VirtualBox 4.0.4 released and ubuntu 10.10/10.04/9.10 installation instructions included

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Oracle released VirtualBox 4.0.4, a maintenance release of VirtualBox 4.0. It improves stability and fixes regressions.

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

What is new in virtualbox 4.0.4

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

* VMM: fixed recompiler crashes under certain conditions (bugs #8255, #8319 and further)
* VMM: fixed running 64-bit guests on 32-bit host with nested paging enabled on AMD CPUs (4.0 regression; bug #7938)
* VMM: fixed timing issues / hangs for certain guests using the programmable interval timer (bugs #8033 and #8062)
* VMM: large page and monitoring fixes for live snapshots (bugs #7910, #8059, #8125)
* GUI: fixed error message when trying to exceed the maximum number of host network interfaces
* GUI: fixed saving of changes to the metadata of an existing snapshot (bug #8145)
* GUI: fixed rare crash on X11 hosts (bug #8131)
* GUI: when selecting a shared folder, start the file dialog in the users home directory (bug #8017)
* ExtPack: enforce the correct permissions which might be restricted by umask when creating directories (non-Windows hosts only; bug #7878)
* VBoxSDL: fixed crash when starting by specifying the VM UUID (4.0 regression; bug #8342)
* VBoxManage: allow savestate even if the VM is already paused
* VBoxManage: fixed modifyvm --synthcpu (bug #6577)
* VBoxManage: fixed hang when doing guestcontrol execute –wait-for exit and displaying process status on exit (bug #8235)
* VBoxManage: decreased CPU load during guestcontrol execute –wait-for exit/stdout while waiting for the guest process to terminate (bug #7872)
* VBoxManage: fixed list hostdvds/host?oppies
* VBoxManage: fixed storageattach for host DVD drives and host ?oppy drives
* Metrics: introduced RAM/VMM base metric.
* Main: improved sanity check when taking a VM screen shot (bug #7966)
* Main: fixed a crash under rare circumstances if a VM failed to start
* Main: fixed attaching of immutable disk images (bug #8105)
* Main: fixed a crash at VM shutdown (bug #6443)
* Main: fixed incorrect handling of cross-referenced medium attachments (bug #8129)
* Settings: fixed truncating of big integer values (4.0 regression)
* Settings: properly store the ICH9 chipset type (bug #8123)
* Host-Only & Bridged Networking: fixed VBox DHCP server startup issue for Windows hosts (4.0 regression; bug #7905)
* Host-Only Networking: re-create vboxnetX interfaces after vboxnetadp.ko module reload on Linux and Darwin (bugs #5934, #6341)
* NAT: fixed an mbuf leak under rare circumstances (bug #7459)
* ACPI: don’t allow the guest to enter S4 by default and don’t announce S1 and S4 in the ACPI tables if disabled (bug #8008)
* Graphics card: made re-enabling disabled screens work correctly to prevent problems when X11 guests enter screen saving mode (bug #8122)
* Storage: fixed write errors with snapshots if the host cache is disabled (4.0 regression; bug #8221)
* ATA/SATA: fixed reset handling after ACPI suspend/resume
* BusLogic: fixed hang with SMP VMs
* Serial: another attempt to prevent lost characters during transmission (bug #1548)
* Linux hosts/guests: Linux 2.6.38-rc1 compile fixes
* Mac OS X hosts: fixed VBoxSVC crash when listing host interfaces without default gateway (64-bit hosts only; bug #7955)
* Solaris/Darwin hosts: fixed VM CPU execution cap
* X.Org guests: fixed a crash on X server restart (bug #8231)
* X.Org guests: support X.Org Server 1.10 pre-release and Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha.
* X.Org guests: Add EDID emulation in the graphics driver to prevent GNOME settings daemon changing the mode on login.
* X.Org guests: never send graphics modes to the host that older VirtualBox versions can’t handle.
* Linux Additions: fixed a memory leak in the shared folders code if a host link is not readable (bug #8185)
* Windows Additions: fixed handling of Security Attention Sequence (SAS) with VBoxGINA

Install virtualbox 4.0.4 in ubuntu 10.10/10.04/9.10

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list file

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add one of the following line

For ubuntu 10.10 users

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian maverick contrib

For ubuntu 10.04 users

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lucid contrib

For ubuntu 9.10 users

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic contrib

Save and exit the file

Add gpg key

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add --

Update source list

sudo apt-get update

Install virtualbox 4.0.4

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.0

Note: Ubuntu/Debian users might want to install the dkms package to ensure that the VirtualBox host kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt and vboxnetadp) are properly updated if the linux kernel version changes during the next apt-get upgrade. For Debian it is available in Lenny backports and in the normal repository for Squeeze and later. The dkms package can be installed through the Synaptic Package manager or through the following command:

sudo apt-get install dkms