VirtualBox 4.0 released and ubuntu 10.10/10.04/9.10 installation instructions included

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Oracle released VirtualBox 4.0, a new major release. It now has an open architecture using extension packs and the base package is under GPLv2.

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

VirtualBox 4.0.0 (released 2010-12-22)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

* Reorganization of VirtualBox into a base package and Extension Packs; see chapter 1.5, Installing VirtualBox and extension packs, see the manual for more information
* New settings/disk file layout for VM portability; see chapter 10.1, Where VirtualBox stores its files, see the manual for more information
* Major rework of the GUI (now called “VirtualBox Manager”):
o Redesigned user interface with guest window preview (also for screenshots)
o New “scale” display mode with scaled guest display; see chapter 1.8.5, Resizing the machine’s window, see the manual for more information
o Support for creating and starting .vbox desktop shortcuts (bug #1889)
o The VM list is now sortable
o Machines can now be deleted easily without a trace including snapshots and saved states, and optionally including attached disk images (bug #5511; also, VBoxManage unregistervm --delete can do the same now)
o Built-in creation of desktop file shortcuts to start VMs on double click (bug #2322)
* VMM: support more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts
* New virtual hardware:
o Intel ICH9 chipset with three PCI buses, PCI Express and Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI); see chapter 3.4.1, “Motherboard” tab, see the manual for more information
o Intel HD Audio, for better support of modern guest operating systems (e.g. 64-bit Windows; bug #2785)
* Improvements to OVF support (see chapter 1.12, Importing and exporting virtual machines, see the manual for more information):
o Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA) support
o Significant performance improvements during export and import
o Creation of the manifest file on export is optional now
o Imported disks can have formats other than VMDK
* Resource control: added support for limiting a VM’s CPU time and IO bandwidth; see chapter 5.8, Limiting bandwidth for disk images, see the manual for more information
* Storage: support asynchronous I/O for iSCSI, VMDK, VHD and Parallels images
* Storage: support for resizing VDI and VHD images; see chapter 8.21, VBoxManage modifyhd, see the manual for more information.
* Guest Additions: support for multiple virtual screens in Linux and Solaris guests using X.Org server 1.3 and later
* Language bindings: uniform Java bindings for both local (COM/XPCOM) and remote (SOAP) invocation APIs

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

* VMM: Enable large page support by default on 64-bit hosts (applies to nested paging only)
* VMM: fixed guru meditation when running Minix (VT-x only; bug #6557)
* VMM: fixed crash under certain circumstances (Linux hosts only, non VT-x/AMD-V mode only; bugs #4529 and #7819)
* GUI: add configuration dialog for port forwarding in NAT mode (bug #1657)
* GUI: show the guest window content on save and restore
* GUI: certain GUI warnings don’t stop the VM output anymore
* GUI: fixed black fullscreen minitoolbar on KDE4 hosts (Linux hosts only; bug #5449)
* BIOS: implemented multi-sector reading to speed up booting of certain guests (e.g. Solaris)
* Bridged networking: improved throughput by filtering out outgoing packets intended for the host before they reach the physical network (Linux hosts only; bug #7792)
* 3D support: allow use of CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH again (bug #6864)
* 3D support: fixed various clipping/visibility issues (bugs #5659, #5794, #5848, #6018, #6187, #6570)
* 3D support: guest application stack corruption when using glGetVertexAttrib[ifd]v (bug #7395)
* 3D support: fixed OpenGL support for libMesa 7.9
* 3D support: fixed Unity/Compiz crashes on natty
* 2D Video acceleration: multimonitor support
* VRDP: fixed rare crash in multimonitor configuration
* VRDP: support for upstream audio
* Display: fixed occasional guest resize crash
* NAT: port forwarding rules can be applied at runtime
* SATA: allow to attach CD/DVD-ROM drives including passthrough (bug #7058)
* Floppy: support readonly image files, taking this as the criteria for making the medium readonly (bug #5651)
* Audio: fixed memory corruption during playback under rare circumstances
* Audio: the DirectSound backend now allows VMs to be audible when another DirectSound application is active, including another VM (bug #5578)
* EFI: support for SATA disks and CDROMs
* BIOS: reduce the stack usage of the VESA BIOS function #4F01 (Quake fix)
* OVF/OVA: fixed export of VMs with iSCSI disks
* Storage: Apple DMG image support for the virtual CD/DVD (bug #6760)
* Linux host USB support: introduced a less invasive way of accessing raw USB devices (bugs #1093, #5345, #7759)
* Linux hosts: support recent Linux kernels with CONFIG_DEBUG_SET_MODULE_RONX set
* Guest Additions: Shared Folders now can be marked as being auto-mounted on Windows, Linux and Solaris guests
* Linux Additions: Shared Folders now support symbolic links (bug #818)
* Linux Additions: combined 32-bit and 64-bit additions into one file
* Windows Additions: automatic logon on Windows Vista/Windows 7 is now able to handle renamed user accounts; added various bugfixes

Install virtualbox 4.0 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

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

What to do when experiencing The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG ... when refreshing the packages from the repository?

# sudo -s -H
# apt-get clean
# rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*
# rm /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/*
# apt-get clean
# apt-get update

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19 Responses

  1. Eric B says:

    I have installed 4.0, and I can no longer use any USB devices.

  2. Tan says:

    You have to download and install the Virtualbox extension pack from Virtualbox’s website to enable the USB 2.0 and other functionality.

  3. tRaCk3r says:

    What to do when experiencing The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG … when refreshing the packages from the repository?

    gpg –keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net –recv-keys E0F72778C4676186
    gpg –armor –export E0F72778C4676186| sudo apt-key add –

  4. wayne says:

    Mine works except for 64-bit clients, which were working fine with 3.2

    Sigh.

  5. Eric B says:

    I had the extensions. Turns out I needed to add my user to the virtual box group and restart/log out. USB works now.

  6. Hans says:

    @Eric B
    You are not running a windows guest, are you? In my guest os I can see the filtered usb devices, but they are greyed out. There seems to be a permission problem.

    I found a solution on http://www.fedorawiki.de/index.php/VirtualBox#USB%20unter%20Windows

    # sudo mkdir /mnt/usbfs
    # sudo echo ‘none /mnt/usbfs usbfs devgid=,devmode=664 0 0’ >> /etc/fstab

    Now I can use usb. But after a host reboot, ubuntu fails with the new fstab…:-/

    Any advice?

  7. Eric B says:

    I was a permission issue. I needed to add my user to the vboxusers group. Then everything worked.

  8. Eric M says:

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    virtualbox-4.0: Depends: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8m-1) but 0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.5 is to be installed

    any ideas?

  9. Kelly says:

    Having the same issue. Has anyone resolved this?

    virtualbox-4.0: Depends: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8m-1) but 0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.5 is to be installed

  10. Kelly says:

    I forgot to mention it states I am running the newest versions too. See below.

    sudo apt-get install libqtcore4
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    libqtcore4 is already the newest version.

    It says that for all 3 Depends.

  11. askela says:

    same problem:

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    virtualbox-4.0: Depends: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8m-1) but 0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.5 is to be installed

    ubuntu server 10.10 x86_64

  12. Dave says:

    Ditto:-

    The following packages have unmet dependencies.
    virtualbox-4.0: Depends: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5.1 is to be installed
    Depends: libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8m-1) but 0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.5 is to be installed
    E: Broken packages

    I would appreciate any help. Have looked around elsewhere but I can’t see any resolution to this.

  13. Dave says:

    Ah, just though – am running Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 32 bit.

  14. Eric M says:

    @Kelly I solved my problem. I was using the list for 10.10, this machine is 10.4 It happens when you have six machines running different versions.

  15. Christian says:

    Yes… mine was lucid too… did add the maverick by mistake… fixed it

  16. nerkn says:

    mint 10 is also lucid. libqtcore4 libqtgui4 libssl0.9.8 is solved.

  17. Jackie says:

    I have tried countless times to download the virtual box from the ubuntu software, from the virtual box website and from here. Yet all I’m getting on the terminal is

    No command ‘deb’ found, did you mean:
    Command ‘debc’ from package ‘devscripts’ (main)
    Command ‘derb’ from package ‘libicu-dev’ (main)
    Command ‘dab’ from package ‘bsdgames’ (universe)
    Command ‘debi’ from package ‘devscripts’ (main)
    Command ‘xdeb’ from package ‘xdeb’ (universe)
    deb: command not found

    and it says when through ubuntu software:

    This error could be caused by required additional software packages which are missing or not installable. Furthermore there could be a conflict between software packages which are not allowed to be installed at the same time.

    Any suggestions?

    I wasn’t the one who installed the ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop another co-worker did yet between the two of us, neither seem to be able to install it.

  18. Mina Maher says:

    @Eric : i don’t understand this “It happens when you have six machines running different versions.”

  19. Mina Maher says:

    any one try to use aptitude instead of apt-get ??

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