE

controller).</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>You will also see a <emphasis role="bold">SATA

controller,</emphasis> which is a more modern type of storage

controller for higher hard disk data throughput, to which the

virtual hard disks are attached. Initially you will normally have

one such virtual disk, but as you can see in the above screenshot,

you can have more than one, each represented by a disk image file

(VDI files, in this case).</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist></para>

<para>If you created your VM with an older version of VirtualBox, the

default storage layout may differ. You might then only have an IDE

controller to which both the CD/DVD drive and the hard disks have been

attached. This might also apply if you selected an older operating system

type when you created the VM. Since older operating systems do not support

SATA without additional drivers, VirtualBox will make sure that no such

devices are present initially. Please see <xref

linkend="harddiskcontrollers" /> for additional information.</para>

<para>VirtualBox also provides a <emphasis role="bold">floppy

controller</emphasis>, which is special: you cannot add devices other than

floppy drives to it. Virtual floppy drives, like virtual CD/DVD drives,

can be connected to either a host floppy drive (if you have one) or a disk

image, which in this case must be in RAW format.</para>

<para>You can modify these media attachments freely. For example, if you

wish to copy some files from another virtual disk that you created, you

can connect that disk as a second hard disk, as in the above screenshot.

You could also add a second virtual CD/DVD drive, or change where these

items are attached. The following options are available:<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>To <emphasis role="bold">add another virtual hard disk, or a

CD/DVD or floppy drive,</emphasis> select the storage controller to

which it should be added (IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS, floppy controller)

and then click on the "add disk" button below the tree. You can then

either select "Add CD/DVD device" or "Add Hard Disk". (If you

clicked on a floppy controller, you can add a floppy drive instead.)

Alternatively, right-click on the storage controller and select a

menu item there.</para>

<para>On the right part of the window, you can then set the

following:<orderedlist>

<listitem>

<para>You can then select to which <emphasis

role="bold">device slot</emphasis> of the controller the

virtual disk should be connected to. IDE controllers have four

slots which have traditionally been called "primary master",

"primary slave", "secondary master" and "secondary slave". By

contrast, SATA and SCSI controllers offer you up to 30 slots

to which virtual devices can be attached.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>You can select which <emphasis role="bold">image

file</emphasis> to use.<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>For virtual hard disks, a button with a drop-down

list appears on the right, offering you to either select

a <emphasis role="bold">virtual hard disk

file</emphasis> using a standard file dialog or to

<emphasis role="bold">create a new hard disk</emphasis>

(image file), which will bring up the "Create new disk"

wizard, which was described in <xref

linkend="gui-createvm" />.</para>

<para>For details on the image file types that are

supported, please see <xref

linkend="vdidetails" />.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>For virtual CD/DVD drives, the image files will

typically be in the standard ISO format instead. Most

commonly, you will select this option when installing an

operating system from an ISO file that you have obtained

from the Internet. For example, most Linux distributions

are available in this way.</para>

<para>For virtual CD/DVD drives, the following

additional options are available:</para>

<para><itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>If you select <emphasis role="bold">"Host

drive"</emphasis> from the list, then the physical

device of the host computer is connected to the VM,

so that the guest operating system can read from and

write to your physical device. This is, for

instance, useful if you want to install Windows from

a real installation CD. In this case, select your

host drive from the drop-down list presented.</para>

<para>If you want to write (burn) CDs or DVDs using

the host drive, you need to also enable the

<emphasis role="bold">"Passthrough"</emphasis>

option; see <xref linkend="storage-cds" />.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>If you select <emphasis role="bold">"Remove

disk from virtual drive",</emphasis> VirtualBox will

present an empty CD/DVD drive to the guest into

which no media has been inserted.</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist></para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist></para>

</listitem>

</orderedlist></para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>To <emphasis role="bold">remove an attachment,</emphasis>

select it and click on the "remove" icon at the bottom (or

right-click on it and select the menu item).</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist></para>

<para>Removable media (CD/DVDs and floppies) can be changed while the

guest is running. Since the "Settings" dialog is not available at that

time, you can also access these settings from the "Devices" menu of your

virtual machine window.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="settings-audio">

<title>Audio settings</title>

<para>The "Audio" section in a virtual machine's Settings window

determines whether the VM will see a sound card connected, and whether the

audio output should be heard on the host system.</para>

<para>If audio is enabled for a guest, you can choose between the

emulation of an Intel AC'97 controller, an Intel HD Audio

controller<footnote>

<para>Intel HD Audio support was added with VirtualBox 4.0 because

Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit versions) as well as 64-bit Windows Vista

do not support the Intel AC'97 controller.</para>

</footnote> or a SoundBlaster 16 card. In any case, you can select what

audio driver VirtualBox will use on the host.</para>

<para>On a Linux host, depending on your host configuration, you can also

select between the OSS, ALSA or the PulseAudio subsystem. On newer Linux

distributions (Fedora 8 and above, Ubuntu 8.04 and above) the PulseAudio

subsystem should be preferred.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="settings-network">

<title>Network settings</title>

<para>The "Network" section in a virtual machine's Settings window allows

you to configure how VirtualBox presents virtual network cards to your VM,

and how they operate.</para>

<para>When you first create a virtual machine, VirtualBox by default

enables one virtual network card and selects the "Network Address

Translation" (NAT) mode for it. This way the guest can connect to the

outside world using the host's networking and the outside world can

connect to services on the guest which you choose to make visible outside

of the virtual machine.</para>

<para>This default setup is good for probably 95% of VirtualBox users.

However, VirtualBox is extremely flexible in how it can virtualize

networking. It supports many virtual network cards per virtual machine,

the first four of which can be configured in detail in the Manager window.

Additional network cards can be configured on the command line with

VBoxManage. </para>

<para>Because of the vast array of options available, we have dedicated an

entire chapter of this manual to discussing networking configuration;

please see <xref linkend="networkingdetails" />.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="serialports">

<title>Serial ports</title>

<para>VirtualBox fully supports virtual serial ports in a virtual machine

in an easy-to-use manner.<footnote>

<para>Serial port support was added with VirtualBox 1.5.</para>

</footnote></para>

<para>Ever since the original IBM PC, personal computers have been

equipped with one or two serial ports (also called COM ports by DOS and

Windows). Most importantly, computer mice used to be connected to serial

ports before USB became commonplace. </para>

<para>While serial ports are no longer as important as they used to be,

there are still some important uses left for them. For example, serial

ports can be used to set up a primitive network over a null-modem cable,

in case Ethernet is not available. Also, serial ports are indispensable

for system programmers needing to do kernel debugging, since kernel

debugging software usually interacts with developers over a serial port.

With virtual serial ports, system programmers can do kernel debugging on a

virtual machine instead of needing a real computer to connect to.</para>

<para>If a virtual serial port is enabled, the guest operating system sees

a standard 16450-type device. Both receiving and transmitting data is

supported. How this virtual serial port is then connected to the host is

configurable, and the details depend on your host operating system.</para>

<para>You can use either the graphical user interface or the command-line

<computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> tool to set up virtual serial

ports. For the latter, please refer to <xref

linkend="vboxmanage-modifyvm" />; in that section, look for the

<computeroutput>--uart</computeroutput> and

<computeroutput>--uartmode</computeroutput> options.</para>

<para>In either case, you can configure up to two virtual serial ports

simultaneously. For each such device, you will need to

determine<orderedlist>

<listitem>

<para>what kind of serial port the virtual machine should see by

selecting an I/O base address and interrupt (IRQ). For these, we

recommend to use the traditional values<footnote>

<para>See, for example, <ulink

url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_(hardware_interface)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_(hardware_interface)</ulink>.</para>

</footnote>, which are:</para>

<para><orderedlist>

<listitem>

<para>COM1: I/O base 0x3F8, IRQ 4</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>COM2: I/O base 0x2F8, IRQ 3</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>COM3: I/O base 0x3E8, IRQ 4</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>COM4: I/O base 0x2E8, IRQ 3</para>

</listitem>

</orderedlist></para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>Then, you will need to determine what this virtual port should

be connected to. For each virtual serial port, you have the

following options:</para>

<para><itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>You can elect to have the virtual serial port

"disconnected", which means that the guest will see the

device, but it will behave as if no cable had been connected

to it.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>You can connect the virtual serial port to a physical

serial port on your host. (On a Windows host, this will be a

name like <computeroutput>COM1</computeroutput>; on Linux or

Solaris hosts, it will be a device node like

<computeroutput>/dev/ttyS0</computeroutput>). VirtualBox will

then simply redirect all data received from and sent to the

virtual serial port to the physical device.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>You can tell VirtualBox to connect the virtual serial

port to a software pipe on the host. This depends on your host

operating system:<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

<para>On a Windows host, data will be sent and received

through a named pipe. You can use a helper program

called VMware Serial Line Gateway, available for

download at <literal> <ulink

url="http://www.l4ka.org/tools/vmwaregateway.php">http://www.l4ka.org/tools/vmwaregateway.php</ulink>

</literal>. This tool provides a fixed server mode named

pipe at

<computeroutput>\\.\pipe\vmwaredebug</computeroutput>

and connects incoming TCP connections on port 567 with

the named pipe.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>On a Mac, Linux or OpenSolaris host, a local

domain socket is used instead. On Linux there are

various tools which can connect to a local domain socket

or create one in server mode. The most flexible tool is

<computeroutput>socat</computeroutput> and is available

as part of many distributions.</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist></para>

<para>In this case, you can configure whether VirtualBox

should create the named pipe (or, on non-Windows hosts, the

local domain socket) itself or whether VirtualBox should

assume that the pipe (or socket) exists already. With the

<computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> command-line

options, this is referred to as "server" or "client" mode,

respectively.</para>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist></para>

</listitem>

</orderedlist>Up to two serial ports can be configured simultaneously

per virtual machine, but you can pick any port numbers out of the above.

For example, you can configure two serial ports to be able to work with

COM2 and COM4 in the guest.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1>

<title>USB support</title>

<sect2 id="settings-usb">

<title>USB settings</title>

<para>The "USB" section in a virtual machine's Settings window allows

you to configure VirtualBox's sophisticated USB support.</para>

<para>VirtualBox can allow virtual machines to access the USB devices on

your host directly. To achieve this, VirtualBox presents the guest

operating system with a virtual USB controller. As soon as the guest

system starts using a USB device, it will appear as unavailable on the

host.<note>

<orderedlist>

<listitem>

<para>Be careful with USB devices that are currently in use on

the host! For example, if you allow your guest to connect to

your USB hard disk that is currently mounted on the host, when

the guest is activated, it will be disconnected from the host

without a proper shutdown. This may cause data loss.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para>Solaris hosts have a few known limitations regarding USB

support; please see <xref linkend="KnownIssues" />.</para>

</listitem>

</orderedlist>

</note></para>

<para>In addition to allowing a guest access to your local USB devices,

VirtualBox even allows your guests to connect to remote USB devices by

use of the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE). For details about

this, see <xref linkend="usb-over-rdp" />.</para>

<para>In the Settings dialog, you can first configure whether USB is

available in the guest at all, and in addition also optionally enable

the USB 2.0 (EHCI) controller for the guest. If so, you can determine in

detail which devices are available. For this, you must create so-called

"filters" by specifying certain properties of the USB device.<note>

<para>The EHCI controller is shipped as a VirtualBox extension

package, which must be installed separately. See <xref

linkend="intro-installing" /> for more information.</para>

</note></para>

<para>Clicking on the "+" button to the right of the "USB Device

Filters" window creates a <emphasis role="bold">new filter.</emphasis>

You can give the filter a name (for referencing it later) 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.</para>

<para>In detail, the following criteria are available:</para>

<orderedlist>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Vendor and product ID.</emphasis> With

USB, each vendor of USB products carries an identification number

that is unique world-wide, the "vendor ID". Similarly, each line of

products is assigned a "product ID" number. Both numbers are

commonly written in hexadecimal (that is, they are composed of the

numbers 0-9 and the letters A-F), and a colon separates the vendor

from the product ID. For example,

<computeroutput>046d:c016</computeroutput> stands for Logitech as a

vendor, and the "M-UV69a Optical Wheel Mouse" product.</para>

<para>Alternatively, you can also specify <emphasis

role="bold">"Manufacturer"</emphasis> and <emphasis

role="bold">"Product"</emphasis> by name.</para>

<para>To list all the USB devices that are connected to your host

machine with their respective vendor and product IDs, you can use

the following command (see <xref linkend="vboxmanage" />): <screen>VBoxManage list usbhost</screen></para>

<para>On Windows, you can also see all USB devices that are attached

to your system in the Device Manager. On Linux, you can use the

<computeroutput>lsusb</computeroutput> command.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Serial number.</emphasis> While vendor

and product ID are already quite specific to identify USB devices,

if you have two identical devices of the same brand and product

line, you will also need their serial numbers to filter them out

correctly.</para>

</listitem>

<listitem>

<para><emphasis role="bold">Remote.</emphasis> This setting

specifies whether the device will be local only, or remote only

(over VRDP), or either.</para>

</listitem>

</orderedlist>

<para>On a Windows host, you will need to unplug and reconnect a USB

device to use it after creating a filter for it.</para>

<para>As an example, you could create a new USB filter and specify a

vendor ID of 046d (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.</para>

<para>Several filters can select a single device -- for example, a

filter which selects all Logitech devices, and one which selects a

particular webcam.</para>

<para>You can <emphasis role="bold">deactivate</emphasis> filters

without deleting them by clicking in the checkbox next to the filter

name.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2>

<title>Implementation notes for Windows and Linux hosts</title>

<para>On Windows hosts, a kernel mode device driver provides USB proxy

support. It implements both a USB monitor, which allows VirtualBox to

capture devices when they are plugged in, and a USB device driver to

claim USB devices for a particular virtual machine. As opposed to

VirtualBox versions before 1.4.0, system reboots are no longer necessary

after installing the driver. Also, you no longer need to replug devices

for VirtualBox to claim them.</para>

<para>On newer Linux hosts, VirtualBox accesses USB devices through

special files in the file system. When VirtualBox is installed, these

are made available to all users in the

<computeroutput>vboxusers</computeroutput> system group. In order to be

able to access USB from guest systems, make sure that you are a member

of this group.</para>

<para>On older Linux hosts, USB devices are accessed using the

<computeroutput>usbfs</computeroutput> file system. Therefore, the user

executing VirtualBox needs read and write permission to the USB file

system. Most distributions provide a group (e.g.

<computeroutput>usbusers</computeroutput>) which the VirtualBox user

needs to be added to. Also, VirtualBox can only proxy to virtual

machines USB devices which are not claimed by a Linux host USB driver.

The <computeroutput>Driver=</computeroutput> entry in

<computeroutput>/proc/bus/usb/devices</computeroutput> will show you

which devices are currently claimed. Please refer to <xref

linkend="usb_linux" /> also for details about

<computeroutput>usbfs</computeroutput>.</para>

</sect2>

</sect1>

<sect1>

<title>Shared folders</title>

<para>Shared folders allow you to easily exchange data between a virtual

machine and your host. This feature requires that the VirtualBox Guest

Additions be installed in a virtual machine and is described in detail in

<xref linkend="sharedfolders" />.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="efi">

<title>Alternative firmware (EFI)</title>

<para>Starting with release 3.1, VirtualBox includes experimental support

for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), which is a new industry

standard intended to eventually replace the legacy BIOS as the primary

interface for bootstrapping computers and certain system services

later.</para>

<para>By default, VirtualBox uses the BIOS firmware for virtual machines.

To use EFI for a given virtual machine, you can enable EFI in the

machine's "Settings" dialog (see <xref linkend="settings-motherboard" />).

Alternatively, use the <computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> command

line interface like this: <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --firmware efi</screen>

To switch back to using the BIOS, use: <screen>VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --firmware bios</screen>One

notable user of EFI is Apple's Mac OS X, but recent Linuxes (such as

Fedora 11) and Windows (starting with Vista) can be booted using EFI as

well.</para>

<para>Another possible use of EFI in VirtualBox is development and testing

of EFI applications, without booting any OS.</para>

<para>Note that the VirtualBox EFI support is experimental and will be

enhanced as EFI matures and becomes more widespread. While Mac OS X and

Linux guests are known to work fine, Windows guests are currently unable

to boot using EFI.</para>

<sect2 id="efividmode">

<title>Video modes in EFI</title>

<para>EFI provides two distinct video interfaces: GOP (Graphics Output

Protocol) and UGA (Universal Graphics Adapter). Mac OS X uses GOP, while

Linux tends to use UGA. VirtualBox provides a configuration option to

control the framebuffer size for both interfaces.</para>

<para>To control GOP, use the following

<computeroutput>VBoxManage</computeroutput> command: <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode N</screen>

Where N can be one of 0,1,2,3,4 referring to the 640x480, 800x600,

1024x768, 1280x1024, 1440x900 screen resolution respectively.</para>

<para>To change the UGA resolution: <screen>VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/UgaHorizontalResolution 1440

VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/UgaVerticalResolution 900</screen></para>

<para>The video mode for both GOP and UGA can only be changed when the

VM is powered off and remains persistent until changed.</para>

</sect2>

</sect1>

</chapter>