Virtualbox releases version 3.1.4!

This just in: VirtualBox just announced a maintenance release of their popular virtualization software. On the list of changes:

• VBoxManage: add restorecurrent operation to snapshots command
• VBoxManage: fixed broken snapshot lookup by name (bug fixed in SVN/3.1.4 (closed)">#6070
• 3D support: fixed SELinux warning saying VBoxOGL.so requires text relocation (bug ... (closed)">#5690)
• 3D support: fixed Corrupted surface rendering (bug Fixed in SVN (new)">#5695)
• 3D support: free textures on guest application termination (bug #5206)
• 3D support: fixed ubigraph_server crashes ( ... (closed)">#4674)
• 3D support: fixes for 64-bit Solaris guests

As always, check the changelog for the complete list of changes. I continue to be pleased by the high quality of this project.

New Linux Journal Article: Working with Windows XP in Linux using VirtualBox

A lot of the volunteer work that I do involves working with the Windows XP operating system. Recently, I needed to configure a server that was originally running on Win XP and needed to continue to function as an XP machine. I was able to do that in Linux using VirtualBox, and Linux Journal's website published the article here.

I'm preparing to don flame retardant clothing, as there is a high potential for an ensuing flame war on the site ;)

Virtualbox releases version 3.1!

Hello all!

Yesterday (Nov. 30th), Sun announced its first major update to VirtualBox 3 with the release of version 3.1. The major new features include:

• Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another (see the manual for more information)
• VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well ("branched snapshots"; see the manual for more information)
• 2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion (see the manual for more information)
• More flexible storage attachments: CD/DVD drives can be attached to an arbitrary IDE controller, and there can be more than one such drive (the manual for more information)
• The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
• Complete rewrite of experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher
• Significant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging)
• Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface; see the manual for more information)
• Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net; see the manual for more information)

In addition to the major features, a slew of minor fixes have been included, such as fixes in the 3D support of guest OSes while playing games such as Unreal Tournament.

As always, see the Changelog and the user manual (in PDF or HTML) for all the details. I am incredibly impressed with the pace of VirtualBox's development. Every time I turn around, they add another cool feature.

Ars Technica has a review of version 3.1, as well.

Linux Journal article- Android OS and Palm Pre WebOS virtualization

Today, I was published on the Linux Journal website with an exclusive (two part) Tech Tip. The first Tech Tip describes how to get Google's Android OS easily running as a virtual appliance. The second Tech Tip will focus on getting Palm's WebOS running, which you may find out to be easier than you think. Part two is now out, as well. Enjoy!

VirtualBox 3.0.8 released!

Another maintenance release of VirtualBox (3.0.8) was released!
The changelog is below:

• VMM: fixed 64 bits guest on 32 bits host regression in 3.0.6 (VT-x only; bug fixed in ... (closed)">#4947)
• VMM: fixed a recompiler triple fault guru meditation (VT-x & AMD-V only; bug fixed in ... (reopened)">#5058)
• VMM: fixed hang after guest state restore (AMD-V, 32 bits Windows guest and IO-APIC enabled only; bug fixed in ... (closed)">#5059)
• VMM: fixed paging issue with OS/2 guests
• VMM: fixed guru meditation in rare cases (2.0 regression; software virtualization only)
• VMM: fixed release assertion during state restore when using the Sound Blaster 16 emulation (bug Fixed in ... (closed)">#5042)
• Security: fixed vulnerability that allowed to execute commands with root privileges
• Linux hosts: fixed runtime assertion in semaphore implementation which was triggered under certain conditions (bug Fixed in SVN/3.0.6 (closed)">#616)
• Linux hosts: change the default USB access mode on certain distributions (bugs #3394#4291) and
• Linux hosts: on hardened Gentoo, the VBoxSVC daemon crashed by opening the VM network settings (bug fixed in ... (closed)">#3732)
• Linux hosts, Solaris hosts: pass the XAUTHORITY variable along the DISPLAY variable when starting a VM from VBoxManage or from the VM selector (bug #5063)
• Linux hosts: use sysfs to enumerate host drives if hal is not available
• Solaris hosts: fixed a bug which would hang the host sporadically as interrupts were not re-enabled everytime
• Solaris hosts: fixed a kernel panic with bridged and host-only networking (bug #4775)
• Solaris hosts: fixed incorrectly persistent CD/DVD-ROMs when changing them (bug #5077)
• X11-based hosts: support additional function keys on Sun keyboards (bug ... (closed)">#4907)
• Mac OS X hosts (Snow Leopard): fixed problem starting headless VMs without a graphical session (bug fixed in ... (closed)">#5002)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed problem listing host-only adapter names with trailing garbage (attached VMs won't start)
• Windows Additions: now work with Vista 64-bit Home editions (bug #3865)
• Windows Additions: fixed screen corruption with ZoomText Magnifier
• Windows Additions: fixed NPGetUniversalName failure (bug Fixed in ... (closed)">#4853)
• Windows Additions: fixed Windows NT regression (bug Fixed ... (closed)">#4946)
• Windows Additions: fixed VBoxService not running if no Shared Folders are installed
• Linux Additions: implemented ftrunctate (bug Fixed in ... (closed)">#4771)
• VRDP: start VM even if configured VRDP port is in use
• Networking: the PCnet network device stopped receiving under rare conditions (bug Fixed in SVN/3.0.8 (closed)">#4870)
• VBoxManage: implemented controlvm vrdpport command
• iSCSI: fixed issue with NetApp targets ( fixed in SVN/3.0.8 (closed)">#5072)
• SCSI: add support for virtual disks larger than 2TB
• USB: fixed potential crash when unplugging USB2 devices (bug Fixed in SVN/3.0.8 (closed)">#5089)
• NAT: IPSEC did not properly work with Linux guests (bug fixed in ... (closed)">#4801)

The most interesting feature to me appears to be the implementation of the "VBoxManage controlvm vrdpport" command, offering another way to configure VirtualBox's internal RDP server for virtual appliances over the Remote DeskTop (RDP) protocol.

VirtualBox 3.0.6 released!

Hooray! A new version of VirtualBox is out! Version 3.0.6

The changelog is listed here:

• VMM: fixed IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003 guests (AMD-V only; bug #4392)
• VMM: fixed a Guru meditation under certain circumstances when enabling a disabled device (bug Fixed in ... (closed)">#4510)
• VMM: fixed a Guru meditation when booting certain Arch Linux guests (software virtualization only; bug VM assertion (pVM->patm.s.pGCStateHC->fPIF == 1) -> fixed in ... (closed)">#2149)
• VMM: fixed hangs with 64 bits Solaris & OpenSolaris guests (bug #2258)
• VMM: fixed decreasing rdtsc values (AMD-V & VT-x only; bug fixed in SVN/3.0.6 (closed)">#2869)
• VMM: small Solaris/OpenSolaris performance improvements (VT-x only)
• VMM: cpuid change to correct reported virtual CPU id in Linux
• VMM: NetBSD 5.0.1 CD hangs during boot (VT-x only; bug Fixed in SVN/3.0.6 (closed)">#3947)
• Solaris hosts: worked around an issue that caused the host to hang (bug #4486)
• Solaris hosts: fixed a rare host system deadlock when using bridged networking
• Solaris hosts: fixed a potential host system deadlock when CPUs were onlined or offlined
• Solaris hosts installer: added missing dependency for UTF-8 package (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4899)
• Linux hosts: don't crash on Linux PAE kernels < class="closed ticket" href="http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1842" title="" vm =""> Fixed in ... (closed)">#1842)
• Linux/Solaris hosts: correctly detect keyboards with fewer keys than usual (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4799)
• Mac OS X hosts: prevent password dialogs in 32 bits Snow Leopard
• Python WS: fixed issue with certain enumerations constants having wrong values in Python webservices bindings
• Python API: several threading and platform issues fixed
• Python shell: added exportVM command
• Python shell: various improvements and bugfixes
• Python shell: corrected detection of home directory in remote case
• OVF: fixed XML comment handling that could lead to parser errors
• Main: fixed a rare parsing problem with port numbers of USB device filters in machine settings XML
• Main: restrict guest RAM size to 1.5 GB (32 bits Windows hosts only)
• Main: fixed possible hang during guest reboot (bug Fixed in SVN/3.0.6 (reopened)">#3792)
• GUI: fixed rare crash when removing the last disk from the media manager (bug Fixed in SVN/3.0.6 (closed)">#4795)
• VBoxManage: fixed guestproperty for Mac OS X hosts (bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#3806)
• VBoxManage: fixed setting guest properties with --flags or -flags
• Webservice: fixed a severe memory leak, at least on platforms using XPCOM
• Serial: fixed host mode (Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X hosts; bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#4672)
• VRDP: Remote USB Protocol version 3
• SATA: fixed hangs and BSODs introduced with 3.0.4 (bugs fixed in svn (closed)">#4695, fixed in svn (closed)">#4739, Fixed in SVN/3.0.6 (closed)">#4710)
• SATA: fixed a bug which prevented Windows 7 from detecting more than one hard disk
• SATA/SCSI: fixed rare random guest crashes and hangs
• SCSI: fixed problem with Fedora 11 refusing to boot after kernel update
• iSCSI: fix logging out when the target has dropped the connection, fix negotiation of simparameters, fix command resend when the connection was dropped, fix processing SCSI status for targets which do not use phase collapse
• BIOS: fixed a bug that caused the OS/2 boot manager to fail (2.1.0 regression, bug ... (closed)">#3911)
• PulseAudio: don't hang during VM termination if the connection to the server was unexpectedly terminated (bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#3100)
• Mouse: fixed weird mouse behaviour with SMP (Solaris) guests (bug fixed in 3.0.6 (closed)">#4538)
• HostOnly Network: fixed failure in CreateHostOnlyNetworkInterface() on Linux (no GUID)
• HostOnly Network: fixed wrong DHCP server startup while hostonly interface bringup on Linux
• HostOnly Network: fixed incorrect factory and default MAC address on Solaris
• HostOnly Network: fixed the problem with listing host-only interfaces on Mac OS X when all physical interfaces are down (bugs Fixed in ... (closed)">#4698, #4790)
• DHCP: fixed a bug in the DHCP server where it allocated one IP address less than the configured range
• E1000: fixed receiving of multicast packets
• E1000: fixed up/down link notification after resuming a VM
• NAT: fixed ethernet address corruptions (bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#4839)
• NAT: fixed hangs, dropped packets and retransmission problems (bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#4343)
• Bridged Network: fixed packet queue issue which might cause DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSOD for Windows hosts (bug #4821)
• Windows Additions: fixed a bug in VBoxGINA which prevented selecting the right domain when logging in the first time
• Windows host installer: should now also work on unicode systems (like Korean, bug Account name contains special ... (closed)">#3707)
• Windows host installer: check for sufficient disk space
• Shared clipboard: do not send zero-terminated text to X11 guests and hosts (bug fixed in SVN/upcoming 3.0.6 (closed)">#4712)
• Shared clipboard: use a less CPU intensive way of checking for new data on X11 guests and hosts (bug fixed in 3.0.6 (closed)">#4092)
• Guest Additions: do not hide the host mouse cursor when restoring a saved state (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4700)
• Windows guests: fixed issues with the display of the mouse cursor image (bugs #2603, fixed in SVN/upcoming 3.0.6 (closed)">#2660 and fixed in SVN/upcoming ... (closed)">#4817)
• SUSE 11 guests: fixed Guest Additions installation (bug fixed in SVN/upcoming ... (closed)">#4506)
• Guest Additions: support Fedora 12 Alpha guests (bugs applied in SVN (closed)">#4731, applied in SVN (closed)">#4733 and applied in SVN (closed)">#4734)

Even though it's only a maintenance release, get downloading!

VirtualBox 3.0.2 released!

FYI, VirtualBox recently released a maintenance release to the popular VirtualBox virtulization program. Get downloading! Here is the changelog:

VMM: fixed network regressions (guest hangs during network IO) (bug Fixed in SVN (reopened)">#4343)

VMM: guest SMP performance improvements

VMM: fixed hangs and poor performance with Kaspersky Internet Security (VT-x/AMD-V only; bug fixed in SVN (reopened)">#1778)

VMM: fixed crashes when executing certain Linux guests (software virtualization only; bugs fixed in SVN/3.0.2 (closed)">#2696 & VBox crash -> fixed in SVN/3.0.2 (closed)">#3868)

ACPI: fixed Windows 2000 kernel hangs with IO-APIC enabled (bug fixed in ... (closed)">#4348)

APIC: fixed high idle load for certain Linux guests (3.0 regression)

BIOS: properly handle Ctrl-Alt-Del in real mode

iSCSI: fixed configuration parsing (bug #4236)

OVF: fix potential confusion when exporting networks

OVF: compatibility fix (bug #4452)

NAT: fixed crashes under certain circumstances (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4330)

3D support: fixed dynamic linking on Solaris/OpenSolaris guests (bug Fixed in SVN. (closed)">#4399)

3D support: fixed incorrect context/window tracking for multithreaded apps

Shared Folders: fixed loading from saved state (bug #1595)

Shared Folders: host file permissions set to 0400 with Windows guest (bug ... (closed)">#4381)

X11 host and guest clipboard: fixed a number of issues, including bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4380 ... (closed)">#4344 and

X11 Additions: fixed some issues with seamless windows in X11 guests (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#3727)

Windows Additions: added VBoxServiceNT for NT4 guests (for time synchronization and guest properties)

Windows Additions: fixed version lookup

Linux hosts: workaround for buggy graphics drivers showing a black VM window on recent distributions (bug #4335)

Linux hosts: fixed typo in kernel module startup script (bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#4388)

Installer: support Pardus Linux

Solaris hosts: several installer fixes

Solaris host: fixed a preemption issue causing VMs to never start on Solaris 10 (bug #4328).

Solaris guest: fixed mouse integration for OpenSolaris 2009.06 (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4365)

Windows hosts: fixed high CPU usage after resuming the host (bug fixed in SVN/3.0.2 (closed)">#2978)

OVF: accept ovf:/disk/ specifiers with a single slash in addition to ovf://disk/#4452) (bug

Fixed a settings file conversion bug which sometimes caused hardware acceleration to be enabled for virtual machines that had no explicit configuration in the XML.

VirtualBox NAT Port Forwarding with VBoxManage

VirtualBox is a free, powerful and versatile virtualization program which is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows hosts, and can virtualize many different Operating Systems. VirtualBox was originally developed by innotek, but was purchased by Sun and renamed Sun xVM VirtualBox. There are several versions of the program, but I use the free closed-source version, since it has more features than Virtualbox OSE.

Several networking modes are available for the Virtualbox guest OS to connect to the Internet, but I will specifically mention Network Address Translation (NAT) networking here.

The Virtualbox manual describes the advantages and disadvantages of NAT in this way:

Network Address Translation (NAT) is the simplest way of accessing an external network from a virtual machine. Usually, it does not require any configuration on the host network and guest system. For this reason, it is the default networking mode in VirtualBox.

A virtual machine with NAT enabled acts much like a real computer that connects to the Internet through a router. The “router”, in this case, is the VirtualBox networking engine, which maps traffic from and to the virtual machine transparently. The disadvantage of NAT mode is that, much like a private network behind a router, the virtual machine is invisible and unreachable from the outside internet; you cannot run a server this way unless you set up port forwarding (described below).

So, your shiny new virtual machine can access the net, but is invisible to other devices on your network. Usually this isn't an issue, but it isn't possible to ssh into your virtual machine or access any services of the machine (such as a webserver) without configuration of port forwarding.

PORT FORWARDING IN VIRTUALBOX:

Port Forwarding can be initiated through the powerful and versatile VBoxManage command-line utility. VBoxManage has many options, but we will be using the “setextradata” feature to configure port forwarding.

The following commands will allow you to access your virtual machine via ssh. For this to work, I am making several assumptions about the guest OS:

* Your virtual machine is not currently running, but has already been created and saved.
* Your guest OS has ssh installed and correctly configured
* Your guest OS is set up with the VirtualBox's default virtual network hardware (PCNET III)
* sshd is listening for incoming connections at the default port (port 22)
* Your guest OS is named “VM Name Here”, although I'd wager that isn't the actual name of your VM.

If you don't know the name of your virtual machine, the easiest way to verify the name is to start Virtualbox and to look at the names of the machines listed on the main screen. Scrolling down on the details also allows you to see other information, such as the network adapter being used.

The following commands will forward TCP traffic that originates from port 2222 on your host OS to port 22 on your guest OS:

$ VBoxManage setextradata "VM Name Here" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/Protocol" TCP

$ VBoxManage setextradata "VM Name Here" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/GuestPort" 22

$ VBoxManage setextradata "VM Name Here” "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/HostPort" 2222

Note the usage of double quotes for the virtual machine name. If you decided on a virtual machine name that is only one word such as “VMNameHere”, you can technically omit these double quotes, like this:

$ VBoxManage setextradata VMNameHere "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/Protocol" TCP

$ VBoxManage setextradata VMNameHere "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/GuestPort" 22

$ VBoxManage setextradata VMNameHere "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/HostPort" 2222

There is no harm done in leaving them there, so do whatever makes you feel most comfortable.

FYI, there are some limitations to NAT port forwarding, and I will list them as they are listed in the VirtualBox Manual:

There are four limitations of NAT mode which users should be aware of:

• ICMP protocol limitations: Some frequently used network debugging tools (e.g. ping or tracerouting) rely on the ICMP protocol for sending/receiving messages. While ICMP support has been improved with VirtualBox 2.1 (ping should now work), some other tools may not work reliably.
• Receiving of UDP broadcasts is not reliable: The guest does not reliably receive broadcasts, since, in order to save resources, it only listens for a certain amount of time after the guest has sent UDP data on a particular port. As a consequence, NetBios name resolution based on broadcasts does not always work (but WINS always works). As a workaround, you can use the numeric IP of the desired server in the \\server\share notation.
• Protocols such as GRE are unsupported: Protocols other than TCP and UDP are not supported. This means some VPN products (e.g. PPTP from Microsoft) cannot be used. There are other VPN products which use simply TCP and UDP.
• Forwarding host ports lower than 1024 impossible: On Unix-based hosts (e.g. Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X) it is not possible to bind to ports below 1024 from applications that are not run by root. As a result, if you try to configure such a port forwarding, the VM will refuse to start.

These limitations normally don’t affect standard network use. But the presence of
NAT has also subtle effects that may interfere with protocols that are normally working. One example is NFS, where the server is often configured to refuse connections from non-privileged ports (i.e. ports not below 1024).

VBoxManage is an incredibly powerful utility, and this post just scratches the surface of its abilities. There is an entire section of the user manual dedicated to VBoxManage, and I encourage you to read it and discover the other things it can do.

I will cover Port Forwarding from the router to the host computer in a later post.

VirtualBox 3.0 released!

Good news! VirtualBox Version 3.0 has been released!
Here is the changelog from the VirtualBox web site:

VirtualBox 3.0.0 (released 2009-06-30)

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

• Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only; see chapter 3.7.2.2 of the user manual)
• Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental; see chapter 4.8 of the user manual)
• Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests

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

• Solaris hosts: allow suspend/resume on the host when a VM is running (bug #3826)
• Solaris hosts: loosen the restriction for contiguous physical memory under certain conditions
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed guest PAE
• Linux hosts: kernel module compile fixes for 2.6.31 (bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#4264)
• VMM: fixed occasional guru meditation when loading a saved state (VT-x only)
• VMM: eliminated IO-APIC overhead with 32 bits guests (VT-x only, some Intel CPUs don’t support this feature (most do); bug #638)
• VMM: fixed 64 bits CentOS guest hangs during early boot (AMD-V only; bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#3927)
• VMM: performance improvements for certain PAE guests (e.g. Linux 2.6.29+ kernels)
• VMM: some Windows guests detected a completely wrong CPU frequency (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#2227)
• VMM: fixed hanging and unkillable VM processes (bug fixed in ... (closed)">#4040)
• VMM: fixed random infrequent guest crashes due to XMM state corruption (Win64 hosts only)
• VMM: performance improvements for network I/O (VT-x/AMD-V only)
• GUI: added mini toolbar for fullscreen and seamless mode (Thanks to Huihong Luo)
• GUI: redesigned settings dialogs
• GUI: allow to create/remove more than one host-only network adapters (non Windows hosts)
• GUI: display estimated time for long running operations (e.g. OVF import/export)
• GUI: fixed rare hangs when open the OVF import/export wizards (bug #4157)
• 3D support: fixed VM crashes for client applications using incorrect OpenGL states
• 3D support: fixed memory corruption when querying for supported texture compression formats
• 3D support: fixed incorrect rendering of glDrawRangeElements
• 3D support: fixed memory leak when using VBOs
• 3D support: fixed glew library detection
• 3D support: fixed random textures corruption
• VRDP: support Windows 7 RDP client
• Networking: fixed another problem with TX checksum offloading with Linux kernels up to version 2.6.18
• NAT: fixed “open ports on virtual router 10.0.2.2 - 513, 514” (forum)
• NAT: allow to configure socket and internal parameters
• NAT: allow to bind sockets to specific interface
• PXE boot: significant performance increase (VT-x/AMD-V only)
• VHD: properly write empty sectors when cloning of VHD images (bug fixed in svn (closed)">#4080)
• VHD: fixed crash when discarding snapshots of a VHD image
• VHD: fixed access beyond the block bitmap which could lead to arbitrary crashes
• VBoxManage: fixed incorrect partition table processing when creating VMDK files giving raw partition access (bug fixed in svn (closed)">#3510)
• VBoxManage: support cloning to existing image file
• OVF: several OVF 1.0 compatibility fixes
• OVF: fixed exporting of disk images when multiple virtual machines are exported at once
• Virtual mouse device: eliminated micro-movements of the virtual mouse which were confusing some applications (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#3782)
• Shared Folders: sometimes a file was created using the wrong permissions (2.2.0 regression; bug ... (closed)">#3785)
• Shared Folders: allow to change file attributes from Linux guests and use the correct file mode when creating files
• Shared Folders: some content was incorrectly written under certain conditions (bug #1187)
• Shared Folders: fixed incorrect file timestamps, when using Windows guest on a Linux host (bug #3404)
• X11 clipboard: fix duplicate end of lines (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4270)
• X11 guests: a number of shared clipboard fixes
• Linux guests: Guest Additions support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
• Linux guests: new daemon vboxadd-service to handle time synchronization and guest property lookup
• Linux guests: implemented guest properties (OS info, logged in users, basic network information)
• Windows host installer: VirtualBox Python API can now be installed automatically (requires Python and Win32 Extensions installed)
• USB: Support for high-speed isochronous endpoints has been added. In addition, read-ahead buffering is performed for input endpoints (currently Linux hosts only). This should allow additional devices to work, notably webcams (bug #242).
• USB: fixed error handling for some USB dongles
• Web service: fixed inability to handle NULL pointers for object arguments, which are valid values for a lot of APIs, in both the raw and the object-oriented web service.
• Web service: object-oriented bindings for JAX-WS did not exhibit interface inheritance correctly, fixed
• Web service: added support for IDisplay and IGuest interfaces, which were previously unavailable
• Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now

The updated 3D support should be the most exciting for many users. It looks like VirtualBox 3.0, with support for DirectX 8/9 as well as OpenGL 2.0, might become a viable option for computer games running within a Windows Guest OS instance. I might just break out my old copy of Freelancer and give it a try!